#fruits basket ending 4

[dnangelic]

@toadmiretoweepover asked: "ah, i didn't realize the great phantom thief would limit himself to just face on jeans." [ mercutio, as if the ph series isn't getting some nendos in this unholy year of 2024. ]

he doesn't see your face ANYWHERE , ( the fact he's not at all looking irrelevant ) so who are you supposed to be again ?

[royxrizafan]

Apropos of literally nothing, I finished Killing Eve and now I’m feeling bitter about how many shows I get invested in that end so poorly it makes me kind of resent the investment I made and not want to ever rewatch again. I honestly don’t watch a fraction of as much TV as I used to and I think I’m realizing that this is why.

[furrymintysong]

[fandom]

Anime and Manga

Please don’t skip the openings and endings.

Boku no Hero Academia

SPY x FAMILY

Jujutsu Kaisen -1

Haikyuu!! -1

Mob Psycho 100 +16

One Piece +1

Naruto -1

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure +1

Tokyo Revengers +1

Mo Dao Zu Shi -2

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba +7

Chainsaw Man +12

Attack on Titan -8

Yu-Gi-Oh! +11

Sailor Moon -2

Tian Guan Ci Fu -2

19 Days -6

Death Note -2

Bungou Stray Dogs +3

Fullmetal Alchemist -3

Hetalia -9

Bleach +7

Yuri!!! on Ice -3

Cowboy Bebop

Inuyasha -6

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System +16

Neon Genesis Evangelion +6

Hunter X Hunter -2

Digimon +11

Sk8 The Infinity -26

Vanitas No Carte +3

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Tokyo Mew Mew

Lupin the Third

Fairy Tail -5

Boruto +3

Dragon Ball Z

Dungeon Meshi

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Soul Eater -2

Witch Hat Atelier

Berserk -1

Pop Team Epic

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

One Punch Man

Gokushufudou: The Way of the House Husband

Fruits Basket -32

Dorohedoro -5

Yotsuba&!

Kuroshitsuji -4

The number in italics indicates how many spots a title moved up or down from the previous year. Bolded titles weren’t on the list last year.

[anipgarden]

Adding To or Starting a Garden

AKA, the beginning of the Plants-Related section of this series.

This is my third post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

Got an area of lawn you’d like to convert to a wildlife haven? An area you can stick some hanging baskets in? Want to know how your garden of tomatoes and zucchinis is already putting in a lot of work? This is the section for you!

It would be dumb of me to not acknowledge that the act of gardening can come with a lot of costs. Buying seeds, buying plants, buying soil, raised bed materials, mulch, etc. … it can all get a bit daunting, let’s be honest! But there’s quite a few ways to get seeds and plants for free or extremely cheap, which I’ll be addressing in this section! The next section will be all about addressing the other Costs in gardening and how to mitigate or eliminate them entirely.

Also, do keep in mind; there’s no need to try and convert a whole area from lawn to garden or unused to garden at once. In fact, it could actually be extremely beneficial to do it a little at a time--maybe four or five square feet to start out.

Front Lawn (or Managing Principles)

If you live in a place where you’re required to have a grass turf lawn (HOA’s come to mind…), try replacing it with native grasses instead! You could even possibly use a low-growing ground cover plant like clover to a similar effect! Reseeding/replacing an entire lawn can be a big upfront cost, but even just letting the lawn be a little messy and tall helps. If the lawn gets patchy, leave the bare spots for a little while and something different will likely pop up! Pioneer species will fill the gaps and provide benefits to other plants around them, support animals, and more! If you want to take the guesswork out of it, you could always research what the pioneer species are in your area and plant the ones you like most. 

Obtaining Seeds for Cheap or Free

The cheapest way to start a garden is by far via seeds. However, seeds can be a bit complicated to grow, and some sources make them… way overpriced. Fortunately there are ways to get seeds for little to no cost! 

Some places sell seeds for as low as a dollar, 50 cents, or 25 cents! The packets may not have a lot of seeds, but it’s definitely a good start for a low budget! I’ve personally bought cheap seed packets at Walmart--the Ferry-Morse and Burpee brands are not what we’re looking for here. Typically the cheaper ones I’ve found are American Seed (which is owned by Green Garden Products, which also owns Ferry-Morse, Livingston Seed, McKenzie Seed, and Seeds of Change. Do with that information what you will), but they’re rarely stocked near the Ferry-Morse ones in the Formal Gardening Section. I’ve most often found them on end caps near the gardening section, so you may have to weave through a few aisles to find them, but once you do there’s an array of flower and vegetable seeds to select from! Alternatively, I’ve found seeds at Dollar Tree sold 2 or 4 for a dollar in Spring as part of their seasonal product; however, when they’re out of stock, they’re typically out of stock for the year. Try to check them out early in the year!

Otherwise, other seed companies like Urban Farmer or Botanical Interests will often have semi-frequent sales in spring and fall, when people are stocking up on seeds--joining their email lists can help you be the first to know when a good sale is going on!

Some foods from grocery stores will provide seeds that you can use in the garden as well. I’ve had the most luck with store-bought bagged beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Some people have had luck with watermelons, apples, citrus, squash, and more. Do keep in mind that you likely won’t get the same variety of fruit/vegetable as the one you bought--the resulting plant may look different and taste different.

Give it a shot! Pick some beans you like--if they don't grow well, at least you can eat the rest!

If you live in the US, food-producing live plants, bare roots, and seeds can often be purchased with SNAP benefits. But what does growing fruits, veggies, and herbs have to do with boosting biodiversity? While food crops aren’t typically native, they still provide valuable shelter for native insects. Some plants even have intricate relationships with native fauna--like the squash bee, a solitary bee which exclusively pollinates cucurbits like pumpkins, squash, and zucchini. And we get to benefit more directly as well! If you’re planting a diverse range of foods in your garden (as opposed to the swaths of single-plant farms that typically produce what’s sent to grocery stores), you’re supporting high levels of biodiversity by providing a variety of plants for creatures to live and hunt around.

Most of the time, when we think of boosting biodiversity with a garden, we think of a colorful flower garden teeming with pollinator species. However, if we’re striving to use native species, it can be a bit difficult to find some species in stores. I can say from experience that trying to find any wildflower seeds other than butterfly weed, purple coneflowers, and black-eyed-susans is… challenging, if you limit yourself to stores like Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. You might occasionally get lucky with an ACE Hardware or a local nursery, but even then sometimes it can be hard to track down who in your area is selling what--let alone if you live in an area where no one really is selling native plants or their seeds. Not to mention, even once you find a local or online store selling the seeds you want, they can sometimes cost a pretty penny. So what do you do?

If you have the option to, consider gathering native seeds yourself! Get good at identifying the native flora and fauna--or at least, a few target plants and their lookalikes--and get ready to go! Learn where they tend to grow, when they’ll be seeding, etc. Try to identify the plant before it goes to seed (for most plants, it's easiest to identify when flowering), then check back regularly to gather seeds. Typically, if I want to learn how to collect seed from a specific plant, I just search it on Google or YouTube--oftentimes, I'm lead to the GrowItBuildIt Youtube page, so it may be a helpful resource for you as well! Of course, make sure to leave plenty of seed behind so the wild population can repopulate, and seed can feed other creatures in the area. A good rule of thumb is to take no more than 1/3rd of what's available.

Buying seed in bulk is an option if you can afford the upfront cost. Try teaming up with a few friends to buy some bulk seeds and split them amongst yourselves--you’ll get tons of seed! Prairie Moon is a popular site that'll sell seeds by the pound if you can afford the price--though they're in the US, and I believe they focus on Midwest and East Coast natives.

If you want to cheat the system, don’t buy bulk sunflower seeds--buy bags of sunflower seeds being sold as birdseed. They’re typically all black oil sunflower seeds, but they’ll sprout, and they’re fairly cheap for the amount you get!

However, beware generic wildflower seed mixes! Many brands like to sell wildflower seed mixes in big box stores like Home Depot, Target, or even Dollar Tree, but they’ll often include flowers that aren’t native or possibly even invasive in your region! Before you make any purchases, double check to make sure the contained seeds won’t do more harm than good! A quality source of native seeds will provide English and Latin names for all seeds included, and will be native to the region or at least non-invasive. 

See this? I don't trust this.

There’s a good handful of programs online that’ll send you free seeds if you’re planning to start a native habitat project! Poke around online and see what you can find; you might get lucky! The best time to start looking for these is fall and winter, I find--by early spring, many of them are either done or beginning to wind down... though some also start up in spring. Ultimately--just check regularly! You never know what you can find!

Other Ways to Get Plants

Don’t want to start from seed? That’s fair! You can try cuttings! Just be sure not to take too much of the plant while you do so. Make sure you’ve gotten a few leaf nodes on your cutting, and cut any flowers you may have gotten. Make sure to leave some blooms and foliage on the original plant for the creatures in the current habitat--you don’t want to destroy one habitat to make another in your garden. There’s tons of methods of rooting cuttings, many of which have different efficacy rates for different plants, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you find seedlings growing in a place where they won’t be able to sustain themselves long-term, or are in danger of being destroyed, consider relocating them! You may be able to gently dig up and transplant the seedling to your garden. Don’t do this if they’re in a place where they can easily survive--ideally, you’ll be taking plants from sidewalk cracks, heavily maintained public gardens, roadsides, etc. Do be careful while doing this--ensure your safety first!  

You’re totally allowed to join gardening communities like clubs, facebook groups, and more before you’ve even put a trowel to the dirt. These are great places to learn information and advice! Many gardeners are more than happy to help out a new gardener, and will eagerly provide seeds, cuttings, or even baby plants! Talk to some people about your gardening journey and what you’re hoping to do, and you just might find some kindred spirits--or at least get more people interested in the topic! 

Seed and plant giveaways and trades happen all the time in gardening clubs, as well as online! Just poke around and see what you can find! Some are explicitly trades, meaning you’re expected to send something in return, but once you get your feet on the ground with some plant knowledge you’ll be stellar! You may be able to explain you’re just starting out, and someone may send you seeds without expecting a trade, but I’d suggest trying giveaways first. 

Poke around online and see if there’s a local chapter of your state’s native plant society. From there, you’ll likely be able to find a calendar of events--many of them will host plant sales in the spring, with a bunch of native plant seedlings ripe for the pickings if you can make it out and have some money to spare! Fair warning, though, you’ll want to get there early if you can. If they say they’re starting at 10, try to get there by 9:45. Year after year, there’s always record turnout, and they sell out of plants faster than ever. Just trust me on this. I’ve been let down; hopefully you won’t have to be.

Some libraries are beginning to host seed libraries! Check around and see if your library has one! Ideally, the system works best if you also have seeds to contribute in return, but if you’re just starting out I’m sure they won’t mind you taking some seeds! Just consider saving some seeds to contribute in the future and pay it forward. If your library doesn’t have a seed library? Consider asking if they’d be willing to start one! Community interest is a great way to get the ball rolling on projects like these, but they’ll only know the community is interested if the community tells them they’re interested!

Volunteer to Garden for/with Someone Else

Maybe someone in your area wants to garden, but is struggling to find the time/energy. Many elderly people who used to garden simply can’t anymore but still would like a garden. Other people may love to have a helping hand in their garden. You might even find a few people in your area interested in renting and sharing a community garden plot with others, so they don't have to handle it all on their own! They may be interested in increasing biodiversity right now, or may be willing to if it’s brought up to them. You might be just the kind of person someone needs! Since it won't be your garden, you’ll likely need a bit of permission and collaboration to get anything in particular going, but it’s worth a shot and a way to maybe even make friends! 

Again, your mileage may vary with some of these. You may not know where there's a bunch of wildflowers growing in your area, or maybe your local library doesn't have a free seed library. That's okay! Do what you're able to, find what you can find, get what you can get! And there's never any shame with starting small--in fact, starting small can make the project easier to manage and expand when you're able!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to start growing plants cheaply--low cost seed starting set ups, essentially. There's a lot of good options, many of which I've used myself even! Until then, I hope this advice is helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

[natsuyuki-w]

Not one of the boys

Twisted wonderland cast realizes that (Yuu) is a girl.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 Featuring: Grim - Trey - Adeuce - Tsunotaro, Cater and Riddle

Dumb human

- Hyiiii! It's really coming down! - Appeared the monster out of nowhere. - ARGH! Grim! - I jumped almost stumbling on the dusty sofa. - Gyahahahaha! You've got this stupid look on your face like... Whaaaaaa but you're a girl! - He panicked watching my shirt.

To dust the abandoned building, I had thrown off the ceremonial cape leaving me with a tight black shirt.. - Yes,... I identify as one at least. What about it? - His face gradually relaxed and he put a paw under his chin. - I dunno. I only saw boys, just thought you were one as well. - he shrugged. Thinking back to the faces I met in the mirror chamber, it could've been true. Tho there were many people, hooded furthermore, and there was no way of knowing if somebody was another gender instead.

- Yes I've decided.- piped the grey cat. - Nothing has changed, you're still a weak dumb human, either a boy or a girl. -

- How many colorful titles am I going to get in the near future? -

Chestnuts

- Talking about husband material. - with the basket of chestnuts in hand, I gushed eying all the goodies in the kitchen prepared by the third year. Trey chuckled lightly - If you say so.- strangely enough, the comment hit differently from when his friends teased him about it.

Cater's words came to his mind: "Much like the new Pomefiore kid, (Yuu)Chan is a very cute boy."

- Lah - I clipped back Deuce's hair just like I did with mine. - Now we are ready! - and I struck a power pose. Trey looked at me for a good moment, mind wandering, cheeks reddening. His Heartslabyul companion was getting into his head.

---

With that tart involved, I knew it was going to end like this. - (Yuu)!!! Stop it. - slapped my hand Ace - I need them for the cake, do you want me to stay like this forever???- he pointed to the collar on his neck. - You are such a drama-king, there are probably 10 kilos of them. - I pouted - This is just the rightful prize for...Ouch! - he flicked my nose this time. Chestnuts were a weakness of mine and even tho it was a very boring and laborious task, Ace was considering switching and shelling them himself.

He snatched the one I just finished cleaning and dropped it in the pile - Junkie! - he threw a judging gaze. - Yes okay? I admit it. Hi, my name is (Yuu), I'm 18 years old, and it's since last November that I haven't tasted, this delicious fruit of the devil. - I chanted.

- Fruit of the devil? - asked Grim. - Yeah..., where I live, chestnuts have been said to be a gift from God to the people of the mountains, but that has been cursed by the devil, making them difficult to bring and eat.- - Ah-ha! - looked at me weirdly the cat.

- As I, mere mortal, can't look upon this gift... OUCH - a slap, this time on my nape. - Are you going to just punish me or do you intend to make yourself useful for YOUR apology cake? - I bit.

- Kids, calm down. - teased the man with glasses posing his large hands on our heads - but He...(Yuu) has a point, Ace. - inquired. And scolded by the older student, the angry first year started working alongside me but scrutinizing my every move.

---

I quickly finished shedding all the remaining fruits and stood to go asking what we needed next, but before, I spun fast, aiming for my drug.

Unfortunately, Trey was quicker, and from behind me, he managed to grab the bowl and hold me back with his long arms. When his hand got hold of my waist, I felt him tense briefly, but he recomposed, looking down at me with a tinge of red on his ears. - No more falling into temptation, okay (Yuu)? - he commented, lingered for just a moment, and then proceeded to give us instructions.

- What was that? - whispered Ace to me. - What? - I asked dumbfounded. - WHA??? You haven'...sigh...WHATever.- and he left

- What? -

---

- Do that thing you do, Trey-kun. - said Cater. The boy arrived just to snatch a couple of photos and enjoy our labor. -..., oh that! What are your favorite things to eat guys? - asked the other third-year. And after he listened and chanted " doodle suit", we all bitted into the slices again. Everyone was surprised and cheery about the unexpected flavor. My mind on the other hand got in a tantrum of emotions, and soon big juicy tears were streaming down my face.

- This is Trey-kun's unique magic. Don't you think it'd work super well on a date with a girl? - commented the boy winking and wrinkling the diamond seed on the cheek.

The rivers streaming down my eyes wouldn't stop. I quietly turned around hoping to cover it from the others. But Trey, who was right next to me, caught sight of my face - (Yuu) what happened? Have I messed up yours? - he posed a comforting hand on my back. I shook my head and tried denying my poor state with sobs choking each word. -N-no no! I-*hick* it's perfect. A-and don't *sniff worry-y I'm just a baby. - I felt pathetic.

- Uff I'm glad I didn't mess it up, but you definitely are not good.- - I-it's just...I think I-I'm feeling homesick fro-om the taste of the dish- I murmured - Pushing me a little he looked where he could find some tissues, but after seeing that it wasn't getting better tried the bold move of hugging me.

Welcoming the offered comfort, I moved my arms from my face to the back of his shirt mumbling - I'm so sorry.- for the tears that stained his clothes and the awkwardness of the moment, and too caught by my storm of emotions, I didn't realize the implications of my chest pressed against him.

His body went stiff like a wooden plank but managed to gulp heavily and relax. "Perhaps (Yuu) isn't a cute boy after all." He was going to take the information for himself.

Hook up???

- Excuse my intrusion. - said Deuce who came along to keep an eye on Ace. - Make yourself at home. - I smiled warmly. - the bathroom is here, I'll go up and take out the mattress, cover, and pillow. Ace, do you want to sleep on the couch again? - - My back hurts just thinking about it. - he groaned.

- Let us give you a hand prefect! - followed Deuce grabbing his companion by the wrist. - Hey, hey I'm coming... geez - he almost fell from the cramped stairs. - Hahaha, sure, thank you. - I waved them up. - I'll seriously start to tie up this weekend. So, I'm sorry but for now, my guest room is the lounge. - and I invited them to my shared bedroom. - Don't worr...- the raven boy froze in place.

- What's up? - and I followed his eyes. - Ups... - my laundry was still folded on the sheets and, obviously, my bra was on top of the pile. - I can exp...- -I KNOW RIGHT? I never noticed until yesterday! - exclaimed Ace. - Gyahahaha, you should've seen him: "HOW DARE YOU LYING TO ME LIKE THAT, WOMAN?". So lame. - Grim cackled nudging the boy's leg, but no reactions came out of him.

- ACE, GRIM DAMN IT! I was ready with a bunch of excuses! - - Oh yeah, like? - they asked incredulously. - This Gremlin pranked me? I snatched a hook-up? I like wearing women's clothes or I'm a Drag queen?...-

- THOSE EXCUSES ARE EVEN MORE EMBARRASSING THAN THE TRUTH! - Screamed back at me the ginger. I glared very disappointed but before I could insult his bigotry he inquired- And a hookup? How in hell would you find a girl to hook up with? - - Mhpf... - I pouted offended - I AM a pretty boy, Cater's words. I could find a girl easily if only I would.-

- (Yuu)...- Finally Deuce snapped out of his daze and spoke in a quiet voice. - ...you are a girl... - and a little hurt asked - Why you didn't tell us? - I had the impression this was starting to be a talk of routine. - Crowley asked me to keep it a secret, but honestly...Well, is not like I needed to tell anything. Do you present yourself as "Deuce, a boy"? Till the headmaster gave me the warning I don't recall occasions where my gender got questioned...other than Grim on the first day here. -

He was trying to Think how to take the situation, and that operation was successful just as mixing water with oil. - Look - I posed a hand on his shoulder before his brain started fuming - I wanna be friends with you all, it's not like I act any different either way, it's always me. Just covering more than I would usually. I mean, if it's awkward for you guys, I would be very sad, but I'll...accept it and I'll take my distan...- And he exchanged with a stern hold of my shoulder. - No! You're right! I wanna be friends with you, it hasn't changed anything. And don't worry - he puffed his chest holding his fist on it - I'll be sure your secret will not be spilled further! -

- Awww thank you Deuce, you're such a sweetheart.-  - Mmmm... - he nodded but quickly turned to face the other way - SORRY...can't help it,.... that name hits differently now. - his face was red as a tomato.

---

They sat on their mattress while I was on the couch with Grim lying in my lap. - So in order, Grim was the first one, then the headmaster...when? - - After I gave him the crystal of the Dwarf's mine. - and I mimicked dramatically - One moment he was: "I'll grant you the honor of attending our majestic academy. Go and make me proud son." then he saw and he was: "WHAT'S A CHICK DOING IN MY OFFICE?". - The events may be inaccurate...- muttered the gray cat and I shushed him.

- How many others know? - asked Deuce. - You two,... I think?- - I bet, Trey-senpai. - inquired Ace. - Why? - - He was SO all over you. - he smirked. - All over...didn't notice. - delicious chestnuts were the only thing I could recall - And how do you know he doesn't like boys? - - Yeah exactly - supported me Deuce. - Cater said something about his unique magic being great with the girls so I am assuming.- shrugged the ginger. - He has a point! - quickly changed sides his companion.

And an evening of gossip and snacks started.

Intruders

Me and Grim prepared ourselves for another day of investigations and on the path to the school I sum up my late-night talking with the mysterious stranger.

-...and I saw those green sparks and this big shadow out of our widow. So I opened it and there was this Huge stunning boy with dark horns on his head. So I was like: " Intruder!" and he was like: "A child of man? Though, aren't you the intruder little lady? " - I imitated his tone - Obviously, I was wearing the crop top and not one of the XXL shirts - and Grim cackled.

- So I went out, 'cause I didn't want to wake you and I told him the all I'm here cause blah blah, don't tell anybody etcetera. So I asked him why strolling around our dorm? And he said he was there cause he likes exploring ruins, and now we ruined his ruin, cause the abandoned building is no longer abandoned.-

- Rude! - - A little...- - So who was he?- - Wait I'm getting there! - We stopped waiting for our favorite duo. - I asked him and he was all weird about it. At first, astonished, and then he laughed and said " I'd rather you remain unaware". - - Suspicious! - whispered Grim. - "It's for your own benefit. Instead, I will permit you to call me by the name of your choosing." - and I got closer to the cat to add drama -" Although you may one day regret it..."-

We looked at each other and grinned mischievously. - Oooh, oooh let me pick it! - exclaimed Grim - Howsabaout...Tsunotaro! - I couldn't help but giggle. - I was thinking "Hornton", but yours works well. Can't wait to see his face when I tell him.-

He then pondered - If Tsunotaro's a student here who knows when we might run into him? If we do, introduce me! I've never seen a human with horns before.- - G'morning, Prefect. - jumped Cater from behind us and threw an arm around my shoulders.

- Cater don't be so touchy - frowned slightly Riddle, and the older student complied disappointed. - But (Yuu)Chan is soft, I like giving hugs to my kohai.- I chuckled embarrassed - Good morning to you Cater, and hello Riddle. How is Trey doing? - - Better, he's slowly but surely recovering thanks to Crewel's potions and nurses' caring. - responded the redhead.

He then looked intensely - Mmh your tie is a little off from the assault. - frowned Riddle - Following the rules starts with your attire. Or else your residents will never listen to you...Although, I guess it's not as bad for you being the only one. - inquired the head of Heartslabyul.

I looked down and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the third year smirking. Before I knew it Riddle had his hands on my clothes, the back of his hand brushing on my chest. I stood still, too stunned to do anything.

"Wow (Yuu) is very broad." was his first thought, but Cater provided to correct it. - Riddle-San... You are unfair, first telling me not to be touchy with her, and now look at you. -

It took some time for the both of us to register his phrase and still holding onto my tie he twisted his head and stuttered - W-what have you just said? -

" Damn it" - Ha-ha. Why? What did he say? - I tried to play dumb hoping Cater would doubt his words. Unfortunately, my body was not as much of a good actor, and the boy's green eyes immediately spotted my shade of red. - I said that it's unfair you're being touchy with Her. -

The dorm leader looked back at me and a million thoughts passed through his big eyes, realizing everything at once. Quickly became red from head to toe, then threw himself back in a mess of sorries, "I didn't know", "Since when?"...

Incredulous, Grim asked - HOW DID YOU KNOW S...*MPHF - I quickly covered his mouth to avoid the entirety of the front yard eavesdropping. - Trey-kun told me! - winked Cater. - And since when Trey knya about it???- exclaimed again the cat. - Since the Mont Blanc tart! He was all over you so I asked and he confessed his suspicions. -

- Ace said the same thing... Dang, I'm in debt with that dummy...- I mumbled recalling his bet. - Was I the only one ignoring this fundamental fact??? - snapped Riddle still full red. - I don't know,...(Yuu)? - the third year quickly threw the fireball at me. - Well, there is Grim, the headmaster, who by the way, was the one telling me it would've been troublesome for him to let this information known. - I explained - Then Ace discovered, Deuce, Trey as it seems, and Cater too, Tsunotaro, and now you! - I listed. - I think...- - Tsuno-Who? - asked the two members of Heartslabyul. - Ah, a new encounter I made yesterday. -

- So you're telling me, someone, you just met, knew it before me???- and the tinge of red on the king of hearts, changed from fluster to anger.

Till reading the manga I thought Cater's name was "Carter" instead.

Not just because it sounded better in my head, but because "Carte" in Italian means "Cards".

[penguinsnoot]

20 Anime You Should Watch

I’ve been getting into anime again recently, and thought I’d share some that I like! These are in no particular order. I gave very short, simplistic descriptions of each show, but I recommend looking them up for full summaries to get a better idea of what they’re about.

1) Cells at Work! (2 seasons, 22 episodes) [Comedy]

Anthropomorphic cells living in a human’s body. Focuses on a red blood cell that frequently encounters a white blood cell during dangerous bodily infestations and illnesses.

2) Kaichou wa Maid-sama! (1 season, 26 episodes) [Comedy, Romance]

Focuses on the female school president of a previously all-male school who directs and rules over them harshly. She secretly works at a maid café, which is discovered by a popular male classmate of hers. 

3) Ouran High School Host Club (1 season, 26 episodes) [Comedy, Romance]

Student Haruhi Fujioka stumbles upon a host club in the prestigious Ouran Academy. After accidentally breaking an expensive vase, she must work for the club to pay off her debt.

4) Lost Song (1 season, 12 episodes) [Music, Fantasy]

Rin is a girl from a small village who dreams of singing in the capital city. Her singing has the power to heal any wound. Rin and her brother, Al, journey to the capital when their home is attacked by soldiers hoping to capture Rin. Finis, who also has a magical voice, performs for the royal palace. She falls in love with a soldier named Henry and must hide their relationship from the prince. She and Rin have intersecting destinies and both struggle with the terrible circumstances that life throws at them. 

5) Clannad (2 seasons, 47 episodes) [Drama, Romance, Supernatural]

Delinquent Tomoya meets ill Nagisa and they become friends. Along with four other girls, Tomoya decides to help Nagisa revive the school’s drama club. He finds himself helping each girl with their respective problems and learns that life may not be as dull as he once thought. 

6) Fruits Basket (3 seasons, 64 episodes) [Drama, Romance, Supernatural]

Homeless Tohru Honda moves in with members of the mysterious Soma family. When she accidentally learns of the family’s curse of them turning into animals when embraced by a member of the opposite sex, she resolves to help them figure out how to lift the curse. 

7) Kamisama Hajimemashita (2 seasons, 25 episodes) [Comedy, Fantasy, Romance]

Offered a home by a man being attacked by a dog, Nanami is surprised to find a seemingly abandoned shrine. When she tried to leave, she is confronted by the spirits of the shrine. Tomoe, the fox spirit, leaves angrily when he realizes it is not the land god, Mikage, who has entered their home and that he instead sent a human girl as replacement. Refusing to remain homeless, Nanami decided to serve the shrine and ends up forming a sealed contract with Tomoe when she kisses him. 

8) Princess Jellyfish (1 season, 11 episodes) [Comedy, Slice-of-life]

Tsukimi is an introvert with a love for jellyfish living with other socially isolated women in Tokyo. One day, she meets someone beautiful who looks like a princess and helps her save a jellyfish from a local pet store. The beautiful princess is revealed to actually be a crossdressing man named Kuranosuke. Despite their aversion to men and socializing in general, Kuranosuke resolves to help the women become more confident in themselves. 

9) Soul Eater (1 season, 51 episodes) [Action, Comedy, Fantasy] 

Follows three sets of meisters and their weapons as they fight demons and witches to obtain the status of Death Scythes. They attend a school founded by Lord Death and learn the best ways to recognize and defeat these evil entities. 

10) Yuri on Ice (1 season, 12 episodes) [Sports, Romance]

Figure skater Yuri meets champion skater Victor, who claims he is going to be Yuri’s new mentor. Yuri accepts and goes on a difficult journey of training in the world of competitive ice skating. 

11) BNA: Brand New Animal (1 season, 12 episodes) [Action, Fantasy, Comedy]

Michiru, after becoming a newly formed beastman, travels to Anima City, a safe haven for people like her. After witnessing an explosion during a celebration, she is confronted by detective Shirou Ogami. They team up to pursue the criminals involved with the explosion and discover why Michiru has suddenly started to turn into a Tanuki after being human all her life. 

12) Japan Sinks: 2020 (1 season, 10 episodes) [Drama, Sci-fi] 

Ayumu and family’s life is turned upside down when an earthquake strikes and obliterates Japan’s structural integrity. The Mutou family must find a way to survive and get out of the country before the entirety of Japan sinks into the ocean. 

13) Toradora (1 season, 25 episodes) [Drama, Romance]

Gentle yet fierce-looking Ryuji forms an unlikely friendship with sharp-tongued and violent Taiga. They try to help one another confess to their crushes while growing closer along the way.

14) A3! (2 seasons, 24 episodes) [Drama, Slice-of-life, Comedy]

Izumi confronts the loan sharks who are after money from her father’s run-down theater. She plans to bring the theater back into the spotlight and pay of the debt with the help from an all-male acting troupe.

15) Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun (1 season, 12 episodes) [Comedy, Romance]

Chiyo has a crush on her schoolmate, Nozaki, and confesses to him, but he mistakes her as a fan of his manga and gives her an autograph. Saying she wants to be with him, Nozaki invites her to help him with his drawings. Chiyo hopes that by helping Nozaki, he will eventually take notice of her romantic feelings for him.

16) Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku (1 season, 11 episodes) [Romance, Comedy]

Narumi and Hirotaka knew each other when they were younger and end up working in the same office. They decide to start dating, but find that their respective interests make it difficult to create romantic situations. 

17) K-On! (2 seasons, 39 episodes, 1 film) [Comedy, Slice-of-life]

Five high school students become friends and bandmates as they form the next generation of their school’s Light Music Club.

18) Violet Evergarden (1 season, 13 episodes, 2 films) [Fantasy, Drama]

Amidst working for a ghostwriting agency, past soldier Violet Evergarden learns to reconnect with her feelings while trying to understand the final words her commander left her with.

19) Given (1 season, 11 episodes, 1 film) [Drama, Romance]

Prepared to give up music for good, Ritsuka changes his mind after meeting Mafuyu. He gives Mafuyu guitar lessons in the hopes of making the other boy the lead singer for his band. 

20) Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (1 season, 13 episodes, 1 film) [Drama, Romance, Supernatural]

Sakuta suffers from puberty-syndrome and sees a bunny girl that is invisible to others. When he meets the girl in real life, he realizes she’s going through her own problems and becomes attached to the bunny girl. 

[xxblairexxss]

Doudou (part 3)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 (Charles’s ending)

Pairing : Charles Leclerc x reader / Lando Norris x reader

Theme : Angst / fluff

Let me know what you feel and which side are you on!

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

Charles explored the aisle of chocolates, scanning each brand while holding a basket that was halfway full with packets of chocolates.

“Mate, that’s a lot. You tryna get high on sugar or something?”

He turned around and was greeted by Lando, who had an amused curiosity expression on. “I never knew you were that big fan of sweets.”

“No, my sweet racks needed a restock. I wasn’t gonna finish everything in one sitting.”

“Great. I was gonna say I’m one call away if you were overdosed with all that.” Lando had realised Charles’s behavior had been more light-hearted and carefree during the winter break. He wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the break or it was you. The last time he hung out with you, you did mentioned that you bumped into Charles but didn’t go into the details of what you guys talked about.

And he didn’t ask you because he wasn’t sure if he would like to know.

“Hey, uhm, did something happen between you and Y/N?”

The question made Charles stopped looking at the rows of chocolate. Lando never asked about you, it wasn’t a topic that he would put on the table if you weren’t presence.

“Yeah, I mean, no. I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing. You just look different.”

“I haven’t heard her voice for so long, mate. Hearing her voice was enough to lift up my spirit even if the conversation I had with her wasn’t exactly how I wished.”

Your voice was his favourite song.

“I didn’t know you were this close with her.”

Lando was taken aback. He thought he sounded casual with the conversations but it seemed like some of his true feelings slipped off along with the words he had spoken. “No, we only shared a couple of texts and phone calls. It wasn’t anything more than that.”

“Chill, I was just saying. She deserved a good friend like you, Lando. I wasn’t gonna stop you from hanging out with her or anything. I just…wanted her to be happy and I know she’s in a good hand with her friends…. and you.”

But Lando knew Charles said that because he was far off, way far off compared to what you and him had been through.

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, landonorris and 334,546 others

ynusername bb face *(*❦ω❦)*

username belleee

username la plus belleee 😍

username Your hair is cuteee

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

You scrambled through the cabinet to find that one thing that had always been there when you didn’t need it but vanished when you badly needed it, like right now.

“Ah! Here it is!”

The sound of doorbell broke the silence in your apartment. You had a slept over with your friend yesterday and the house was a mess. It wasn’t that bad but messier than usual. Your friend, Lia had decided to bake her own version of cake to celebrate your first job and to make it short, the cake wasn’t edible but it was the thoughts that was counted. So now your kitchen was a mess chocolate chips was everywhere, the dishes, the batter. It was best to say that your kitchen was under construction at the moment.

“Charles? What are you doing here?” You were in an oversized hoodie, your hair was a mess, your head was throbbing and your period cramp was like cherry on the cake. Complete set.

“Hey, I brought some chocolates for you…”

“Chocolates for…?”

“Your period cravings?”

You weren’t gonna ask how he knew about it because you knew he had always set a reminder on his phone. But you didn’t expect him to still keep the reminder on.

“You still set it on?”

“I never turned it off. I am not sure if you had a new favourite so I bought some of your all time favourite and some of them are new ones. It has new flavour written on the packaging but I didn’t buy any flavour that has fruits.”

Because you hate fruits and chocolates combination.

He rubbed on the back of his neck awkwardly and was going to walk away as you took the bag of chocolates and sweets but you stopped him.

“Do you…wanna come in?”

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

You just wanna dug a hole and hide your face when the reality hit. You shouldn’t have invited him in because you were only humiliating yourself. You could see the way Charles blinked as he walked into your apartment.

“Did you get rob?”

“No….Lia came over last night and we were trying to bake to celebrate my first job but it didn’t go according to plan. I didn’t get to clean up the mess because I woke up with a headache and—“

“It’s okay. Give me that.” Charles stepped closer and and took the heating pad that you had in your arms, the thing that you were looking for before he rang the doorbell. “You should go and rest, I’ll fill up the heating pad and make ginger tea for you.”

“Can you make the tea with honey and—“

“Lemon, yeah I know, silly.”

He knew you couldn’t stand the smell of ginger tea alone.

The heating pad and tea did help to soothe some of the pain but you were still feeling awful. Charles had left you alone in the living room and you could hear the thud and clunk sound from the kitchen as he cleaned up the mess and cooked a simple and the only pasta recipe he knew that would be edible even if he cooked it horribly.

After all those ruckus, you were both now sitting on the couch with some random movie playing on the screen of the television.

“You really didn’t have to buy this much chocolates. I won’t be able to finish it.” You chuckled at the bag of snacks sitting on the coffee table.

“Yeah, I didn’t think I would end up with a bag full of it. The new flavours were the one that sold me out.”

“Do you wanna try some of it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

After spending like half an hour rating half of the chocolates, they ended up making you feel drowsy. Charles had noticed your head kept on falling forward as the sleep tried to win you over. He took the heating pad from your hand to change the water inside before pulling you to his side which caused you to jolted awake.

“Do you want to lay down?”

“Yeah. Can you hold me….?”

“Of course, doudou.”

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

You fell asleep in his embrace, the embrace that completed the missing piece of comfort in your heart after the night. You had your ear against his chest and the sound of his heartbeat was a comfort to you. You could smell his cologne and feel the rhythm of his breathing as your head moved along with his chest as he breathed. You missed everything. You missed him.

“I haven’t washed my hair.” He tittered to your sudden remark which made your heart flutter.

“Is that what woke you up? It’s not the first time I have seen you on your period. I still think you look beautiful.” His palm went back to apply light pressure on your stomach.

“At any point in your life when we stopped talking, have you ever regretted what happened to us that night?” That was the actual thought that woke you up.

“Every second of it.”

“Charles?” You looked up.

“Yeah?”

“If our story was only meant to be up until this point in our lives, how would you take it?” You could feel your throat closing up as you imagined the end of us, the life where Charles was no longer in the frame with you. It was a hypothetical question. You just wanted to know what his answer would be.

Charles believed the question, or the possibility of you not being in his arms, either of it gave him goosebumps.

“Do you see yourself being happy after it ended?”

“That’s not the answer!”

“Answer the question first. If our story was to end here, where do you see yourself?”

“What if I can’t see myself ever being happy?

“Then I am still gonna chase after you. I have never prayed for anything so bad but I would beg for the universe that somehow, in any case that it could hear me, all I asked for is a chance to fix everything, to be with you again.”

“What if I see myself being happy after our story ended?”

“Then I would feel strange.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s just strange to see evidence of you changing and continuing on without me being there to witness it. But you said you would be happy. I think being given a chance to grow up with you and learn about love together was enough to shape me for who I am today so it would be selfish for me to ask for more chances to be with you when you are already happy on your next chapter of you life. So, maybe if our story was to end here, I’m gonna continue with my life, it’s gonna hurt, of course, but I’ll always go back to reread our chapter all over again and remind myself that you are happy, and that’s all that matters.”

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

“I don’t think this is the right shape, Lando. Look!”

“Yeah, that one has double sided holes. But it can’t be this one.”

Lando had asked for your help and when you asked him to elaborate more, he said you should know once he came over.

He came over with a 10,000 pieces set of Lego. He couldn’t ask you out on a date because he was scared you would pulled away if you knew he liked you.

But he was very desperate to get to know you better so he came up with Lego. He thought 500 pieces would be too short so he went for 10,000 one.

“Oh, look! We did it! We did the first section. How many sections left?” You placed the small stacked up section away to start with the next one.

“I think we have….40 sections left. Yeah, 40.”

“What?! Ugh, that one took us 30 minutes because you weren’t helping.”

“Oh, yeah? I wasn’t the one helping or it took 30 minutes because you just picked everything that looked like the shape without double-checking and I had to go over the steps again to fix it back?”

“I call dibs on the first one!” You laughed. Lando couldn’t help but to smile at you, the sound of your laugh made him wish he could stop the time.

“Would you drink coffee or beer for the rest of your life?”

You straighten your back and sit up to look at him. “Why do you ask?”

“Nothing, just wanted to know your answer.”

“Coffee. I don’t like to drink. I only drink when I’m with someone I’m familiar with.”

“Why?”

“Why I don’t like to drink or why I only drink with someone I’m close with?”

“Both.”

“I was born with migraine. It was genetic. Beer would trigger my migraine. As in why I always drink when I’m with someone I’m close with, it’s because I’m a woman, Lando. Isn’t it not obvious?”

He cackled in response. “Oh, yeah. I just realised about it. It wasn’t that obvious, actually.”

“Lando!” You slapped on his arm. “And it was also because when I get drunk, I just become more….affectionate.”

“Interesting. Would you rather watch sports or play sports?”

You and Lando spent another hour making different sets of legos while answering some random questions like ‘comedy club or dance club’ or ‘skiing and skateboarding’ and Lando jotted down everything you said is his mental note.

Play sports, check.

Dance club, check.

Skateboarding, check.

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

“There was this one time my dad sent me to a karate class and—“ You bursted out into another fit of laughter and rolled your body on the fluffy carpet.

“And what?” Lando has no idea what you were going to say but he had already joined you laughing. “Y/N, what?”

“And the next day I came to school, I punched my friend in the face because I tried to show her what I’ve learned.”

“No way! Are you kidding? What happened then?” He guffawed at what he just heard, unable to imagine you punching someone in the face.

“She cried, of course! And I got scolded by my teacher.”

“That was amazing!”

“No, it’s not! I have never felt so embarrassed.”

“That was some hands-on training, wasn’t it?”

“You could say that.”

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

You and Lando shared more funny stories without caring about the time and for some reason, the night felt so short. It was already midnight when you started feeling sleepy, and so was Lando.

“I’ll get going so you can take your beauty sleep, yeah?” He ruffled on your hair before taking all his stuffs except for the Lego box.

“Thank you for today, Lando.”

“No, I should be the one thanking you. I had a lot of fun tonight.”

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

landoprivate

Liked by 5 others

He thought you had a lot in common with the moon; it’s light, its beauty, and its distance from him.

[mimsynims]

Fool For Love

part 4

~~~

part 1, part 2, part 3

~~~

Astarion x reader/Tav

Tags: (mild?) angst, pining, pining while fucking, jealousy, eventual happy ending

Summary: You thought you knew what you were doing when you let Astarion into your bed. He doesn’t have feelings for you, and vice versa. Only… now you do.

You’ve finally made a decision on how to handle it, but it turns out it might not be that easy to actually do as planned.

~~~

It’s as if all the gods have come together to conspire against you. Truly, you wonder if you accidentally angered one or several of them, because after dinner, nothing goes as planned.

First it is Shadowheart, seeking your counsel about a scroll in her possession she wants you to take a look at. Next it is Lae’zel, wanting to discuss again your findings about Orpheus and what it might mean.

You almost scream out loud when Karlach calls for you just as you are finally about to approach Astarion.

You definitely do scream, just a little, when you collide with a tipsy Gale and the collision causes red wine to splatter all over your shirt and trousers. Cursing under your breath, you see Astarion glance your way with a chuckle. As tempting as it is to stomp over and drag him into his tent just to have it over with, you decide a change of clothes first is the wisest course of action.

It’s much less conspicuous, for one — everyone would notice and wonder if you decide to talk to him now — and you need a moment to cool down.

You’re quick about it, grabbing the first clean pieces of clothing you can find — but it’s not quick enough.

When you walk out of your tent again, Astarion is nowhere to be seen. Telling yourself that it’s not strange for you to inquire about his whereabouts, you ask Halsin if he has seen him.

“I think he went to find something to eat.”

“Ah.” Dammit. ”I see.”

You stare into the dark forest surrounding the camp, wondering if it will seem odd if you go after him. Probably not, if they even notice you leave.

In the end, you decide to remain where you are, sitting down by the fire with the others. He will be back sooner or later, and until then, you can enjoy the company of your friends. Or try to, at least.

Astarion’s still not back when Gale suddenly stands and announces that it’s time to head out. Watching them all laugh and banter as they gather blankets and wine, you realise that you should do things like this more often. Take the time to just have fun. Especially now, when what you have to face next is the Shadowlands, a place that sounds more terrifying than anything else your party has encountered so far.

Not counting getting tadpoles inside your head.

It’s actually a quite nice spot Gale has found. Wide stretches of soft grass swaying in the night breeze, the surrounding tree line creating a sense of protection and serenity. If your heart wasn’t already attached to another, you think you would’ve enjoyed going here alone with Gale. Maybe.

“Where’s the food? Surely we need something to snack on too?”

“Karlach…”

Shrugging, Shadowheart held up the bottles in her hands. “Sorry, too busy grabbing the wine.”

“I’ll go,” you offer, because it would be a shame to bring the mood down with unnecessary squabbling. The fact that there’s a chance you might find a certain elf back at camp has absolutely nothing to do with it. Well, maybe a little.

“Thanks, soldier, you’re the best!”

You leave before anyone gets the idea of tagging along. If Astarion is back, you wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to finally talk with him. Even if it ruins the night for one or both of you.

When you get back, you see Withers by his tent. But no Astarion in sight.

“Where is that goddamn man?” You stomp over to his tent. “Astarion? Are you here?”

Nothing.

Muttering to yourself, you take a basket and fill it with bread, cheese, and some fruit. With how everything has gone so far tonight, you grab a bottle of what you presume is wine, because the urge to get blissfully drunk is too hard to resist.

As you trudge back to the others, you wistfully wonder where Astarion has been all night. Was he avoiding you? And if so, why?

“Tav, there you are!” Karlach shoots up from her seat on the blanket and relieves you of the basket. “Look who we found!”

And there he is.

“Astarion.”

Sitting between Halsin and Shadowheart.

“Tav,” Gale pats the spot next to him, “I saved you a seat.”

Of course he did. “Thank you, Gale.”

Even if you had it in you dismiss him, you realise quickly that there’s no other space available. So you sit down, because there’s not much else you can do.

It turns out that the bottle you snagged isn’t wine but rum, but that suits you just fine at this point. You try to listen as Gale talks to you about the constellations he points at, but your focus keeps shifting to Astarion. The way he leans closer to Shadowheart, the way he keeps touching Halsin. You are used to him being a bit of a flirt, but this feels like more. It feels like there’s actual intent behind it and not him just being his usual self.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that he’s trying to make you jealous. Which is ridiculous, of course.

Unless it isn’t. You take another swig of the rum. “Ridiculous.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Astarion glances your way but quickly turns to Halsin again when he catches you watching. The bastard. Well, two can play that game. “Oh.” You inch just a little bit closer to Gale. “I was just saying to myself how ridiculously beautiful the sky is.” Smooth, Tav, smooth. You almost roll your eyes at yourself.

Gale smiles. “It is, isn’t it?”

For the next half hour, you make yourself focus on Gale, and Gale alone. He is an interesting man — when he’s not talking about Mystra. In the back of your mind, you know you shouldn’t be doing this, but your drunk brain justifies it by telling yourself that Gale deserves an attentive audience. He’s the reason why you’re all here, after all.

He really is nice — too nice for someone like you. You realise that at some point while observing Gale and Karlach talk about… something. You’re not really listening anymore, once again caught up in your own hazy mind.

The bottle in your hand is almost empty — when did that happen? Oh, right. You have been taking a sip every time you hear Astarion laugh or call someone else a pet name. Stupid idea, that.

With a heavy sigh, you flop back to lie down on the blanket. Everyone’s voices turn into background noise as you stare up at the stars. Or try to, because the world is spinning, spinning, and the last thing you hear before you doze off is someone saying your name.

~~~

[journeytothewestresearch]

I've heard the idea that Monkey is 7 times immortal thrown around a couple times, but my count has only ever gone up to 4 (the peaches, the pills, the wine, and his daoist studies). How immortal IS Monkey?

I count at least six levels of immortality.

1) Daoist Longevity Arts - Ch. 2

I discuss the exact methods here.

A photomanipulation by me.

2) Erasing Allotted Lifespan - Ch. 3

[After Monkey is summoned to hell in his sleep and thereafter threatens to beat the Judges of Hell for their mistake] The Ten Kings immediately had the judge in charge of the records bring out his [Sun's] books for examination. The judge, who did not dare tarry, hastened into a side room and brought out five or six books of documents and the ledgers on the tens species of living beings ... He [Monkey] had, therefore, a separate ledger, which Wukong examined himself.  Under the heading "Soul 1350" he found the name Sun Wukong recorded, with the description: "Heaven-born Stone Monkey. Age: three hundred and forty-two years. A good end." Wukong said, "I really don't remember my age. All I want is to erase my name. Bring me a brush." The judge hurriedly fetched the brush and soaked it in heavy ink. Wukong took the ledger on monkeys and crossed out all the names he could find in it. Throwing down the ledger, he said, "That ends the account! That ends the account! Now I'm truly not your subject" (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, pp. 140-141).

A print from the Japanese children book Son Goku (1939).

3) Immortal Peaches - Ch. 5

[After being appointed the guardian of the Queen Mother of the West's immortal peach groves] The Great Sage ... asked the local spirit, "How many trees are there?" "There are three thousand six hundred," said the local spirit. "In the front are one thousand two hundred trees with little flowers and small fruits. These ripen once every three thousand years, and after one taste of them a man will become an immortal enlightened in the Way, with healthy limbs and a lightweight body. In the middle are one thousand two hundred trees of layered flowers and sweet fruits. They ripen once every six thousand years. If a man eats them, he will ascend to Heaven with the mist and never grow old. At the back are one thousand two hundred trees with fruits of purple veins and pale yellow pits. These ripen once every nine thousand years and, if eaten, will make a man's age equal to that of Heaven and Earth, the sun and the moon..." One day he [Monkey] saw that more than half of the peaches on the branches of the older trees had ripened, and he wanted very much to eat one and sample its novel taste. Closely followed, however, by the local spirit of the garden, the stewards, and the divine attendants of the Equal to Heaven Residence, he found it inconvenient to do so. He therefore devised a plan on the spur of the moment and said to them, "Why don't you all wait for me outside and let me rest a while in this arbor?" The various immortals withdrew accordingly. That Monkey King then took off his cap and robe and climbed up into a big tree. He selected the large peaches that were thoroughly ripened and, plucking many of them, ate to his heart's content right on the branches. Only after he had his fill did he jump down from the tree. Pinning back his cap and donning his robe, he called for his train of followers to return to the residence. After two or three days, he used the same device to steal peaches to gratify himself once again One day the Lady Queen Mother decided to open wide her treasure chamber and to give a banquet for the Grand Festival of Immortal Peaches, which was to be held in the Palace of the Jasper Pool. She ordered the various Immortal Maidens ... to go with their flower baskets to the Garden of Immortal Peaches and pick the fruits for the festival ... [After meeting with the Great Sage's ministers] The local spirit went into the garden with them; they found their way to the arbor but saw no one. Only the cap and the robe were left in the arbor, but there was no person to be seen. The Great Sage, you see, had played for a while and eaten a number of peaches. He had then changed himself into a figure only two inches high and, perching on the branch of a large tree, had fallen asleep under the cover of thick leaves (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, pp. 161-162).

A new years print found online.

4) Immortal Wine - Ch. 5

Our Great Sage could not make an end of staring at the scene [the heavenly feast set for the Immortal Peach Banquet] when he suddenly felt the overpowering aroma of wine ... standing beside the jars and leaning on the barrels, he abandoned himself to drinking. After feasting for a long, he became thoroughly drunk... [...] [After returning to Flower Fruit Mountain and meeting with his children, he says] "When I was enjoying myself this morning at the Jasper Pool, I saw many jars and jugs in the corridor full of the juices of jade [yuye qiongjiang, 玉液瓊漿; lit: "Jade liquid and jade syrup"], which you have never savored. Let me go back [to heaven] and steal a few bottles to bring down here. Just drink half a cup, and each of you will live longer without growing old" ... He took two large bottles, one under each arm, and carried two more in his hands. Reversing the direction of his cloud, he returned to the monkeys in the cave. They held their own Festival of Immortal Wine [Xianjiu hui, 仙酒會], with each one drinking a few cups" (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, pp. 165 and 167).

A screenshot from the 1986 Journey to the West TV show.

5) Immortal Elixir - Ch. 5

[After Sun Wukong drunkenly stumbles into Laozi's laboratory in the Tushita Heaven] He found no one but saw fire burning in an oven beside the hearth, and around the oven were five gourds in which finished elixir was stored. "This thing is the greatest treasure of immortals," said the Great Sage happily. "Since old Monkey has understood the Way and comprehended the mystery of the Internal's identity with the External, I have also wanted to produce some golden elixir on my own to benefit people. While I have been too busy at other times even to think about going home to enjoy myself, good fortune has met me at the door today and presented me with this! As long as Laozi is not around, I'll take a few tablets and try the taste of something new." He poured out the contents of all the gourds and ate them like fried beans (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, p. 166).

A detail from the 1835 Japanese translation of Journey to the West.

6) Ginseng Tree Fruit - Ch. 24

In the mountain there was a Daoist Abbey called the Five Villages Abbey [Wu zhuang guan, 五莊觀]; it was the abode of an immortal whose Daoist style [name] was Master Shenyuan [Shenyuan zi, 鎮元子] and whose nickname was Lord, Equal to Earth [Shi tong jun, 世同君]. There was, moreover, a strange treasure grown in this temple, a spiritual root that was formed just after chaos had been parted and the nebula had been established prior to the division of Heave and Earth. Throughout the four great continents of the world, it could be found in only the Five Villages Abbey in the West Aparagodaniya Continent. This treasure was called grass of the reverted cinnabar [cao huan dan, 草還丹], or the ginseng fruit [renshen guo, 人參果]. It took three thousand years for the plant to bloom, another three thousand years to bear fruit, and still another three thousand years before they ripened. All in all, it would be nearly ten thousand years before they could be eaten, and even after such a long time, there would be only thirty such fruits. The shape of the fruit was exactly that of a newborn infant not yet three days old, complete with the four limbs and the five senses. If a man had the good fortune of even smelling the fruit, he would live for three hundred and sixty years; if he ate one he would reach his forty-seven thousandth year. [After Wukong learns the complicated method of harvesting the fruit] Parting the leaves and branches, he knocked three of the fruits into the sack ... The three of them [Monkey and his brothers] took the fruits and began to enjoy them (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, pp. 453 and 462-463).

Monkey holding ginseng tree fruit. Image found online.

This previous article talks about the history of this magical fruit.

An important note

Sun Wukong is not really immortal, just long-lived and hard to kill. Immortality in Ming to Qing-era popular literature means that you can live for a long time but still die if injured badly enough. Think of it like an infinitely long candle being blown out instead of having a chance to burn for centuries or eons. For example, Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi, 封神演義, c. 1620), a sort of prequel to Journey to the West, is full of immortals killed in battle with heavenly weapons. Some even have their immortality sapped away before dying in one of many celestial traps. The biggest of these traps is the "Ten Thousand Immortal Array" (Wanxian zhen, 萬仙陣), so named because it can apparently kill myriad transcendents.

I commonly suggest that Monkey's levels of immortality just make him more durable than your average celestial.

Source:

Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4) (Rev. ed.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

[oncewhenalongtimeago]

Always an Angel, Never the God Full

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Runaway!Reader

Words: 13,104

Your plans to run away with Hiccup fall through. Three years later, you finally make it off Berk and away from the Edge. Here are the years that follow.

Tags: SUGGESTIVE ENDING, Runaway Reader, Angst, bitter reader, unrequited love, requited love, healing, conflicting emotions, compiles parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

<Previous

You waited for hours, back aching against the flat rock, basket of your few chosen belongings hidden behind a small outcropping of rock as you waited for him, increasingly more worried as the sun began to set.

Scared, even. You’d seen the axe, laid plainly on the ground. You feared the worst, especially after your frantic search bore no fruit. That he’d been found, and that something terrible had happened to him.

 But Hiccup was fine, with Astrid, this whole time.

Even Toothless seemed to like her well enough. He didn’t like you, glaring and snapping at you when you got too close, despite all of your efforts to get on his good side. He barely let you on, and he certainly wouldn’t without Hiccup. You had the sneaking suspicion he’d buck if you tried it on your lonesome. 

While you understood, it hurt that even as close friends he’d not told you about Toothless at all, at first. You doubt he would’ve if he’d not seen you do so poorly at dragon training. He probably felt terrible, watching you fail over and over again when he could be doing something to help.

You hugged your knees tightly, hidden behind rock and moss, fighting not to make a sound as you peered around a corner, barely listening in as they conversed.

Even if he never inherited the chiefdom, It was still a heavy expectation that he’d marry. You two were an inevitable couple, if not because of love, out of a bond of solidarity. It’s not like either of you had any suitors. You were friends first, of course, but privately you hadn’t had a problem with that. You got along well, and you could see a future with him where you were both alright.

And you really, really liked him.

You knew he wanted someone else, someone who was confident, capable, who had good standing, who his father could be proud of. Someone who was more gorgeous than plain, someone like Astrid.

You weren’t the best viking, you couldn’t work in the forge, you hadn’t a lot of lucrative talents at all and a measure of clumsiness and troublemaking that could rival Hiccup’s own.

But you were friends, and that had to count for something.

He came to you with his plan to run away. You were running away together, you thought.

But somehow, she was here, and he left with her. He liked her. You knew that. And, you realized with mounting horror as she leaned in closer to him, she liked him too. 

You knew you’d never had a chance, but knowing it is different from experiencing it. You had not a chance in the world.

You could never fault him for that.

You couldn’t stop the tears from pooling in your eyes, or the tiny bits of your heart from splitting apart and scattering across the grass.

Conversely, he didn’t tell you when he flew off to battle with the rest of your peers. The whole thing with the Red Death? You missed it completely. You only found out later after Hiccup had been towed back to Berk on death's door.

Constantly spilling his heart out to you but saving the rest of it for the other teens, the ones who used to jeer at him from the sidelines, who all of the sudden began to treat him well, but still jeered at you while he wasn’t looking. 

A hangers-on to their group, not very useful or funny, just there, always. Not spoken with or talked to or considered at all by anyone who wasn’t Hiccup. Just there.

Your companionship had, for lack of a better word, remained the same, except now there was an undercurrent of something under the surface of a black ocean, broiling and writhing like an angry serpent.

Sometimes it felt like a sick corruption of the friendship you and Hiccup used to have, made up of long held hardship and what you had thought were good times. Sometimes it was better than it was before, and you could joke and laugh and play games the same way you had as children. 

And sometimes it felt like you were speaking to a stranger, one you weren’t sure you’d ever known at all; sometimes his mannerisms, his ticks and even the way he stood were alien to you.

You weren’t even sure you recognized who he was anymore. You never asked why, afraid of the answer you might find.

“So, I’m hoping that if I place a spring there, when I pull the lever it wont catch so violently. The gear system around the side is to help turn the barrel while you’re aiming. Got it? What do you think?”

You nodded, eyeing the vast array of blueprints and open journals spread sideways in between the two of you. Brown leather met leather as Hiccup rubbed his shoulder, no doubt a result of a hard fall he’d taken earlier on Toothless.

“Yeah, I got it,” You say casually, “What about the wheels? If you’re going to be pulling it over grass, you might need to cover the space between the wheels and gears, because the plants might catch and pull up into the gear system.”

It feels fake. Slimy to say, like a lie, except you know it’s not. It feels like a product of something more larger and uglier.

Hiccup picks up a yellowed paper, scrutinizing his own design, “Yeah… Actually, you’re right. I don’t know If- maybe if I shift the base… Yeah, I think that would work. Thank you.”

“No problem,” You puff, blowing a strand of hair out of your face.

“Also, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Hiccup shifted in his seat, clenching and unclenching his fingers, a nervous tick he’d had since the two of you were little, “Your dragon. Have you picked a name for it yet?”

“Ah, no,” You sigh, looking down at your knees, “Honestly, I haven’t been able to find something he likes.”

The picky bastard./Picky beast.

Hiccup had helped you find a dragon before the lot of you had moved, a smallish nadder who still didn’t feel much like your own, but served you just as well as any other would and you did teh best to serve it fine as well. He turned out to have just as much propensity for social upset around the other dragons and seemed to get along with Stormfly, Toothless and no one else.

Speaking of, the black dragon, Toothless, had warmed up to you, and in the end you became no better or worse than anyone else on Berk to him, which you were okay with for the most part.

The others had gotten used to you, though remained relatively detached. Conversations wouldn’t stop nor would people give you the look once you entered a room. You didn’t try to strike up conversation anymore, learning that it was better to be silent than awkward. 

It still did nothing to soothe the hurt, or all of the years you’d spent hurting, or any of the time now you spent on your lonesome.

“If you don’t mind, I can-...” Hiccup leans back, the both of you turning heads as your door creaked open, heavy boots moving across the threshold of your home, wood floors creaking. 

You gave Astrid a nod of acknowledgement as she approached your table and she tilted her head, glancing in your direction.

“Hiccup,” Astrid called, “Are we still flying tonight?”

“Astrid,” Hiccup greeted as he stood up, a soft smile stretching half the length of his face as he gathered his assets, leaving a few papers scattered across the top that he knew he could come pick up later as he usually did, “Yeah, let me get my things first.”

You tuned them out as they began speaking in earnest, leaning back to stare at the ceiling, fingers tapping against your elbows almost antsily as they slowly took their leave.

“Hey,” Hiccup looks back at you as your heart beats rapidly in your chest, “I’ll see you later, right?”

“Right,” You say nearly at a mumble, refusing to look him in the eye, your stomach rolling guiltily as the door shuts behind him, “I’ll see you later.”

Your foot nudged the pack you’d prepared out from under the table in the small, shoddy hut you’d managed on the Edge, slinging it over your shoulder as you watched Hiccup and Astrid take off on their dragons through a crack in your window shutters.

He may have found his happiness with the others but you had not, and you fully intended to leave, the same way he’d planned it all those years ago. 

You knew what you were doing was wrong. Not saying goodbye, just up and leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to say it.

What would you be leaving behind, anyways? You didn’t have much.

You waited until they were just a small speck in the distance before running out on your own, a pack slung up over your shoulders. The dragon, who you’d parked just behind your hut and who’d spent the past few hours almost patiently waiting for you as you’d spent your sudden and unexpected last few hours with Hiccup, stood to its feet and chirruped as you hoisted yourself up onto its saddle.

Fishlegs was busy in his hut. The twins and Snotlout, maybe they’d notice you leaving but you didn’t have much faith in them asking why or feeling much at all besides a vague expectation that you’d be back later. Everyone went out for a leisure flight every once in a while, it was just about time you’d finally taken yours, after all.

Hiccup and Astrid wouldn’t be back till late doing who knows what. You bit your lip, lightly tapping your Nadder’s side with your heel, signaling for him to take off in the opposite direction, shoving down a deep spike of jealousy at the thought. He was your friend first, and soon he would be nothing to you and it wouldn’t matter at all anymore.

You weren’t sure where exactly you were going. But you knew wherever it was, it would be good as long as it was as far, far away from here as possible.

You grind your teeth, eyes tearing up as a heavy booted foot pushes you down further into the wooden ship floor. The ship rocks angrily as does your dragon, struggling against the barbed netting.

“Who are you? A new vigilante?” The leading trapper, Erik son of Erik or something, asked, bending down above you. He had, coincidentally, been the one to shoot you down.

 “Where is your… hideout?” He leaned down into your ear at your silence, speaking in a raspy whisper. You got the vague impression he was trying to be intimidating, though the end results were more in favor of making you blush.

You were thankful for the hard wood covering your face and, therefore, your embarrassment. Of your belongings, you were only able to manage a mask and had taken to running around ensconced in furs with nothing but a dagger to your name. 

You’d recon you looked much like a wild animal, straddling your nadder bare of a saddle. You had not done too well on your own. It was hard. You had always been a team player if by team player you meant a leech on society. At least, you had been told so.

So of course you had, unwittingly, stumbled onto dragon trapping territory. Extreme sport dragon trapping territory. It didn’t help that you and your nadder hadn’t been on the same page, you two being unable to sync in the way you’d seen the other riders with their dragons, which left a bitter taste in your mouth.

He’d go left when you were trying for right, and when you finally decided to just go with it, he would change his mind and throw you for a complete loop. It was safe to say that even if you got out of this mess you never wanted to step foot on his back again.

You breathed a silent sigh of relief just as the trapper let out an annoyed one, stepping off of you in favor of yelling at his men for damaging their goods. Meaning, your nadder. Was he really yours, though? He did try and make a break for it without you.

 While debating whether or not you should try at the ropes shackling your arms together, you grunt frustratedly, noticing a new tear in your garb.

After running away and getting captured, you had not expected to be kidnapped again by some insane-looking madman in a mask. Though you did look like two of a kind, so it was fitting. 

Your nadder had its wings torn irreparably, so, unfortunately, you had to retire him early.

You found small comfort in that it hadn’t abandoned you on the ship that one final time, though the irony that it had led you here was not lost on you.

He visited sometimes. He took to life in the sanctuary very well. 

You didn’t, a borderline prisoner before you’d been able to win over the trust of the resident feral gorgon. Sort of. She was a woman who let you see her face, more on accident than anything else. You hadn’t let her see you or hear yours. However you weren’t inclined to speak of her nicely, least of all in your head, after the number of weeks you spent trapped in a cave at her behest.

Finally, you’d been let out. Let out enough to walk more than just the short stretch of stone and greenish ice that made up your prison. The endless turquoise was beginning to make you sick.

Recently, you found a real friend in the sanctuary, and this dragon, it was truly yours. Affectionately named, fed and groomed, you two were almost inseparable. It was the kind of friendship with a dragon you’d completely missed out on on Berk.

It was hard to maintain given your captive status, but that was alright. 

There probably wasn’t any social profit involved in being a vigilante, which is why you assumed the crazy dragon lady had taken to speaking at you in her spare time. About the dragons, what they ate, what she had to do. Pointedly she gave away nothing of their true secrets, not that you wanted them, nor anything of her vigilant-ing. Not verbally, though the influx of injuries both on her and the dragons spoke volumes.

She did give away her name.

You groan, rubbing your eyes under your mask as you cradle the thing to your face with the other.

“You’re quite attached to your mask,” Valka said amusedly, shifting the logs roasting in the fire with a stick, pushing them back and forth as you sat in silence. You hardly ever spoke a word, nowadays.

Her dragon, the stormcutter, stared at you with large eyes through the licking flames.

Neither of you mentioned that the only real reason you’d been able to keep your mask so long was that she’d been kind enough to let you. An allowance you’d been given on a whim. One you clung to with all the nervous energy of Fishlegs to his dragon cards.

“... I’d rather not be,” You grumble, voice raspy from disuse, “It’s stuffy.”

“Oh,” Valka looked at you, amused and maybe a little surprised to hear you speak at last, before going back to tend to her fires, “I was starting to think you couldn’t speak.”

“Funny.” You said, lifting a sharpened stick off the ground, spearing it through a slimy, gutted fish from the basket beside you. Your nose wrinkled as you heard the sharp point break skin. No amount of faux stoicism could make it seem pleasant to you.

“I have a few questions,” You grimace under your mask as she asserts herself. She can ask them all she wants, but there’s no guarantee you’ll answer. 

You might, probably, as keeping secrets hasn’t always been your strong suit. She’s certainly been trying to open you up for a while. You’ve not given her any leeway before though, no reason to give her any now. 

“How did you tame your dragon?” She asked, pushing a particularly thick dragon searching for morsels. Valka guides its head gently away with her spare hand before any of the other dragons crowding around them get any ideas.

You wait for a moment, still wondering whether you should follow along. Eventually, you decide to answer.

“Wasn’t me. Someone else back home did it,” You huff, “I just followed along.”

“...But not very well,” Valka hums. It’s obvious she doesn’t believe you. Unfortunately for her, that is not your problem. 

 She pulls a small trout off her own stick, tossing it to a crowd of young dragons, who you knew had acquired a taste for the cooked, through no fault of your own.

You should feel offended, but you know she’s right. You lean away from a wandering dragon snout as it searches you for morsels. The stormcutter, after a look from Valka, shoos it away with a large wing.

 “Where are you from?” 

You feel the embers from the fire as they rise, the furs of your coat becoming nearly unbearable, your skin heated up rapidly. You wrinkle your brow with annoyance as you feel a drop of sweat slide down the side of your face.

“Where are you from?” You retort pointedly.

She studies you cautiously, as if she could glean your intentions from your body language. And she very well could. Or the heat was getting to you, the wells you’d spent in solitude had finally done some real damage to your psyche, and you were hallucinating.

“Berk,” She says. You sit back, surprised, “And you?”

“...None of your business.” You wonder how long it had been since she had left. You pray she would not know you.

Valka raised her eyebrow. 

“I’m serious.” You ground your heel into the dirt. It was a touchy subject, still.

“Berk, too. …Stop looking at me like that.”

Valka leaned back against the ice wall where you rested, looking out over the empty ocean as dragons flooded to and fro the sanctuary. You squinted far into the distance, as if you thought you might be able to see through it if you tried hard enough.

Your hair tugged wildly by the winds out from behind your mask as you sat, one leg extended and the other bent as you leaned back against one arm. 

You probably looked as you felt, weary and unkempt after a long flight over the seas with your dragon, who clambered among the icy spike-lined wall with clawed hands. You felt refreshed yet somehow at odds with yourself still.

You cared little for your bedraggled demeanor the same way you hadn’t cared for much at all in a while. It might have made a cool picture had you not slipped and fallen onto your face on the ice just a few minutes prior. Whether you had broken your nose or not on your mask had yet to be uncovered. All that mattered was that Valka hadn’t seen.

Dragons crowed. Through the cracks in the walls of the sanctuary, the wind would whistle through if it hit the right angle. Louder than anything else were the sounds of the waves crashing against rock. 

But between you and Valka, it was silent. A contemplative silence, the kind of silence you shared with others after a long thought or a hard day’s work. That’s how you knew she was going to break it.

“Why did you leave?”

You are annoyed at the prospect but are no less expectant. After the moment passes, you are not surprised. However, it feels as if you are the one who should be asking.

“Why did I leave?” You ask, “Does it matter?”

A loose chunk of ice falls off the side of the sanctuary as a large titan scrambles violently down the side, chasing after a bright yellow baby. You spot a shape through the fog, distant and blurry enough to resemble a bird though there are no birds here. You pointedly do not think of your small hut, even less of green eyes, and tiny, fading freckles.

Valka tilted her head in your direction, reaching a hand out to scratch Cloudjumper under his chin as he lowered himself towards her, “It mattered to you.”

You open your mouth, but you are only able to choke on your breath. No one has ever said something like that to you, not in a long while. You don’t understand why it’s hitting you so hard. Maybe it’s the isolation.

You blame the burning of your eyes on the biting wind.

 “Why did you leave?” You ask in return, once you’ve taken time for yourself, though you have an idea. You can’t keep your voice from sounding a little bit scratchy.

You unhook your dagger from your belt, trying not to seem so attentive. Instead, you take to carving random shapes into the ice. A gronkle. A nadder.

“I was taken.” She sighs, quieter now. Lost off in memory as you both often are.

The nadder’s spikes are much too long. The gronkle looks more like a sandwich than a dragon.

“Taken?” You prompt and you begin on the outline of a fury. The result is shallow and scratchy. 

It’s one of your own designs, not the same as the one Berk uses. Astrid liked the other one better, not yours, so that was the one Hiccup went with.

“I didn’t leave,” She insisted, almost as if she was trying to convince herself of the fact,  “I had a son, and a husband.”

You’ve seen her by the fires, while trying to sneak out of this hellish ice maze. She talks to herself then. On particularly paranoid days, she’s slept by you, in the same caverns, so you’ve heard it. She talks in her sleep and says things she would never say awake, or had you been around. It’s all so very unsettling. 

“Really?” You remarked with false astonishment. The facade is flimsy, but you figured you’d give her the benefit of the doubt. The grace to assume that you’d no idea what she was on about.

With prompting, you might have seen it earlier. In her slim form, the one she kept hidden under thick furs and thicker armor. You squint. They have the same eye color. The same hair. They both have higher cheekbones, though her son more resembles his father in that aspect. That is all.

Valka shoots you a reprimanding look. Cloudjumper, now creeping down the wall behind you, taps you on the back of your head with its tail at her behest.

Valka was of the air. Though he had the same flighty tendencies, he was very grounded, like his father, though he might either be proud or loath to admit it. He loved flying, yes, but he loved inventing and processing and routine just as much, if not more.

He did when you were close. Of course he did, he spent his whole life on it. You couldn’t really say you knew him anymore.

You didn’t pin Valka as the type to enjoy the same in any sort of manner. But that suited you just as well. You found that as time went by and as you were granted more freedoms, you appreciated it. It made it easier for you to forget. To ignore.

In the end they, you and she, she and you, were one and the same.

“But what does it matter, if you never went back?” You grumble, pushing your dragon’s head away as it nudges you towards the cliff, crooning for more flying time.

You guessed that was why she clung so viciously to the safety of her sanctuary. Why she hated other people so much, why she’d had no faith in the humanity of other people, why she’d held you here so strictly. If things could have been different, then what did she give it all up for?

Though you’d never had something else. Not even the option. You’d never been given it. Valka hadn’t been given it either, but there was a sure difference between something being there and not. 

The atmosphere is silent again, tainted with some darker undertones. If you’d had to put a name to it, you might have called it grief. 

“I want to leave.”

Valka doesn’t look surprised at your request. And indeed, it’s been no secret that you wanted to leave. Maybe she was glad for it, or maybe she was sad at the news. 

After all, you settled into each other's presence long ago. You had a good sort of companionship.

And from that companionship, you learned a lot without even trying, just by watching. Eventually she took notice and she took an active part in teaching you the truths she learned during all her years in self-imposed isolation. 

You two weren’t incredibly close but you could tell Valka was grateful for the company, grateful to have someone maybe even a little bit like her, even if most of it was spent in silence. 

You still left the Drago fighting for her. It wasn’t your fight, it was hers, and you made that clear.

Neither of you brought up Berk. Ever. 

You were content to just come and go as you pleased, for a while. Nonetheless, despite your freedom, you felt restricted to the small world of the Sanctuary and the empty skies around it. There was no place for you on the ground or by the seas, where hunters and trappers swarmed by the thousands and Drago’s armies grew by the day. 

You spent so much time learning from her and yet it felt like no time at all. Which was why you were shocked when you’d truly learned how much had come and gone in full. 

You were out slinking in the shadows, seeking shelter from a storm on the same small rocky outcropping of island that had a shipful of trappers stranded, in a rage and a panic as they attempted to recover their assets. The winds had been too rough to fly, so you had no choice but to wait and listen.

You didn’t believe it at first. It had been…

Months.

You wondered if he’d been married, yet.

Years. 

The idea hurt, not as much as you’d thought it would, still not as little as you’d hoped.

Under clear skies, you found an inn, untouched by everything except grass and trees.

You asked, “What day is it?”

The large man, a burly viking scrubbing down a wooden cup with a torn old rag, had looked down at you skeptically from behind a beaten pine and stone counter.

Two years. It had been nearly two years since you left Berk. Just as Valka’s attachments kept her at the Sanctuary, you needed to go. To run.

Since you had heard it, spoken it, the urge to run, to fly hadn’t abated at all, going from a wispy thought at the back of your mind to a full blown need. Your dragon too had become antsy, maybe feeding off of your nervous energy. Eager to take off, to fly new skies.

“Are you sure?” Valka asked searchingly. You two were stationed over a heavily planted cliff over a large main pool which consisted of the main cavern within the Sanctuary, once again in front of a fire, eating your own meals as the dragons below ate and exchanged fish. 

You were already packed, your mask secured as it had been for all two years you had been in this place stuck between confinement and dwelling. You almost regretted it, not telling her your name, but you couldn’t bear yourself to her knowing who she was, not truly. Not until you’d washed yourself of that particular weight. 

“Yes,” One day you would, if you ever saw her again. Once you were released from the heartache and pain of your own making, “I am. Thank you.”

You started out into the pale foggy sky,  mounted your beast as smooth as you’d ever done, which is to say, not smooth at all. You’d only ever managed it right when Valka was watching, anyhow. It was odd how that worked, maybe the peer pressure was finally starting to kick in.

As you took off and the sanctuary became smaller and smaller both to your eyes and your mind, as the tight bundle of chains in your chest dropped and the world opened up to you once more, you felt light, and free. 

Once again, there was no one to watch you and no one to hurt for besides your and your dragon. Endless opportunity. Thousands of ways to keep going.

You wondered what your face looked like.

You couldn’t wait to see it again.

Hiccup traced the faint outline of a Night Fury in the ice with his fingertips.

He tried to suppress the bubbling hope and dread at the thought his mother had been lying to him and his father about being alone all those years.

 He had left to get some air and to give his parents time together to linger while the snowstorm outside abated, taking shelter under a misty overhang of ice just off one of the tunnels leading back into the main dwelling. One that had fortunately not fallen victim to the heavy layers of snow drowning the uncovered surfaces below. 

Toothless had followed him out, of course, and sniffled curiously at the ground, giving the other few doodles littered across the ice an inspection of his own. Hiccup sat back, covering his mouth with his hand as he mulled over the implications.

He then stood, staring back into the tunnel leading back into the sanctuary. Much of the awe he had felt earlier at the discovery of his mother had washed away and a wave of uncertainty and hurt replaced it.

He knew he had been given grace. A lot more than he deserved. 

Since everything had changed, terrible mistakes became minor inconveniences. People no longer whispered about Hiccup the weird, Hiccup the Useless, the Hiccup who just didn’t get it. Rather, every jest on his behalf was now just another one of his strange little quirks. 

He did his part. He was happy to have a part now. A real one.

(He’d had a part. Blacksmith, inventor, friend.)

(Mistake.)

He thought they’d do the same for you. But you weren’t doing well. Even though he was busy with his new role, he noticed. He noticed when you fell behind, when you still couldn’t seem to find your place.

(His father, looking at him with shining eyes.)

He begged for you to not fumble this chance that you both had to be different. To be a part of something real, something tangible.

(He was so proud.)

Except. 

(It made him sick.)

He knew what it was like. To be the odd one out, to not be able to do things quite the way you were supposed to. After all, if he hadn’t had Toothless then he would still be the same old Hiccup. 

(He felt like the same old Hiccup.)

So yeah, it made sense that you weren’t always the first on call. It made sense, when you lagged behind. Why you weren’t part of the group the same way everyone else was. 

(Was he?)

Like a wall had been shattered and the curtains pulled, he’d been witness to some of the moments between the other Dragon Riders he’d not been included in when he was ‘other.’ Moments that he just couldn’t quite indulge in, that used to be aimed at him, that caused something ugly and sad to curl tight in his stomach.

That left the sour taste of stomach acid on his tongue that he couldn’t wash away, no matter what he drank or how many times he tried.

So he vouched for you when the whispers started. Hounded them until they stopped, despite the creeping feeling that they were right. Clung tightly onto the few moments you were able to spend together. The way things used to be.

(Pushed down the tiny voice telling him he still didn’t belong.)

Days. It took days for them to notice you were gone. Truly gone. And they couldn’t be sure at all when it had happened, what or why. 

They assumed you were dead. Once the next devastating winter set in, there was no way you could have made it on your own.

They locked your hut. An empty grave. The key, he’d taken and melted down into other things.

But. there was always a but.

Hiccup was a good handyman. For the most part. He’d caused a lot of handy-requiring, meaning he’d had a lot of practice.

He broke your lock.

Hiccup stared down at the piles of maps, noted, traced and copied sprawled across your desk, pulled out from underneath a loose floorboard by your bed. He clenched the various compasses and sea charts hidden in drawers and carelessly thrown under dishware.

 It turned out you had a lot of free time on your hands. 

There was something missing. Something missed when the other riders would joke and prod, wielding inside jokes he’d never been privy to just as easily as they wielded swords and hammers. And now he had no one to share with when they did.

There was something missing late at night working on a new tailfin, or a rig, or early in the morning when he was too tired to piece metal jigs together.

It just wasn’t the same, going to Fishlegs or Snotlout with these things, and heaven knows that Astrid wouldn’t entertain the idea at all. It was the dragons that appealed to her most. She was an early riser and an early sleeper and for many reasons she appealed to him, but she just couldn’t be what Hiccup needed. Not then.

You faded away as if you were a ghost, a door to a room no one used.

They didn’t get how it felt to spend all those years being the odd one out. He needed someone who got it. He needed someone who got him. A friend.

And like a note in the margins of a bad story, eventually no one mentioned you at all.

He flew as far and as fast as he could. Mapping the world, exploring farther and farther, as if he might somehow be able to trace your footsteps, following a lost trail that one day a long time ago you might have paved.

He’d flown as if, once he’d flown far enough, he might have been able to understand where you’d gone. 

(Why you left him.)

They figured a way to identify dragons through scale patterns. It was a skill Fishlegs had perfected first, taking vague, long held knowledge and putting it into practice, doing the math.

Hiccup ran his hand down the side of this dragon, eyeing the torn wings, the spiked crown. The jaw.

Recording its age, its gender, his place of origin.

“You know this dragon?” Valka asked cautiously. Distrustfully. She was leaning against her staff, face guarded. He didn’t need to look to know that last bit, he heard it just fine. 

Hiccup furrowed his brow. Two fish, a scratch under the chin. Dragon nip, a saddle, carefully woven and tenderly worn.

“I trained it.”

Hiccup leaned forward against Toothless, urging him ever onwards against the rough, buffeting winds and vicious onslaught of snow. Higher and higher until they cut above the clouds, breaching the threshold of the storm, evading it altogether.

Your absence had long since become an idea. Your person, a concept that eluded him time and time again, as inescapable yet unreachable as his own grieving heart.

But now, with the news from his father, his mother… he’d set out immediately, with not a word to spare despite Gobber warning him of the oncoming storm.

You were only two days departed. Two days out, a mirage turned real and he pursued it with all the desperation of a child. Finally, nearly, you were almost tangible. Reachable, physical, real.

There was no telling how far you’d gone or how far you’d go if you’d been given the chance to flee. He needed to catch up, catch you, see you. 

Happy to be on your own again, you’d taken a few days rest just outside of Valka’s territory. You didn’t expect to be caught off guard like that. You didn’t expect to be found, even by accident. It was just your luck.

“Damn it!” Peering from around the bend, you spotted a man. And he was a man now, a long shot away from the kids you two were. 

He was masked, hidden just out of view inside the crack between a rocky craig, where you’d set up camp. However the unmistakable form of Toothless followed suit as the two fought the wind and storm, searching for shelter.  

You brushed your hand over your own mask, your dragon breathing over your shoulder as it too surveyed the newcomers. They had crash landed quite suddenly and you’d rushed to compensate, hiding before they could notice. Hopefully they hadn’t noticed. He nor Toothless wouldn’t ever notice, not if you played your cards right.

You wondered if he remembered you at all. If he knew or if he’d ever had the mind to think about you. What brought him here. Maybe he’d just been chasing a whim. You pushed back a large animal skull with your foot, the mangled remnants of your attempt to fashion a new helmet with no face.

Toothless shook his head, looking at Hiccup sourly as they trudged on towards an outcropping near the center of the small island they’d found themselves on. 

Hiccup rubbed his arms grievously, staring out towards the sea, not sure the place wouldn’t be overtaken should a particularly large wave come to shore. There was no way he’d be able to catch up to you now, not in this rough weather. He prayed that the storm would give but the chances of that were low and he had little hope.

He stumbled slightly as he was buffeted forwards, finally making it to the entrance of a nigh hidden, narrow space carved into a crack in the large rock. Toothless snuffled at his back, urging him forward, though he had to take pause at the entrance as he spotted movement in the back.

A dragon? Or…

You hadn’t played your cards right.

You cursed as you ran further into the cave and towards the opening you knew lay at the back, your dragon already there, packed and ready. You had to run back after the realization you’d forgotten your dagger, which you probably should have just left behind.

“Hey, wait!”

 You grit your teeth as Hiccup made chase, running past your dead fire and crumbling fish bones. You would have been caught had the passage not been too narrow for him and Toothless to run side-by-side. It was just luck that he hadn’t yet thought to jump back onto his saddle.

You increased your speed as the passage started to open up and swung onto your own dragon, kicking off and just missing Hiccup as he skidded to a stop. Toothless lept in front of him right after. 

You could just imagine the two of them vaulting into the sky, a common scene turned frightening image as you and your own dragon bolted.

You’d had plenty of experience flying through this kind of weather. You hadn’t always, and the vikings on Berk hadn’t much at all, choosing to hole up with their dragons when the snow got too rough.

It gave you the advantage, one you needed if Hiccup decided to follow. There was no way to tell with the snow this thick, and with Toothless, he’d be nearly impossible to outmaneuver. You stayed under the clouds, hoping to keep your cover, as traveling into the open sky now would most definitely give you away.

What you could make out below between flurries of hail and flakes was nothing but open ocean and large mountains of ice, which passed you by in less than an instant as you sped as far away as possible, using the winds to uplift instead of hindering you. 

You scanned the area around you, looking for a sound place to escape and hide. Something caught your eye but just barely and you swooped downwards.

With what happened next, you might have been caught off guard had it not been for the yelling you could make out just barely above the wind. Instead you were just incredibly scared as a large mass spiraled into you, sending the four of you tumbling and screaming down into the cavern below.

Through the vertigo you were able to kick Hiccup, untangling your limbs with force as your dragon took unsteadily to the air again.

“Wait- Come back!” He shouted, leaning forwards, arm extended towards you. Toothless roared.

“No!” You yelled stubbornly back as you twisted to glare at him through your mask.

Regrettably, it seems that the Night Fury remained undefeated in terms of speed and inescapability as he soon caught up to you again, Toothless grabbing onto your dragon’s tail and with a hard yank, forcing your landing onto a nearby ledge, large and long enough to facilitate your rough spill and roll against hard gravel. 

Your mask cracked as it was thrown against the ground, loudly echoing as it clattered against hard stone.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to- It was really rough out there, and I-” Hiccup stumbled to his feet, shaking his mechanical foot out of Toothless’ saddle, heart pounding as you looked up at him behind scraggly hair, crouched a good few strides forwards

He’d found the experience novel when he’d seen it on his Dad, an outsider looking in. But to experience it firsthand… He knew what his father meant, when he said ‘You’re as beautiful as the day I lost you.’

Even seeing you as messed up and wild as you were squeezed his breath out of his chest. Maybe even made you more… Whatever this was. Whatever you were to him. 

You definitely looked different, a little older, features more defined, but he’d die before he’d cease to recognize that face.

He had to shut his mouth, lips pursed as if to hold back all the memories flooding back into his mind, faster than the winds blowing up on the surface. You two, as kids in the meadows, complaining about life and dads, sneaking around the Great Hall, causing messes and being scolded.

He realized what it was that he’d felt and missed so deeply. It was something he’d known, hidden so deep inside, realized much too late.

You held back tears as the life you’d tried so hard to forget had finally caught up to you. Within an instant, this new life you had built for yourself had completely fallen apart.

You saw the man- because you begged for it not to be him, and you’d exhausted all your avenues, and the only option you had left was denial, took a shaky step forward, pulling his helmet back over his head with both hands, revealing a face lathered in sweat despite the cool conditions.

Trolls.

“Why…” Your voice, scratchy and ragged, was easily heard despite your whispering as there was nothing else to be heard, “Are you here?”

“Why… Am I…?” Hiccup asked incredulously, staring at you wide-eyed.

“Yes!” You shout, shoving the hair out of your face as you stood abruptly, “What in the world are you doing here?” Your dragon, laying behind you, began to stand, cautiously crouching against the ground.

“I came looking for you!” He looked like you’d kicked his puppy. You bared your teeth at him.

“You came looking for me? You chased me through a storm like a maniac! Can’t you take a hint?! Gods,” You grip your shoulder, “You probably broke my shoulder, curse it!”

“I’m sorry- I’m sorry I hurt you, that I-” Hiccup stepped forward. Toothless growled, behind him, “But you left! What was I supposed to do with that?”

“What you were supposed to do with that? You tackled me to the ground!” It had been so long.

“You didn’t even say goodbye!”

“You’re mad about goodbyes? Was the goodbye I gave you not good enough?!” He had scruff now, a light dusting of peach fuzz spotting along his chin. His hair was redder, his eyes greener. Or maybe that was the lighting.

“You went missing for two years! So I chased after you. Who wouldn’t? In what world would ‘I’ll see you later’ ever be enough? Ever?” It’s not like he ever gave you a goodbye. Not before he’d left you in the dust.

“I was hurt! And what are you- how do you even remember that, anyways?” You scoff loudly. But in the end he was still the same boy. He would have taken anyone else at their whim as a friend or otherwise. Yet he didn’t even recognize your companionship or your silly little crush. Wasn’t that disheartening?

Hiccup stomped forwards, causing you to step back. Your dragon snarled and followed as Toothless began to circle, trapping you and Hiccup in the middle of a very dangerous tango.

“How could I-? You’d- Just- Have you ever considered that maybe I was hurting, too? I spent so long just trying to fix- everything! I spent so long doing, and then you just leave and I can’t do anything about it! Do you know how painful that was? Why didn’t- why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you talk to me? Why?” He had worked hard. So, so hard.

 He probably would have chosen Ruffnut’s hand over yours. He thought she was terrible.

“Why?” You asked him, throwing your arms out, squishing the little ball of guilt worming around in your stomach, “Why didn’t you talk to me? Do you know how much it hurt, to be constantly left behind like- like your old scraps, and maybe I got tired of hearing about it! Hearing about all of it! Your standing, your dad, your stupid girlfriend! Could you not just be happy with what you had?”

“What-”

He did get Astrid, though. He pursued her even though, for the longest time, she remained just ever so out of his league. The same way he was and wasn’t out of yours. Yeah, you were jealous. So, so jealous.

Of her, of his cousin and all his other friends for pushing you around and squeezing you out of his life. You were mad at him for letting them, after all they’d done to the both of you.

“I got made fun of! All the damn time! And your head was so full of air- you were too busy jerking your own ego to notice!” Your eyes stung as you shouted at him.

“Up my own ego!” Hiccup stopped, “No one wanted me as I was. I spent so long trying to make everything work for everyone else! What I had-I wanted you to have it too! So why? Why did you leave?”

“You say that, but-” You grimace and, “Shouldn’t it be obvious? Maybe I didn't want that! Did- did you ever stop to consider that maybe I wanted you? You didn’t have to make anything up for me! You-! It was all about you!”

“I- Honestly, you have to- All my life, I-”

“I have to what?! We had the same life, Hiccup!”

“I know!” Hiccup squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Then, quicker than you could react, he grabbed you by your upper arm and pulled you closer just enough- It wasn’t pleasant at all, all force and teeth against lip. But the next one.

He pulled back, readjusted and you slipped together seamlessly. Closed-mouthed, but he clearly knew what he was doing, kissing you that way. You held onto his elbows, unmoving yet still, frozen by shock. He’d gotten his practice in with Astrid. 

The thought sent a wave of fury down your spine. You punched him.

He reared back from the blow, accepting yet more startled than physically hurt as, just like him, you’d never had much muscle. Still, you’d left what was quickly becoming a nice red welt on his face.

 Your dragons stared at the both of you in shock, yours more in confusion than Toothless. There weren’t many Vikings in the sanctuary, so the meaning behind the gesture, the punch and the kiss, was probably lost.

“I thought…” He mumbled, eyes wide again, speaking as though whatever just happened, hadn’t, “I thought everything was fine. Fine enough. Between us.” You looked at him, the place where your heart used to be all twisted up and torn.

He was a liar. He was a liar, and you wouldn’t let him one over you. Not again. You didn’t want him to, more than anything else.

In spite of that, emotionally and physically, you were exhausted. You could only manage sadness. You weren’t sure you had the energy to push him away. 

“You thought wrong.” You didn’t want to speak to him at all.

“Please, don’t-” he fell apart, voice hushed and cracking as he spoke. He took the final step towards you, burying his head against your shoulder. You stood stiff, staring out over into the scenery beyond his back and yet unseeing.

It was weird, having said everything you’d needed to say, that you’d bottled up for so many years. It defined you for so long that having it all out in the open kind of made you feel like you’d lost something essential.

“I see it. I see it now. I really do,” He whispered that last part tearfully, fingers gripping weakly onto the fabric of your sleeves. You felt as though a stiff breeze might blow him away, “Please, don’t leave me. Not again.” 

He couldn’t say that.

“I can’t let you go again,” He really couldn’t say that.

“Just... Just tell me what you want.” He couldn’t say that, either. Toothless shot you a scathing glare, your dragon all but forgotten as he tugged Hiccup back. Your dragon unfurled its wings behind you, standing tall and proud as he pulled away towards the entrance to the cavern. 

You met Hiccup’s gaze.

“Just do me this.” You choked out, watching as his expression switched from despaired to flat and back again, “Go away,”

 “Please.” You said.

And he did. He turned tail and ran.

It was over.

As he flew away on Toothless, becoming nothing but a pinprick in your periphery before finally disappearing up the cavern entrance, you fell back down onto your knees. 

You weren’t sure what to do anymore. The most important decision of your life was made with his ghost nipping at your heels. Truly, he haunted you. Whether he was with you or not, he always haunted you.

But the dragons here, untouched by the outside world, were kind. And curious. Once the threat was gone and the commotion was over, many came over to examine the newcomers, sniffing and prodding at you and your things.

They were welcoming enough. So you set up shop.

Hiccup laid flat against his bed, staring at the ceiling of his childhood home. He felt torn in every single direction all at once.

He’d left when his people needed him. When his father had needed him. Drago had attacked while he’d been gone, and all that was left of the sanctuary now was rubble. Then he’d gone after Berk. Hiccup had only just gotten there in time.

His father was fine, his mother… alive. After twenty years. Everyone was accounted for, but what if they hadn’t been? If he’d been there, maybe there would have been less damage, less people hurt.

But he wouldn’t have found you if he’d stayed. Finally, after all this time. He'd realized how long it truly had been since you left, lost to him even before you’d actually run off on your… the, nadder.

The floorboards creaked as someone made their way up the stairs to the loft, the front door swinging shut behind him. Hiccup didn’t move, just glancing to the side to see who it was that came to get him this time.

“Astrid,” He sighed. The two of them were distant and had been for a long while, despite the fact that they were supposed to be in a relationship. He’d been off a lot for that whole long while, which she hadn’t much minded as she’d found herself more interested in other things. And… he’d found his heart had a new owner.

“It’s been a month, Hiccup,” She rolled her head back, exhausted, as if reciting a tired script that she’d been reading off for ages, one that no one wanted to listen to anymore,  “Everyone is fine. You don’t have to hole up so often. I don’t know why you did it, but no one is mad you left, you know. You couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah…” Hiccup sighed, “Yeah, I know.”

“You need to get out,” She looked around his room, which was very much a mess of parts and papers, and ran her hand down a large map, laid flat over the only remotely clear space he had, his desk, “if you don’t next thing you know, a month’ll be four.”

“Why are you so obsessed with this place? … Does it have anything to do with the time you spent missing?” Astrid questioned. Hiccup propped himself up, turning over alarmed as he heard the sound of skin on paper. It had been freshly inked.

“No,” He’d guessed at where the two of you had ended up. He was sure that he’d be able to find it again, given the chance. He would. After he worked up the courage.

After all, you’d… You didn’t want to be found.

“Hey, wait, that’s-” He scrambled onto his one leg, kicking aside his prosthetic and jamming his toe in the process.

 “Ah, ow, ow, don’t touch that, please,” Astrid rolled her eyes and tossed the cylinder to his bed and he picked it up, examining it thoroughly as she sauntered off.

You weren’t sure why, but he kept coming back

“Hi,” He said awkwardly, shifting from foot to peg nervously. This was the first time he’d caught you. The first time he’d spotted you was the last but you’d made off that time before he could see you.

“Why are you here?” You stared at him, blank faced. Why didn’t you leave, curse it.

Your dragon waved its tail playful from the side, waiting for Hiccup to go. The other ones wouldn’t come out while he was here.  It felt good in a vindictive sort of way, because dragons had always been this thing, except this time you were the one with the secret dragon knowledge. And the upper hand. Sort of. They didn’t hide from you.

“I like… “ He flushed, “I like hearing you talk?”

“Sure,” You suggested, turning and starting off again, basket under arm and over rock as you began unsteadily making your way back up to home cave. You liked it there because you didn’t have to leave much for anything.

“Wait, wait, wait wait,” Hiccup stuttered. As you had your arms over a particularly steep ledge, your legs waved nonsensically and scrambled against the side as you searched for a foot grip, “Just, uh, let me-”

“Come back tomorrow,” You grunted after you managed to finally get one leg up the side. You’d probably figure out what to say by then.

You felt better here, like maybe you weren’t meant for people. Not for dragons either, not really.  The dragons here didn’t need defending or anything, it’s not like there was anyone down here to defend against besides other dragons. The most you’d had to go out for was food, and even that was made or stolen easily enough.

Being here gave you enough time to make you think that maybe you were meant just for yourself. 

You sat by the spray by the falls, enjoying the mist as it sprayed onto your face and the echoing sounds of the water hitting gray stone. 

“Toothless, come on- Just please, I know you don’t want- but-” Your eyes shot open, the distant voice of Hiccup bounced around the empty cavern, your moment ruined.

You looked around for the pair, trying to figure out which direction you should be running before. Suddenly, it felt like you’d been drenched by a whole lot more than a mist as Toothless landed messily behind you.

“What are you doing here?” You were careful to keep your balance as you shuffled further inland, looking a lot like a drenched cat as you came face-to-face with an also sopping wet Hiccup

You would never be rid of him.

“You said to come back tomorrow?” He asked, twisting his fingers and very purposefully refusing to look you in the eye.

Of course, you hadn’t figured out what to say.

You blew a raspberry as you adjusted the stolen, waterlogged basket which you had, again, under your arm. You needed more than two pairs of clothes.

“...Come back later,” You grumbled, “Later than tomorrow.”

You’d been free for a week. You’d been hoping for maybe two, to be frank.

“Please, I just-” Hiccup huffed, traveling by foot while you rode your dragon. Toothless followed behind, grumbling and gurgling at Hiccup judgmentally. Clearly whatever good will you’d built up with him before you ran left had been more than lost.

“I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling,” You stare straight ahead, over the encroaching cliff, ducking round and under ledges as your dragon trotted onwards.

“I want to get to know you, again.”

Eventually, the cave dragons had warmed up to Hiccup and he was able to work his magic on them. Now they watched through stalagmites and stalactites with impassive eyes as he made chase.

“Uh huh,” You scoffed as you reached the edge of the ledge. You turned around and stuck out your tongue as your dragon took a violent leap into the open air. As the wind whistled around you, you pinwheeled your arms in an effort to try and keep balance.

“Come on, Toothless, bud,” Hiccup complained from way behind. You saw Toothless very decidedly sit down, refusing to move even as Hiccup tried to push him towards the cliff with his whole upper body, “Let’s go.”

“So,” Hiccup started, “You haven’t gone any deeper.”

The both of you stared out into the vast, glowing sea of  towers and gigantic glowing mushrooms extending out of their jagged rock faces. In the distance you could spot gigantic crystals, protruding from the ground the same way the sanctuary did. 

Seas of dragons crowed and chirped, bright patterns shifting and growing under hard muscle. It was very dizzying, if you were going to be honest.

“No,” You replied, “No, I haven’t. Not this far, but now I… I might.”

You hadn’t traveled too far into the cavern, deciding not to push your luck with the locals. You always figured there was some sort of nest farther in. Turns out there was, and a whole lot more locals than you expected, and a lot more to this small world besides the cold, empty cavern. At least you didn’t have to worry about flooding anymore. Or sea salt in your hair.

You swore to yourself that you were going to move further in, caught off guard and most definitely embarrassed at the fact that so much open space had been hiding right under your nose. 

Free for three days.

“There has to be more. There’s no way- It doesn’t make sense how all these different kinds of dragons can live in the same environment. There’s- there’s so much here that-Gods, I have to map it,” Hiccup rambled, smiling gawkily.

He’d been here for a week.

You felt a pressure to supervise him as he ran rampant in your new home, unsure of when he’d become such a cartographer. Your dragons had gone missing a while ago, leaving you two to be babysat by the hands of the general public.

You watched as he painstakingly mapped each pillar, occasionally chiming in with your own advice, looking the same way he did the day he discovered honey when you were kids. It was almost pleasant.

The two of you had fallen off the edge of a pillar after being knocked down during a spat between two touchy Crimson Goregutters, which no Hiccup magic or dragon secret could stop. After an event with a vine, dangling over certain death and panic, you two had managed to swing your way onto a large glowing mushroom. 

The downside to that was that now, you were stuck, owed to the fact that apparently, what made some of these mushrooms glow was very viscous and… sticky. 

Hiccup’s arms were glued to the space on both sides of your head, and your hands were gripping his arms which were visibly shivering, because you two had been stuck like this for a while. You’d been tugged, prodded at and licked by various different dragons. Nothing helped and you were starting to think that maybe this was how you were going to die. 

Well, you knew you weren't going to go to Valhalla. It was kind of really hard to die in battle if you spent most of your time avoiding people. But this just sucked.

“What's up with your pathological need to map everything?” You asked belligerently. To be honest, it didn’t really bother you. Hiccup’s rambling had never bothered you, because you were prone to rambling in the same exact way. Currently though you were hard pressed to find anyone else to hear it. 

“I thought your thing was the forge? You spent half of my childhood there.”

“Well, yeah, I…” He rested his forehead against yours, eyes shut as his neck finally gave out, you weren’t too pleased as you felt his sweat drip onto your face, squirming rebelliously.

 “Wasn’t sure if you’d want to hear it. I-I could talk about that instead?” No talking at all would be great.

 “Yeah,” You gave in, closing your eyes and going limp against the slimy fungi, “That would be better.”

Lips pursed, then grimaced as he’d opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out, though. He just stared above your head, unmoving. You tried to see what he was looking at, but only got an eyeful of his scruff.

Next thing you know, you’re being smothered by a plushy pink tongue, then just licked and nosed a little bit. The spit of this dragon doing something odd to dissolve the slime trapping the two of you, fizzing as it touched shiny goo. When you finally had the facilities to move, you flipped your head back and your eyes widened slightly.

It looked like the two of you had just found Toothless a girlfriend.

Three months, two days and five visits- no, seven. Nine? Eleven? Seventeen?

“I don’t actually have a problem… with the mapping. Talking about it.”

You two were nestled between a rock and another rock, though this time whether it was a result of purpose or chance remained uncertain. You couldn’t remember. You were after something… There was barely any space between the two of you. You had been talking.

There was barely any green to Hiccup’s eyes, most of his iris consumed by large pupils as he mouthed around works that looked suspiciously like, “Can I…?”

Instead, he leaned forwards and your foreheads touched, the same way they did when you were trapped before. His eyes were clenched shut as he uttered, “I love you.”

 You had a hard time believing that.

You turned your head to the side. 

“I wonder how Astrid feels about her boyfriend flying off and doing who knows what.”

Some of the wild dragons lay in front of you, licking at the dying fire by your feet. A terror lay in the middle of it. You’d lined it with stones which were now giving off a pleasant warmth.

“I doubt she’d mind. We’re not really… together anymore. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t want to be.”

“Right,” You raised an eyebrow at him skeptically. 

“Not since a little while after you left, actually.”

You found that hard to believe too, as you shook the burnt slice of fish off your knife onto your burnt slice of bread. You weren’t much better than Valka at cooking, but you were getting better. It was something about that sanctuary, or maybe something about that woman that just made you worse at cooking.

Hiccup wrinkled his nose over on the other side of your log as he shook his head at you.

It was a petty, but bitter sort of revenge. 

Your first kiss had been lost to a fair bloke- his words, not yours- in the middle-of-nowhere inn. It had been a long time since you’d been out, but you were sure you’d easily be able to find somewhere similar to lose some other things. Hiccup had your heart but you’d never give him the opportunity to take any of your firsts.

Two months.

You were angry at him for playing with your heart again.

“There was a crisis-Berk…” His voice cracked.

 You looked disinterestedly out over uncanny black waters. “Yeah, It’s fine.”

Seven days, seven visits. He might have been camping aboveground.

The two of you were between two large red fungi, settled on a mossy rock overlooking a new, larger, unmapped maze of rock pillars and black water rushing below. Dragons, glowing and colorful, mingled together off in the distance. Toothless was probably one, gone off to frolic with his new lady love.

“You never wanted me. As a friend, as a- …battle buddy, or as anything else. You would never have chosen me for anything. And I just… I didn’t want to be just what you settled for,” You mumbled into your knees, “You spent so long searching for better, and then you found it, and it just really hurt to realize that I wasn’t a part of that.” 

You spilt your heart out as you faced the cliffside. Hiccup was facing you. You didn’t care what he heard. None of this was real anyways.

“I’m sorry,” Hiccup repeated, clenching his eyes shut as he buried his nose into your shoulder, barely there though he had to crane his head forwards, due to the uncomfortable angle. 

What he had with Astrid these past few years, that was real. That was history. This thing between the two of you was just a mess of pain and turmoil and a little bit of childhood fantasy. An old infatuation rearing its head as you got everything nasty out of your system.

“It hurt to think that-That… the one person- Like everyone else did, you didn’t think I was good enough either.”

“I’m sorry.” You felt his arms come around your sides awkwardly before he squeezed.

“Me too. I…”

He’d remember that he didn’t want-need- you again soon enough.

“I haven’t told anyone. About you, or this place.”

“You haven’t?” You’d actually expected otherwise. It was nice to know you weren’t at risk of getting dropped in on.

Two months, thirty two visits.

You might be coming around to him.

“You’ve already-?” He asked, a little startled. You still felt a little silly about it but after you’d done it, you figured it wasn’t that big of a deal. It wasn’t like you’d planned to marry or anything anyways, so his reaction was kind of funny.

“Yeah, I was pretty mad. So I went out, and… you know. It was a while ago, though.” 

He looked a little disheartened at the idea, but he just scoffed, waving his hand off in your direction.

“What? You and Astrid kissed, yeah, but you haven’t done- anything? Not even before you ‘totally broke up,’” You didn’t have to specify what they hadn’t done, the innuendo was already pretty obvious.

“Nah.” Hiccup said, hair wiped out of his face, matched squares of parchment. Map pieces were strewn out in front of him as he made himself busy trying to create a complete chart of the underground, matching up the landscape he saw with the islands above it.

 Unfortunately, the caverns seemed to stretch on forever and the islands only covered so much.

Three months, one day, thirty two hours. 

You straddled him, crinkling some of the many, many blueprints scattered across the moss surface. You wiggled one out from under him, looking down as he looked up. It felt good, being the one in charge for once.

You leaned down, pressing your noses together. Just before, you’d been going over his things. His blueprints. Swapping ideas. Sharing minds. Like you used to, every single day. Like you’d been doing, almost every single day.

“Do you love me?” You asked.

Every day you’d been together. Your knees touched, shoulders pressed close together.

You had to know. And if he did… He had to mean it. 

You played games, shared stories. You’d grappled and curled, not the way vikings could, but the way two hiccups did, a long, long time ago. 

If he didn’t, well… You had all the time in the world to leave, to start again. But you didn’t think you could. You could go weeks without seeing him, and then sometimes it would be every other day. 

This was it.

“I do love you,” He choked out, wheezing as you adjusted, your weight pressing against his chest. He glanced back at you, crumbling a little bit. 

He spent a lot of time here, now. A lot more than before. With the time spent traveling in between, as he said it, it was a wonder he got anything done there at all. Most of his time was spent above mapping the islands or down here with you.

You read what his body language told you; he was insecure. 

“... Do you love me?”

“I do.” Hesitantly, you nodded, “I do.” Was that even a question?

You trusted him. You didn’t trust him. You had no way to know if he stabbed you in the back again. Went back to Astrid. You didn’t really have a way to know if that’s what he did, every time he left. 

You loved him, didn’t you?

He didn’t know that? Maybe not always and not all at once, since you left. You hadn’t done a very good job of making him know it. You hadn’t a lot of reason to. 

Did you love him now?

You marveled at how easy it was to be around him, with him. It wasn’t the same as it was before, but it was still good. It could almost be better. You, against everything, wanted it. You wanted it so bad.

“I’d leave it all behind, for you,” Hiccup said.

You would make him know it.

“You would?” You asked, “Would you?”

You laid your heart bare to him, stitched and spiked. And you, as he said it, implied it, maybe you held his. 

“Do you want me to?” He asked. He tugged lightly on one of the draws to your tunic, faking interest in it as he worried the inside of his cheek. You didn’t want his home, or his family. 

“I don’t want anything,” You scoffed dismissively. You wanted his honesty. You wanted to know that he was yours. Yours truly. That was it.

Prove it. You urged him on, Prove it to me. 

He smiled that goofy, awkward smile, half teeth and all closed at the edges. You could tell he was trying hard not to falter. You hadn’t seen that smile in such a long time.

Know me, You asked.

“So… Do you? Do you love me?” He asked again, offering his hand up to your face. His fingers were scabbed, and dirty and you leaned into his palm, pushing it down as he tangled his fingers clumsily into the roots of your hair. You pressed your lips together, again, again and over again until neither of you could breathe. 

Have me, You pleaded.

“I do,” You gasped into his mouth, “I really, really do.” You offered no resistance. Not this time.

Love me. 

There was no coming back.

(Deep in your mind, you wondered if maybe, possibly, he already did.)

Twelve months. Twelve months since he’d found you.

Hiccup stood at the edge of Berk, armor packed away in favor of a lighter tunic. He often wondered what it would have been like, if he’d really run away with you like he’d intended.

If things would have ended up the same. 

Would he have seen you in time? In time for what he had now? For this? 

No. no, probably not. 

…

His father would notice. His mother might.

His father was fine. And now he had his mother. They were old, but they were tough. They could have a new kid. Or maybe they’d convince Snotlout or Astrid to take the mantle. 

They’d-everyone-would be fine without him.Who was he kidding? He’d spent so long working so hard and they didn’t need him at all. And if he was honest, He didn’t need them. 

He didn’t really care. Not anymore. He let go.

Life would go on just fine without him, just as it did before him and just as it would long after his name was lost to time. His distance only proved it. He spent so long away he’d been practically excommunicated again.

After a little bit of irritation, his travels became just another one of his quirks. 

‘Oh, look, there’s Hiccup. Oh, well, he’s off again.’ He was barely missed. And rightly so. It was by his own doing, really. That was fine by him. In fact, It worked in his favor.

It was borderline hysterical how, the moment they found more furies, and his new paramour, Toothless went from devil’s advocate to his most eager accomplice. 

The Sand Wraiths were especially cool… It cost him a lot less fish to get there now. To you.

Sometimes he had to wonder why he’d been so attached to Berk. Working for things that ultimately, he didn’t care about. Everything that kept him here, he also had with you. When he was here, all he wanted was to go back out.

A pebble-sized ball of guilt coil in his stomach. It used to be worse. But, he’d talked to you about it. The engagement.

The engagement with Astrid. The one that was basically moot at this point, anyways. She might even slap him if he brought it up, to expect anything after he’d left her for so long. Truly, officially. all he’d had to do was end it. He left a letter nearby her family home; they would find it if they bothered to search for him.

A scummy trick, yes. Was he a coward for doing it? Maybe. But he was a smart coward. He wasn’t lying when he’d told you that no one knew.

Hiccup exhaled, bouncing up and down on his heel and peg, as if to psych himself up. To dispel all of his nervous, excited energy.

It was a clear day, no risk of a storm. He strapped his saddle pack to Toothless. It was only slightly larger than usual, so as not to arouse suspicion, of course, but it held all of his essentials. Leatherworking tools, metalworking tools, more tools, his armor, spare armor, spare foot, spare charcoal. The small plush his mother had made for him as a child. His viking helmet, for memory’s sake.

Slung over his shoulder was a smaller pack with just his compass and his coin. 

As the two of you grew closer and closer, it only made his decision more and more certain.

He wasn’t meant to be Chief. He wasn’t cut out for this life at all. He didn’t want this life. He wanted you. 

As far as anyone else was concerned, you’d long since disappeared and now he had the feeling it was time for him to do the same.

He took a deep breath, one that pushed his lungs to his ribs. Then like his bag, he flung himself over Toothless’ saddle before he took off from Berk for the last time, closing his eyes. He’d left his helmet off this time so he felt the beating wind rip through his hair.

The two of you were there, half hidden from view under a large red plume. It was wasm, and your perspiring skin was trapped under hollow armor, same as his. 

You gasped, hot air mingling every time his breath hit your face. The two of you huffed and panted as he pushed you unto the dirt and you pushed back, feeling the moss tickle your face and the backs of your hand. 

Not your back, though. Just hands. 

Gripped, interlaced fingers pressed firmly down by your head, sweaty palms melded to his. He’d been the one in charge, today.

He was hunched over you, his trousers unbuckled and unlaced as he pressed downwards, forwards, gently and not.

A line of sweat ran down your cheek. Your eyelids fluttered. His breath caught.

Men shouted their battle cries into the dark, never ending sky as Berk was set in flames. A skull, still fresh with blood and exposed brain, broke with a sickening, wet crunch as Stoick ground his head into it, bringing mercy to the poor, damaged creature.

“There is no fury here,” He bellowed as he towered menacingly against the hulking wall of flames by his door. Three Deathgrippers and their tails lay cut, prone and slain around him. 

“We’ll see about that,” Grimmel crooned, standing tall with his hands linked behind his back, looking down on him with two more dragons hissing and spitting by his sides.

Sharp talons dug into the wood of the rafters, Cloudjumper’s head turning steering around as he hung by her feet. Valka, masked and fully covered, crouched down from where she was, nestled at the bend of his tail. She pulled her arms back, getting her hook, sharp and serrated, ready for a wicked swing.

Yes, he would see. She’d make sure of it.

[izvmimi]

HOW SELECTIVE IS YOUR 2D FAVE ROSTER? (updated for 2024)

Fandom is so exciting! It’s a blessing to be part of fandom and to get to simp for your faves with other people who share similar lists, especially since there are so many to pick from! 

Seeing your list of faves lengthen, shorten and develop over time is exciting, but when was the last time you really looked at your list and decided how much of it is truly based on your interest, or if you’re just a victim of the dash? 

Just how basic are you? Are you a flavor of the month type or is there a healthy amount of diversity? Are you selective? 

This game is easy. I’ll give you a bunch of fandoms, and you’ll simply tally how many you get at the end. There are some special conditions at the end, so make sure you read to the very bottom if you play!

I recommend you be familiar with at least 4 of these fandoms to play! The fandoms mentioned are BNHA, JJK, HQ, Tokyo Revengers, Blue Lock, Demon Slayer, AOT, One Piece, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Naruto, Hunter x Hunter and a few others.

Tag your friends and please don’t take it too seriously!

(^^ and I mean this last part, please do not take this too seriously, it's for fun! Nobody is judging you and if your score is high, it's really just because you have a lot of love to give, I'm literally just teasing!)

BNHA

Bakugou - 4

Deku - 2

Todoroki - 3

Shinsou - 3

Dabi - 3

Aizawa - 2

Hawks - 2

Shigaraki - 2

Mirio - 1

Denki - 2

Sero - 1

JJK

Gojo - 5

Yuuji - 4

Sukuna - 4

Nanami - 5

Toji - 3

Getou - 3

Yuuta - 3

Choso - 3

Megumi - 1

HAIKYUU

Kuroo - 4

Atsumu - 3

Ushijima - 3

Bokuto - 2

Iwa - 2

Daichi - 2

Osamu - 2

Kita - 1

TOKYO REVENGERS

Mikey - 3

Baji - 3

Draken - 3

Ran - 3

Chifuyu - 2

Sanzu - 2

BLUE LOCK

Either of the Itoshi brothers - 10

Nagi - 3

Michael Kaiser - 2

Kunigami - 2

Barou - 2

Bachira- 2

Reo - 1

Chigiri - 1

Isagi - 1

DEMON SLAYER

Sanemi - 4

Tengen - 3

Rengoku - 3

Akaza - 2

Tanjiro - 2

AOT

Levi - 4

Eren - 3

Jean - 2

Reiner - 2

Connie - 2

ONE PIECE

Zoro - 4

Law - 3

GENSHIN IMPACT

Childe - 5

Diluc - 4

Neuvillette - 4

Wriothesley - 4

Zhongli - 3

Xiao - 3

Itto - 2

HONKAI STAR RAIL

Jing Yuan - 5

Aventurine - 5

Dan Heng - 4

Dr. Ratio - 3

Blade - 3

Sampo - 3

NARUTO

Kakashi - 4

Sasuke - 3

Itachi - 3

Obito - 2

Madara - 2

Gaara - 2

Any other Akatsuki member - 1

HXH

Hisoka - 4

Chrollo - 2

Illumi - 2

MISCELLANEOUS

Dazai (Bungou Stray Dogs) - 3

Ichigo (Bleach) - 3

Aki (CSM) - 3

Vash (Trigun) - 2

Wolfwood (Trigun) - 2

Knives (Trigun) - 2

Aomine (Kuroko no Basuke) - 2

Kagami (Kuroko no Basuke) - 2

Kyo Sohma (Fruits Basket) - 2

Literally anyone from Fire Force - 3

Special considerations:

If you have more than 5 faves with the same hair color, add 10 points.

If you like more than 5 blonds specifically, add 10 points and seek help. If one of them is Bakugou, add 15 instead of 10.

If you have more than 10 faves (even if they’re not mentioned on this list), add 20 points to your score.

If you liked both Atsumu and Osamu, add 3 points.

If you polyship with Gojo and Geto, add 10 points.

If you polyship with Bakugou and Deku or Bakugou and Kirishima, add 5 points.

If you liked both Kakashi and Gojo, add 5 points.

If you stopped talking about Nanami after he died on air, add 5 points.

If you like Gojo but have at least 4 additional ships, add 5 points.

If you like Zhongli, Childe and Diluc at the same time, add 5 points.

If you like anyone from Date Tech, subtract 5 points.

If you liked one person from every category, add 5 points.

If you liked greater than five characters from one category, add 5 points.

If you’ve watched Haikyuu and simped for none of those people, subtract ten points. I’m so proud of you.

If you pick any three people with a 4 or above ranking, get help..

If you only like Gojo, get help.

SCORING: 

< 10: What is it like only liking side characters?

11 - 30: This is healthy. Here is good.

31 - 50: I mean you’re a little basic but like this is fine. I’m proud of you.

51 - 70: I mean, it’s nice to be selective once in a while. Consider it.  

70-100: Hm.

100+ : You alright there? My inbox is open. I am here for you.

[tournament-of-the-twinks]

Welcome to Tournament of the Twinks!

Characters included in the bracket

Round 1 A & B has ended

Round 1 C & D has ended

Round 1 E is up! & F is up!

Round 1 G & H tba

Links to polls under the cut

R1A

R1B

R1C

R1D

Round 1E

Matchup 1: Noise from Roleslaying with Roman vs Yukito from Cardcaptor Sakura

Matchup 2: Al Leon from Appare-Ranman! vs Ingo from Pokemon

Matchup 3: Oscar from Tea for Two vs Kajiyama Fuuta from MILGRAM

Matchup 4: Damien from Dream Daddy vs Marvin the Magnificent from Jacksepticeye

Matchup 5: Tamaki Suoh from Ouran High School Host Club vs Daniel from Camp Camp

Matchup 6: Mike from Roleslaying with Roman vs Gowther from Seven Deadly Sins

Matchup 7: Felix Escellun from Last Legacy vs Anasui from Jojo's Bizzare Adventure: Stone Ocean

Matchup 8: Bailin from Bailin and Li Yun vs Hatori Sohma from Fruits Basket

Round 1F

Matchup 1: Diego the Squire from Nimona vs Keith Kogane from Voltron

Matchup 2: N from Pokemon vs Lilia Vanrouge from Twisted Wonderland

Matchup 3: Twink from Q-Force vs Chuuya from Bungou Stray Dogs

Matchup 4: Asra from The Arcana vs Tobias from Faroff

Matchup 5: Jermey Heere from Be More Chill vs Nico di Angelo from PJO

Matchup 6: Ennon from Good Omens vs Sigma from Bungo Stray Dogs

Matchup 7: Yule from Wild Beast Forest House vs Errol from Tea for Two

Matchup 8: Shang Qinghua from The Scum Villian’s Self Saving System vs Akito Sohma from Fruits Basket

[devieuls]

The way of love pt.VIII

Neteyam Sully x Tayrangi Fem Reader (Na'vi)

Warning of the Serie: MDNI. Dom Neteyam x Fem Reader; SMUT; ANGST; FLUFF; Dirty Talk; Fangs; Bites; Blood; Spit; Power Play; Jealousy and Possessiveness; Foreplay; violence; Swearing; Teasing; Unprotected Sex; Enemies (because of you, Neteyam treats you well). Aged characters: Neteyam 19 y.o / You 18 y.o. SERIE

Synopsis: After a great loss happened in your family, you are forced to take a role that before did not belong to you, following a path that you will feel like your only in time. Just when you thought you were finally overcoming the loss, your clan shows up with those you blame for the great offense received. You are the daughter of the first Olo'eykte of all clans and are about to take your mother’s place to lead the Tayrangi clan, but first you must follow Neteyam (the eldest son of the man you detest with all your heart) To train him, despite your contempt for the Sullys and everything about them, you inevitably bond with the boy, unknowingly falling in love with him.

CHAPTER WARNING: ///////

Lenght : 4.6k

Notes: I’m praying that you like the series, because it’s getting closer to the end. Leave a comment to make me understand how it’s going, luv u <3

NA'VI WORDS: TANHI: Star; KARYU: Teacher; 'ITE: Daughter; kenten mì kumpay: a sense of being in an environment where you’re prevented from acting naturally or doing what you want to do; nga yawne lu oer: i love you

Character Cast: NEY'NARI: Your dead sister; IKEYNI: Your Mother; TSENTEY: Your Father; YÌMKXA: Your Ikran; ULEYTE: Your bestie; TUL'PEY: Your future Mate

PART: 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4 ; 5 ; 6 ; 7 ; 8 ; 9 ; 10

· · ─────── · 𖥸 · ─────── · ·

"Does she know?" Lo'ak’s tone became serious for a moment. "No, not yet. I’ll tell her about that when the time comes. " "Our father will skin you alive,bro" said the youngest. " Probably…" The conversation turned to the end.

You had taken a basket of Spartan fruit and steamed Teylu; you would have liked to hear the conversation between Lo'ak and Neteyam but most of the words were a mix of Na'vi and that language you couldn’t understand. When you were ready you came out of the hut, you looked at the boys with a slight blush on your face. "I took what I came looking for… please, take the water…" You whispered with a thread of voice as you passed the two boys. You could see out of the corner of your eye that Neteyam had tried to touch your elbow when you passed in front of him, but he retracted his hand after his brother’s gaze fell on him. You didn’t give much importance to this detail, taking it for granted that he had made this choice in order not to make you feel further uncomfortable with his brother. When you returned to your family’s hut you noticed that your mother and Neytiri kept talking about some strange event they had faced when they were young; Jake arguing with your dad about warrior stuff while the one you recognized as Tuk and Kiri were talking to each other. You put the basket on the table and then you were invited by the little one to sit with her and her sister, at the beginning you were reluctant to approach them but then you had the courage to sit down with them; Kiri hadn’t looked at you most of the night while Tuk was anxious to meet you.

"I’m Tuktirey! You’re Neteyam’s friend, aren’t you? Your hair is so beautiful, wow!" the voice of the little girl was ringing but pleasant to listen to as she touched some of your braids, admiring the small jewels that were wedged between them. "I love your clothes and your jewelry! You are really beautiful, y/n!" she continued, making genuine and sincere appreciations on every part of you, only to be stopped by Kiri who could feel your slight embarrassment as you thanked little Tuk. "Tuk, if you keep this up, she’s gonna run like a hawk" said the girl who must have been about your age, as she touched Tuk’s braids, making her peel off slightly from you. "I am Kiri, but I think you know us at least by name, Neteyam never misses the opportunity to talk about us" her eyes rolled as if she already knew that 100% he had done it, in fact she was right. "Coincidentally he did it just today, It’s not like we had a lot of time together outside of class hours or formal events," you bit the corner of your mouth slightly as your eyes fell on the floor. Kiri noticed that there was something deeper, but remained silent to not make you uncomfortable, after all she had just met you.

At that moment the two young Sullys also entered the hut with some Dapophet leaves that contained the water all of you would need for the long night. The lanterns that were placed inside the hut began to light up with the arrival of the eclipse of the day, while the two boys took their seats near you and the two sisters.

Neteyam sat between you and Tuk, often holding her when she needed the affection of his older brother. You found out that Tuk was particularly close to Neteyam, you could tell by how she whined at the thought of going back to the Omatikaya clan without her brother, and how she complained that Lo'ak couldn’t braid her hair like Neteyam, or by her laments for how Lo'ak always prohibited her from following him into the woods. It softened you the dynamic between them, you could see yourself so much in Tuk, at least 'the old you', the one a little rebellious and mischievous, but endured by the older sister. You also laughed at the way Lo'ak was reprimanded by Kiri when he said something extremely stupid or when he appeared in the stories as a powerful warrior. After a long time you felt happy, you no longer had the burden of thinking about tomorrow or your duties, In one night, your shoulders shook thanks to those who until last month considered 'demons'. The thing that left you most enchanted was how Neteyam smiled and tried to keep all three brothers quiet, almost like a father to them. When it came your turn to speak you found yourself bickering with Neteyam, as he was too modest to be complimented on his skills or improvements; Sometimes you two find complaining and contradicting eachother about some funny scenes that happened while you were training, like the fact that he almost drowned that morning while trying to stay under the water as long as possible.

Suddenly Tuk opened her mouth to talk, drawing your attention. "Neteyam, you and y/n are mated? Becaus-" Lo'ak plugged Tuk’s mouth with Teylu, getting a tender pout from the little girl. "Tuk, you’re talking too much, eat something" Lo'ak said embarrassed as Neteyam blushed and looked slightly away as he scratched the back of his head. "No, just friends. We’re just friends, Tuktirey" you said smiling, while Lo'ak held back a smile that was certainly containing a laugh. Your eyes shook him in the moment, while Kiri had managed to connect the dots in her mind. Kiri looked first at Neteyam and then at you, noticed how the brother swallowed in embarrassment and tried to hide the blush on his cheeks, and how you looked at Lo'ak badly for his expression and embarrassed smile. The marks on Neteyam’s chest and the small scratches behind his back, and then he noticed some hickeys in the upper thigh and closer to your intimacy. She nodded in silence, while a dark veil covered her face after realizing, feeling bad for you, since most likely you did not know yet. "Friends? You seem so close though" Tuk said with his mouth still full, as Lo'ak sighed with relief as he hadn’t mentioned that little detail that only Neteyam could have told you. "is because I am his Karyu, in this month he spent more time with me because of the lessons that with the other Na'vi of the village" Neteyam’s head nodded agreeing.

The evening continued along the same lines: funny stories, Tuktirey insisting that you and Neteyam were a couple, Lo'ak and Neteyam trying to silence her in their strange language and Kiri maybe contemplating death and then talking to you gently. Towards the end of the evening, the Sullys went to sleep in Neteyam’s hut, as they would leave the next day late in the afternoon. You were happy to have met the Sullys, you had discovered how they were simply Na'vi with their flaws and merits; it made you laugh as Jake seemed so trained when Neytiri spoke over him or corrected his grammar, you found them tender… Now that you were lying in the part of the hut dedicated to you, you couldn't help but smile as you looked out of the window hole, still lying on your carpet, talking quietly to the stars and the wind. This was something you often did when you needed to vent both positively and negatively, it made you feel so close to your sister, and you hoped she would hear you tell her about your experience with the Sullys. A gentle breeze came into your room and made you smile, thinking it was Ney'nari’s answer, interpreting that breeze as your sister’s encouragement to move on and continue to bond with that family you were afraid of before and disgusted with.

"Y/n… y/n, are you awake?" a voice coming from outside made you get up from the ground and look out the window, and then notice Neteyam looking for something on the ground, as to hit the window to attract your attention. "I’m awake. What are you doing here at this hour?" you said noting the late hour. Neteyam’s face rose and smiled as he looked out the window. "I told you, I can’t sleep if you don’t say good night, Ma Tanhì," his voice was slightly lowered, so as not to attract the attention of sleepers in the village. He approached your window, albeit slightly higher from where he was. "Skxawng, go to sleep. If they found you there they would skin you" you whispered, trying to make your voice heard only to him. You had to hold back a smile for that gesture as foolish as it was sweet, which had particularly impressed you. "Then say good night, so I have quiet dreams." His eyes chained to yours, watching the little smile that was born on your face. "Goodnight, 'Teyam," you said quietly as you put your cheek on the palm of your hand, noting how happy and uplifted Neteyam seemed after your words. "Good night, ma eywa," you blushed when he called you "Eywa," you didn’t expect it and he knew it. He looked up to you as you smiled like a carefree child thanks to him. After seeing you smile like this, he would surely have had more than golden and serene dreams.

Your gaze fell on him again, his eyes open as he watched you as if you were his entire universe, so much love in those golden eyes that made you blush and smile. You looked at each other in silence for a few minutes, while he was mimicking you with sweet words that you could understand even without hearing his voice. "ma eywa, sweet dreams… nga yawne lu oer" The boy’s voice made all the love and adoration he felt for you, making you smile. You sent him a kiss with your hand, which he took theatrically and carried to his heart, doing the same with you before leaving. Now your back was leaning just below the window, while your hands were resting on your chest, at heart level, squeezing that flying kiss that Neteyam had left you. Neteyam had become the cure you needed after all the years you spent hiding your unhappiness from the world; small gestures like these simply brought you closer to that precipice that was love. You should have been afraid, you were a woman already mated for years, soon the rite of Tsaheylu with Tul'pey would have come, but your mind was poisoned by Neteyam. You fell asleep with a sweet smile on your face, asking Eywa to pass the night quickly so that you could see Neteyam again as soon as possible, you were already missing his sweet touch and scent.

Eywa welcomed you into the dream world and granted your wish, bringing the morning quickly. When your eyes opened, the rays of the two suns hit your face, and for the first time it didn’t even bother you. You got out of bed with a smile on your face and when your parents saw you so sunny they were strangled, they smiled at you and you needed some berries and fruits that they had gone to get from the shed. "Ma'ite, today you shine more than the suns." Your father’s voice made you smile and nod as you savored the sweet juice of the Yovo fruit. "It’s true, what delights your heart so much, ma'ite? We haven’t seen you like this for years." Your mother continued, before passing a hand through your braids and giving you a maternal smile. It was true, Ney'nari’s death had marked you in everything: the smiles were false and if they were true you noticed with how much weakness you held them in face; your character more off and calm to emulate that of your sister, totally making you another person; the way you seemed to sprinkle joy and tranquility made them think for a moment that their sweet, rebellious and old y/n was back. "It’s just a beautiful day, no big deal." You whispered with slight blush on your cheeks as you squinted under your mother’s caresses.

After breakfast, you changed your clothes and rushed out of your hut, hoping to see Neteyam soon. You arrived in front of his hut and welcomed by Tuk, who had apparently just woken up, but did not deprive you of her sweet welcoming smile. "Looking for Neteyam? he went to the village with Lo'ak a little while ago" Her sleepy voice made her even more tender, made you think if Neteyam had the same tenderness as a child. " Thank you Tuktirey" You answered her and then laid a hand on her head, slightly upsetting her braids, while she laughed softly. You thanked Tuk before going to the center of the village to look for the two brothers. You met Lo'ak right away, and he seemed quite insistent on not letting you go looking for Neteyam, not understanding why he was so ambiguous. "Lo'ak, please, let me go find Neteyam" you said gently, repeating yourself several times before abruptly departing from him, following the sound of two voices, one of which sounded vaguely like Neteyam’s. Once you got to where the voices came from, you could distinguish Neteyam’s shoulders and back, but not with whom he was speaking, even though the female voice was unequivocal. "Shit, I tried to stop her…" Lo'ak said once he reached you, spinning Neteyam and showing the figure of a beautiful and tall Na'vi, with long black braids adorned with feathers and flowers typical of the forest; Her clothes were obviously well-made, and you could tell she was of a high status other than that she was definitely a warrior. Your eyes passed from her to Neteyam, failing to understand who Na'vi was close to him.

"Who's she?" Your voice was slightly absent as you looked Neteyam in the eye, looking for sincere answers, but reading only embarrassment and fear in those golden pools. "'Teyam, w-who is she?" you repeated again, not understanding why he didn’t answer right away, and why he wasn’t reassuring you "MaTanhì… she is…" His voice was broken as he searched for words he could not find. Your heart beat in your throat as you felt Lo'ak gently take you by the wrist, as if to take you away from there. "His mate. I am Reyin'al te Sxeke Ninat'ite…" Replied proudly the woman who before was behind Neteyam and who now wrapped her hands around his arm. "… Tsakarem of the Omatikaya" The surprise crept into your gaze, your eyes widening in disbelief before the stark reality that was revealed before you. "Tsakarem of the Omatikaya…" You yanked your wrist from Lo'ak’s grip, as if to get rid of it. Your heart seemed to have stopped like your breath, your eyes that were before on the woman, now they returned to the face of Neteyam who did not have the courage to look at you.

All the happiness that was before in your body evaporated like water under the scorching sun, your eyes went out of disbelief and it hurt you that Neteyam now didn’t even look you in the eye, giving you a tacit statement to what the girl had said. You would have wanted him to say 'No, it’s a misunderstanding' or something to cheer you up, but he didn’t. You searched in vain for his gaze for endless seconds, and then you tightened your jaw and nodded at the Na'vi who answered you, and then you turned around and left as your heart fell apart. You heard footsteps behind you following you, but you didn’t turn around for a second, because you knew if the steps were Neteyam’s, you would collapse in front of him. You found yourself immersed in a whirlwind of emotions as you ran away from him, a tumultuous tornado that tore your soul apart. A wave of pain swept over you, like a fist to the chest that left you breathless. Your heart, first filled with joy, broke into a thousand pieces, leaving a deep wound burning inside you while. The feeling of emptiness warmly welcomed you, as if something essential had been ripped from you. Anger enveloped you like a burning fire, a flame that blazed in the depths of your being. The bitterness is mixed with tears running across your face, cursing you for not being strong enough to hold them. The confusion struck you, and along with it the overlapping questions in your mind, looking for an answer that can make sense of what you heard. You felt lost in a maze of conflicting emotions, unable to find a way out. Sadness envelops you, a heavy mantle that oppresses you and makes you feel deaf to the words of the boy who was following you. Your world has fallen with such speed that even your certainties were dissolved.

A warm hand but too strong to be Neteyam’s kept you from running away. Once you turned to the owner of the hand you noticed that the person who followed you was Lo'ak, and a sense of desolation covered your face. "Y/n… I tried to-" Lo'ak’s voice snapped when he noticed your shiny, slightly red eyes, immediately realizing he had no excuse. " He would have told you… he was waiting for the right moment." He said before he looked away from you, lest you feel uneasy at the tears that streaked your face without your will. You swelled your chest several times, trying to regain the gift of the word, which had been taken away from you by that storm of emotions that had exploded in you. " Isn’t it too late for that? He had plenty of time to talk to me about her." Your broken voice made an idiot hear the boy in front of you, as if anything in his brother’s defense would be in vain. "Y/n.. I understand, I tried to keep you from looking for Neteyam because of that, because I knew he wanted to talk to you first," he continued, letting go of your wrist. "If so, he would be in your place now." Your tone was sour and poisonous, to this statement of yours Lo'ak did not know how to respond without looking like a complete idiot.

He knew you were right, you were absolutely right to feel that way and to be angry. Before he snapped to follow you, the look of Neteyam watching you leave gave him the courage to do what his older brother couldn’t. He was sure Neteyam would tell you, he wasn’t a liar, you could trust him and his word, but Reyin'al’s sudden arrival had ruined all the plans. Neteyam had never loved Reyin'al, they had grown up together, known by the whole clan as the two strongest and most admirable warriors, Mo'at had paired them from an early age saying that their union would bring greatness to the Clan. Despite this, Neteyam had always seen Reyin'al more as a friend than a mate, he had grown up with the love stories of Neytiri and Jake and dreamed of meeting his soulmate like them. He had always felt too close in that relationship, so much so that he had never really tried to make it work, he wanted to try 'true love', fight to meet it and have a sweet ending like his mother’s. Neytiri had always supported his son’s dream, clashing with Jake who agreed with the decision of the elderly Tsahik, reminding him several times that she was destined for another man but still chose her partner. And Neteyam had finally figured out how his mother felt about her father when he saw you, falling in love with you day by day.

"Just yesterday he was under my window, sending me kisses and sweet words, and then…. receiving this poisoned knife. Don’t tell me you’re gonna tell me because I don’t believe a word of it." You hissed before you walked away from Lo'ak, hearing him say something remotely like "Kenten mì kumpay…" Blood was boiling in your veins for trusting him. The pain spread in you like a fire burning in your chest, a feeling of weight that oppresses your breath. Every beat of your torn heart seems to recall the bloody wound that made you lose your breath, a excruciating pain that spreads in every fiber of your being. Feeling you vulnerable as your knees found peace on the grass, near the precipice where it faced the sea.

A reluctant hand landed on your shoulder as you growled. "Lo'ak, go away." Your tone was high, it was releasing all the pain that was building up in you. "Ma Tanhì… I-" You walk away from that delicate touch as if you were struck with burning iron when you realized that voice belonged to Neteyam and not to Lo'ak.

Neteyam had found the strength to follow you and his brother only after a few minutes of derealization and shame, but when he managed to reach you you were already gone and it was Lo'ak who showed him the way to find you. His remorseful look was on your back, hoping to see your face and explain the situation. "Go.away." You spelled it with clenched teeth, giving him your back as you wiped away tears that seemed not to want to stop coming out of your eyes. He swallowed, taking a long breath to start talking. "Ma Tanhì… let me just explain, please" His voice was broken as he tried to explain himself, seeking your consent to speak. You rose from the ground and looked him in the eyes with contempt and disappointment, your shiny and slightly swollen eyes destroyed him more than your words could. You shook your hands in a fist to try to condense your anger as Neteyam’s gaze became increasingly guilty.

"Explain? What do you want to explain. You have a partner and you didn’t tell me." Your words hit her skin like arrows. "You knew about Tul'pey, and you didn’t tell me about that 'Reyin'al'." Your voice was filled with hate as you yelled at him against words that scratched his skin and soul. "I wanted to-" you stopped him with a wave of your hand, and then growled at him. " You lied. You lied and deceived me." Neteyam’s jaw twitched as he listened silently. "You made promises." You started pushing him backwards.

The tension was now palpable in the air, not the usual pleasant tension, a destructive and cramped. Your eyes burn with anger and disappointment, your hands hit hard on his chest making him back, trying to vent all his frustration and pain in one blow. Driven by the anger and wound that had crept into your heart, you struck his chest at other times, letting each blow be a cry of protest against his actions. Each punch, slap or push was accompanied by sharp words, screams of pain and growls that intertwined with your anger. But unlike Tul'pey, Neteyam accepted your desperate cry and took each blow in silence, letting you vent on his body if it would help you feel better. "I hate you. I hate you, Neteyam. I hate you with all my heart," you yelled at him in the face as you held back every tear, as your fingers sought a foothold on him, scratching his chest before pushing him again. He wanted to hug you and let you cry over him, but he understood that now your wound was still fresh and bleeding brutally.

"I want you to leave. Now. Never come back. Go away with your parents today. I don’t want to see you again." You said to then walk away from him, while your hands were still shaking from the rush of emotion that passed through your body. "Go away. Take away your promises and your partner. I put myself at risk for you…. and you ruined everything! " This time Neteyam’s hand approached you, and then was struck by your hand. "Everything I said, I really meant it. Every promise, every compliment, everything was true… She's not you. I never wanted her, I want you, ma Tanhì…" Your eyes still looked at him with disgust as your heart betrayed you by beating so hard for those words. " You lied. You’re a liar. I don’t believe you." You answered with clenched teeth, before screaming to relieve the tension. "I didn’t lie to you… please, ma Tanhì, listen to me." His voice was broken as he tried to get close to you, being rejected. He felt guilty, he promised never to make you cry again, love you and make you happy, but now he was holding in his hands the pieces of your broken heart. "Go away. I said you have to go away!" You yelled at him, his eyes lowered to the ground. He didn’t know whether to listen to your request and let you go or be deaf to your voice and insist on his position.

Neteyam took a deep breath, approaching you and taking your arms, looking you in the eye. "Ma Tanhì, listen to me and if you want I’ll leave. I never wanted to be with Reyin'al, we have been mated all our lives, without choice. I fell in love with you, just you and every aspect of you. I feel horrible, a monster, seeing that I hurt you so much, it was not my intention… I swear to Eywa" A tear twisted Neteyam’s face and laid his forehead on yours. You took a deep breath, repressing all those feelings sent from your still bleeding heart and growled at him. " I would have told you, I swear, I would have… Reyin'al came unannounced and ruined everything, believe me. Let me fix this… I-" "Do not touch me. Don’t touch me anymore." You said growling, then try to get away from his grip. "I'm begging.. Don’t reject me" he whispered in a tone of voice that died in his throat and let all his pain shine through, but also the desire to keep you close. "Go to your partner. Just go." you made sure to spell the words, then feel his hands let go and hesitate before leaving. " Go. GO AWAY!" you yelled at him again, clenching your jaw and struggling with the conflicting feelings that were being born in you.

It was clear that Neteyam wanted to continue the speech, you could read it in his face: his shiny eyes that hesitated on your hands and then your eyes, as his jaw twitched, the way his tail sent you specific signals, or the way his voice died in his throat. He accepted your request and disappeared into the forest, while you dried your tears and your hands spoke the cold ground beneath you, as if to seek some comfort. You wanted him to stay, but at the same time you wanted him to leave; to kiss you, but you wanted to hurt him, to hear his words, but you were deaf. You spent a few hours in that place, letting nature embrace and welcome you, remembering that you could ask for advice and receive comfort from your sister by making Tsaheylu with one of the voices trees that was placed just a short distance from there. You needed guidance and someone who understood your emotions, so who better than your sister to help you figure out the way to go?

[martassimsbookcc]

• .package • Base game compatible • Collection file included • • 𝔻𝕆𝕎ℕ𝕃𝕆𝔸𝔻 • Ad-free as always at my website! 🤍𝕂𝕠-𝕗𝕚 𝕥𝕚𝕡𝕤 𝕛𝕒𝕣  | ℙ𝕒𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕠𝕟🤍

【 ℂ𝕣𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕥𝕤 】 Mesh and textures: @ts4novvvas​ | Original Sims 4 post: ⚪

• Polycount, buy category, price § and more useful information ↓ •

* Barstool: 1617 verts | 2393 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous comfort | 159§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel

* Basket: 9889 verts | 10872 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 89§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Bowls: 7957 verts | 13712 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 140§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Counter: 109 verts | 57 faces >> Found under Counters | 800§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channel

* Counter End A/B: 115 verts | 61 faces >> Found under Counters | 290§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channel >>>> 16 slots for Small/Medium/Large objects

* Counter Island: 111 verts | 59 faces >> Found under Counters | 800§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channels

* Counter Island End A/B: 122 verts | 66 faces >> Found under Counters | 290§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channels >>>> 16 slots for Small/Medium/Large objects

* Cups: 3360 verts | 6020 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous comfort | 49§ >>> Recolorable - 3 channels

* Cutting Boards: 18886 verts | 10101 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 129§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Fridge: 3190 verts | 3077 faces >> Found under Large appliances | 2010§ >>> Recolorable - 3 channels * Fridge Cabinet: 96 verts | 48 faces >> Found under Cabinets | 320§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel

* Fruits: 6469 verts | 10380 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous comfort | 29§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel

* Jar: 1917 verts | 2756 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 29§ >>> Not recolorable - 13 presets

* Kitchen Utensils: 5234 verts | 7343 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous comfort | 59§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel

* Oil Jar: 5601 verts | 6162 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 9§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Palm: 23793 verts | 15470 faces >> Found under Plants | 299§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Plate: 822 verts | 1568 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous comfort | 5§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel >>>> Stackable

* Sauces: 2220 verts | 3854 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 29§ >>> Not recolorable - 4 presets

* Shelf: 24 verts | 12 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous surfaces | 25§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel >>>> 21 slots for Small/Medium/Large objects >>>>> Can be moved up/down on wall

* Sink: 1471 verts | 2380 faces >> Found under Sinks | 290§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channels

* Snake Plant: 3432 verts | 5273 faces >> Found under Plants | 120§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Spices: 1892 verts | 3212 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 39§ >>> Not recolorable - 5 presets

* Stove: 6826 verts | 6261 faces >> Found under Large appliances | 1500§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channels

* Stove Hood: 228 verts | 116 faces >> Found under Cabinets | 820§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel

* Succulent: 5438 verts | 7528 faces >> Found under Plants | 100§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Tray and Bowls: 3208 verts | 5449 faces >> Found under Miscellaneous decor | 89§ >>> Recolorable - 2 channels + 1 non recolorable preset

* Vase: 8055 verts | 9567 faces >> Found under Plants | 160§ >>> Not recolorable - 1 preset

* Wall Oven Cabinet: 904 verts | 508 faces >> Found under Cabinets | 1070§ >>> Recolorable - 1 channel

[katerina-marie]

Don't Go Slowly, Tell Me If You're Lonely (Series)

Chapter 3

Gojo Satoru x Reader & (past) Geto Suguru x Reader

Your relationship with Geto Suguru came to an end somewhere between the day of his betrayal and the day of his death. Your relationship with Gojo Satoru began somewhere in the midst of it all, even without you realizing.

WC: 6.7k

Content: Canon Divergence, Gojo x Female Reader (referred to as such but left descriptively vague), (past) Geto Suguru x Female Reader, Geto's canonical death, friends to lovers, angst, eventual happy ending, fluff later, reader is a sorcerer (left vague tho), brief and vague allusion to sex, but hardly descriptive, no use of y/n. More notes below.

Chapter Count: Chp 1, Chp 2, Chp 3, Chp 4 out of 6ish?

Notes: A bit of a lighter chapter before we (they) get into it in the next one.

-------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3: You Left Me to Be (I Am What He Made Me)

It had only taken two days from the conversation in Yaga’s office to find yourself on assignment an ocean apart from home. The world looked much brighter here, more appealing in its vastness when you realized there were parts of it never touched by Suguru. It was liberating, and you set out with intentions to place your feet in all the places he hadn’t, to breathe in air that didn’t smell like home, and to freely meander without running into faces that reminded you of times past. You ignored the persisting thought at the back of your self conscious that was unrelenting in its effort to remind you of the same plans of exploring once made with Suguru. You would squander them, bury those ideas beneath layers of wall until they withered away into dust, the tendency to ignore wholly unlike you but familiar to the person you were now.

I am what he made me. 

Acclimating to your hotel room and the city around you had taken a couple of days, but the mindless task of making your temporary dwelling feel like an iota of home was a productive way of expelling restless energy before embarking on your assignment. You replaced the standard hotel sheets with ones that swept away the heat of your body in the night, and the little pot of drying peppermint leaves in the corner of the shower filled the cubicle with scented steam when your hot showers carried on a touch longer than they normally did. A small bowl on the modest desk situated in front of your bed became overloaded with your favorite fruits, and the cabinet underneath was a refuge for the hoarded convenience store snacks you had picked up every other afternoon. 

Earlier in the day, when you spotted a familiar bag of chips with a neon logo emblazoned on the front out of the corner of your eye, you nearly whacked your head on a wire rack in your haste to pick them up off the bottom shelf of the back aisle. The bag crinkled in your trembling hand and you threw them into your basket before you could change your mind. You had to fight back tears as you passed them to the clerk scanning your items, and for the entirety of your walk back to the hotel you contemplated hurling the bag into every trash can you passed. But when you sat alone on your bed, having already spent ten minutes sobbing into your pillow perched on bent knees, you forced yourself to rip open the bag and taste a few before disgust had you tossing them aside. 

“Where did you even find these, Suguru?” You squinted your eyes in hopes of reading the tiny foreign lettering on the peculiar bag of chips in your grasp. The flavor wasn’t something you were familiar with and the smell radiating from the opening at the top of the bag didn’t incite confidence in your likelihood of enjoying them. Suguru wrinkled his nose as he caught a waft of them from his spot next to you on his bed and you heard Satoru gag from where he lay sprawled out at the foot of it. 

“At the back of some random convenience store a couple towns over.” Suguru shrugged, and you plucked a chip out of the bag with a delicate pinch of two fingers.“They’re foreign, and I hadn’t ever seen them before, so I figured it’d be something fun to try.” 

You hummed out your disbelief, conscious of the two sets of curious eyes trained on your face, and popped the inoffensive looking chip into your mouth. It took a couple bites before the bitter heat of it traveled down your throat and burned its way up your nostrils, and you were quick to spit the remainder of it out into Suguru’s outstretched hand. Your boyfriend grimaced in disgust, but didn’t say anything as he got up to dispose of the mess. 

“That’s horrible,” you croaked, coughing into the crook of your elbow, and you shot Satoru a glare when he erupted into raucous laughter. “It’s not funny!” 

“Oh, but it is! You should’ve seen your face!” Your white-haired friend rolled around the bed in his fit of amusement, displacing the dark glasses sitting on his nose, and you used your foot to shove him off the side when he inched too close. His laughter didn’t abate even from the floor, and you snagged another chip out from the bag to wiggle it in his face when he sat back up. 

“You try it then,” you taunted, victorious superiority squaring your shoulders when Satoru’s jaw snapped shut with an audible click. His throat bobbed once and you heard Suguru groan from the kitchenette at the front of his room.

“Please, don’t. You know his tolerance for spicy food is worse than most children’s.” 

You snickered, and Satoru whipped his head around to gape accusingly at his best friend. “Is not!” 

With a sock covered foot, you poked Satoru in the ribs to bring his attention back to you and then dangled a chip in front of his mouth as he glanced down at it with a face full of resigned apprehension. “Do it,” you challenged. 

Before Suguru could protest again, Satoru snatched the chip out from between your fingers and shoved it in his mouth, his lips tight with determination as he chewed and swallowed. You watched with wicked elation as his cheeks flared red, his nose scrunched, and the crystal blue of his eyes shined brighter with gathering tears. Satoru managed to hold out one more second before he descended into a coughing fit, and a pained groan that sounded like your boyfriend’s garbled name left his mouth as he folded over himself. You fell back against Suguru’s headboard, arms wrapped around your stomach as it shook with breathless laughter, all the while Satoru sat hacking and gasping in front of you. 

“Children, the both of you,” Suguru grumbled as he walked back from the kitchenette with a glass of water in one hand and a bundle of tissues in the other, but there was no mistaking the affection in his voice. 

There wasn’t anyone around this time to fetch you water when the burn of the chips made your throat raw or hand you tissues when your nose started to run. You were on your own in tending to your wounds, and what you told Satoru at the funeral only a week ago flitted across your mind. 

Grief and mourning found you alone on an assuming Tuesday, and it came in the shape of horribly spiced chips and the memory of echoing laughter. 

————————————————

Satoru called you for the first time ten days later while you sat at your desk and jotted down the report for today’s work on your assignment. Your room had been quiet, with the exception of the muffled noise from the busy street outside your window, and the sudden ringing of your phone had your hand skittering across your notebook as your pen left jagged black marks in its wake. You let out a breath of frustration and chose to use the interruption as an excuse to move from your seat for the first time in nearly an hour. Your bottom was aching, and you fell onto your bed stomach-down as you stretched your arm out to grab your phone. Seeing Satoru’s name as it flashed across the screen sent pinpricks of nervous energy throughout your body, and you hesitated for only a moment before swiping your thumb and bringing the phone to your ear. 

“There you are!” He exclaimed, not even giving you the chance to say ‘hello’ once he heard the call connect. “You leave without a word and then I don’t hear anything from you in nearly two weeks.” 

You winced at the faint hint of accusation in his voice and picked at a loose thread on the comforter as you bounced back and forth between feigning ignorance about the perceived implication or meeting it head-on to deny it with vehemence. Grief had made you tired in ways you hadn’t been before, and for once you believed in the bliss of the ignorant. Confrontation was no longer something you were eager to delve into.

I am what he made me.  

“Well,” you started innocently, “you know how things go when Principal Yaga assigns us a mission. There was just no time to waste, and before I knew it, here I was.” You were never proficient as an actor, and never had that once been so obvious as right then. 

“Mhm,” Satoru hummed, and skepticism colored every syllable of it. “And where exactly is ‘here’?” 

You told him where you were, and there was silence from his end as the recognition of the significant amount of distance between you two settled in. His attitude made you feel guilty, though you couldn’t quite put your finger on exactly what made it so if you had to. Maybe the speed of your departure from the school—with the notable absence of a goodbye for Satoru—could feel akin to running away if one squinted, but you wiped your hands of the blame when you thought back and considered that out of the two of you, Satoru had been the one to first make his grand escape from you on the day of the funeral. If you just happened to be the one to go the extra distance—literally—then that was simply besides the point. 

A drawn out sigh from over the phone caught your attention. “You’re not the only one,” Satoru said, and from his tone you were certain he was pouting. “Okkotsu left for Africa two days ago, so now it’s just me, and the underclassmen. Oh, and Nanami too.” 

A puff of laughter came out through your nose and you rolled onto your back to stare at the ceiling. “How terrible,” you muttered. 

“I know! I have to—,”

“You are not who my sympathies are for.” You were quick to interrupt him, and the petulant whine Satoru let out had you rolling your eyes good-naturedly. 

The rest of the conversation flowed similarly, with small bouts of awkward silence and stilted replies making the whole thing barely tolerable, if not a touch uncomfortable. It made you painfully aware of the fact that you and Satoru had seldom ever spoken on the phone with one another. You supposed that there hadn’t really been a need for it, with the two of you always at the school and only separated briefly when out on assignment. Maybe now that Suguru was dead, the finality of losing him was causing a change in the habits of your dynamic where things were no longer seen through the lens of ‘my best friend’s girlfriend’ and ‘my boyfriend’s best friend.’ However, if Satoru were brave enough to venture into territory not yet traveled between the both of you, then you were willing to meet him there too. Afterall, Suguru would never again be back to transverse that space should it never diminish in your combined efforts.

Time ran away with itself as conversation went on, and the shadows in your room creeped further and further as the sun set and night overtook the sky. You made it known to Satoru your desire to rest, and you had just begun to pull the phone away from your ear after his goodbye when you heard him calling your name. 

“Yes?” You asked, curious as to what he had to say.

“If you go a couple minutes out of the city, just past an old red brick building that used to be a theater, there’s a quaint little cafe sitting next to a worn down paint store. They have a dessert with your favorite fruit on top. I haven’t ever found something quite like it back home, so let me know if you think it’s as good as I remember, yeah?” 

It was the first time Satoru’s ever rendered you speechless, and it wasn’t for anything particularly outlandish, but it still stunned you nonetheless when you realized he remembered something as small as your favorite fruit. Friends you two had been, but you couldn’t say you knew his favorite type of candy or favored dinner spot. You both had a habit of indulging in sweets, but whereas you preferred a lighter, more mild dessert, Satoru was keen to find the most sugary of confections as he possibly could at any given time. 

So you smothered the smile on your face with the back of your knuckles and tried to ignore the pleasant flipping of your heart. There was someone who knew you better than you thought, who recalled the minute details of your life that took intentional time to commit to memory, and you had started to worry that the only one who cared to know such things was buried in the ground back home. 

I am what he made me.  

“Yeah, Satoru. I’ll let you know.”

 ————————————————

When you had made your way into the sleepy cafe Satoru had mentioned a couple days later, presumably visited by himself during an assignment years prior, you were greeted by a smile from a woman with graying hair and wrinkles weighing down her cheeks. The sun had just recently risen and you were hoping that this little place, with its brown-red booths and aging wood floors, would allow you to indulge in dessert before most people had even left their beds. There must have been something about the lingering tension in your shoulders or the fading purple underneath your eyes that caught the attention of the old woman you assumed owned the cafe. She hadn’t let you finish your request before she had you plopped down into a corner booth by a window overlooking the city street, and you could hear the vintage crackle of a jazz radio channel from the kitchen a few feet behind you. Coffee was poured into a ceramic mug next to you with the promise of only a few minutes wait, and you pulled out your phone to help mind the time. Your thumbs hovered over the keyboard that sprung up in the message thread between you and Satoru, ready to inform him of what you were starting your day with, but indecisiveness stilled your thoughts and your fingers. 

Since when had you ever spent so much time considering what was about to come out of your mouth? At what point did you begin to fear what the absence of your words—or even the excess of them—would or wouldn’t do to the person receiving them? Would the result have been the same either way? The destruction left in the wake of words said and unsaid had left you insecure, because such ramifications could be found under the shadow of a stone monument marking a grave. 

I am what he made me. 

The soft clattering of a plate and utensils being placed in front of you brought you out of your new propensity for overthinking, and the old woman with worn hands and a knowing smile brushed a hand over your shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen again. You stared down at your plate with wide eyes, shocked by the sizable portion of what lay before you, and in another time, another world, this would have been shared by two or three. But there was just you and someone an ocean away who was waiting for your judgment, so you snapped a quick picture of the dessert piled high with your favorite fruit and then grabbed your spoon. 

Some minutes later, when the plate was halfway cleared and your stomach was full to the point of aching, you took another picture of what remained and sent the two off to Satoru with a brief message underneath describing your marvel at his recommendation. You didn’t think twice about the unreasonable hour at which he would receive them, and figured he would come around to them in his own time. However, you had just managed to take a step out the door of the cafe after paying your bill and promising to return when your phone pinged twice. 

Satoru: I’m happy to hear it’s as good as I remember!

Satoru: Maybe next time I’ll be there to finish off your leftovers. 

The idea of it was hard to swallow and the smallest bit endearing all at once, and you chewed at your lip as you mulled over the possibility while starting the walk back to your hotel. Once upon a time, there had been someone who always promised to clear what remained on your plate, his stomach seemingly endless in its capacity to fill itself. But Suguru was here no longer, and you struggled to reconcile with the idea of someone else occupying the role you had always imagined him in. You would never call yourself solitary in nature, but when you had envisioned who would permanently take up the space next to you, the person always appeared with warm brown eyes and black hair that never lightened in the sun, leaving you to wonder if you’d always be destined to chase after him. You cursed Suguru for the emptiness he left behind. 

I am what he made me. 

————————————————

The habit of keeping in contact with one another sprouted from that one phone call and subsequent texts. As weeks went by, you and Satoru formed a comfortable rhythm of leaving each other messages and voicemails detailing each of your day-to-day activities. He’d send you pictures of new desserts he’d find when he was supposed to be working, and you would send a wall of text asking his opinion when a curse you had encountered during that day’s work had done something you’d never seen before. On occasion, Satoru would call you on a slow weekend morning when you were barely coherent enough to understand his rambling, and you would listen half-heartedly while you waited for your coffee to drip into a styrofoam cup. 

This time, he was lamenting his latest spat with Megumi, and you offered little bits of advice while you sat with your feet kicked up on your desk. You didn’t have much to say in regards to the tumultuous relationship Satoru had with his reluctant student, but whatever you did say to him would lend itself useful. Later that day, a message lit up your phone, and you couldn’t help smiling at the picture in it. Satoru’s grin was wide enough to reveal his teeth and he had his arm thrown over Megumi’s shoulder as he dragged him in close for the photo. The two must have worked out whatever tiff they had found themselves in this time, and you would say it was for the better, but Megumi’s contemptuous scowl would convince you to think otherwise. 

Overkill would lend itself to the passion involved in whatever Gojo Satoru deemed worthy of immersing himself in, but perhaps that was part of his charm. 

Unfortunately, as time had proven to you, even the most regular of routines could be disrupted in unexpected ways. Nightmares weren’t something you had been prone to beyond normal infrequence, but grief manifested in peculiar ways and when a multitude of them had cropped up on multiple nights six months into your assignment, you stopped replying to your friend for the first time. You had no idea how to explain to Satoru that seeing his name flash across your phone or hearing his voice in your ear during late night phone calls felt much like digging your finger into a new bruise. It was sore and throbbed, and you scrambled away from the pressure of it, even if you were the one inflicting it on yourself. You were grateful for Satoru’s perceptiveness because he didn’t push as he had a penchant for doing. When you didn’t respond to him for two consecutive days, he went quiet. 

You didn’t hold Satoru responsible for the rollercoastering of your emotions, nor would you lay blame on his name for the insurmountable decision he made resulting in the loss of someone significant to both of you. However, you could not scrounge up any explanation that would be palatable to him as to why his presence was suddenly too much for you when a nightmare lingered in front of your eyes all the next day. 

They took many different forms. In some, you threw yourself between Satoru and Suguru, if not to take the hit yourself then to deliver the killing blow with your own hand in another. However, the more vicious ones didn’t ever involve the day Suguru left or the night he died. In fact, they could blend in seamlessly with the memories you had of him, and you were never able to untangle to which they belonged. 

How it felt to have Suguru on top of you, the weight of him familiar and comforting and never able to be forgotten. He liked to suck marks into the skin below your collarbone and you had a tendency to pinch and scratch at the skin of his back when he moved in a way that overwhelmed your senses. Or after, when the two of you rested against each other and smoothed fingers over the bruised flesh, you would whisper plans for the future into the air you shared, tired in body but eager in mind. 

The worst one had you avoiding Satoru for weeks, unable to think of him without feeling like he was the kick to the bruises that scattered over the entirety of you.

You and Suguru sat across from each other in a worn out booth, and familiar music floated out from the kitchen behind you. The cafe was empty, save the old woman, and the remnants of sleep still clung to your unbrushed hair and wrinkled lounge clothes. Morning sun flashed through the window to your right and caught on the brown of his eyes to light them up in a way that you sorely missed. He smiled at you, unburdened and untouched by the disintegration of his mind, and you squirmed with giddy anticipation for the plate of dessert you had been waiting to show him. 

“You know sweets are more of a habit belonging to you and Satoru,” Suguru teased, flicking his finger softly against the back of your hand from where it rested on the table next to his. The two of you always spent slow moments twining and tangling your fingers together and against the other’s, and a cozy morning at breakfast was not an exception. 

“Yes,” you said back to him, your smile flirty and voice light,“but you know I would prefer to indulge with you.” 

Suguru chuckled and the look he shot you sent a shiver of anticipation down your back. You had opened your mouth to see how quickly you could make him blush, but a plate landed in between you two and the old woman had a perceptive twinkle in her eyes. 

“Glad you made it back,” she told you, “especially with someone to share your dessert with.” 

The alarm on your phone had you blinking into wakefulness, and the dream faded to its place in the realm of endless ‘what ifs.’ You yanked a pillow over your face to muffle your wailing as you despaired at the unfairness of it all. And if you never again sat foot into that sleepy cafe with the best dessert you ever had, you’d tell yourself it was to keep from overindulging, not because you were afraid to see somewhere you could imagine Suguru in so vividly, but would never get the opportunity to watch come to fruition. If tempting yourself into a periodic delusion was a new method in overcoming grief, then you’d simply have to turn the other cheek.  

I am what he made me. 

————————————————

It took another month after that dream before you could text Satoru again. You sat on the edge of your bed with your phone in hand and lip tucked between your teeth. The text was simple, nothing dramatic or emotionally heavy—a picture of a cupcake with frosting the same blue of his eyes that you found at a different restaurant—and you hoped that he would respond well to the pitiful white flag you offered him. You hit the ‘send’ button before you could delete the whole thing and threw your phone across the bed before you got up to go take a shower.

You’d admit that it was your fault for clinging so tightly to the idea of Satoru as nothing other than your boyfriend’s best friend. He had become your friend as well over time, and you wondered if you had looked at him more closely as his own person, someone worth the space he took up and the energy he brought to your life, if it wouldn’t hurt so terribly to see him without Suguru behind his shoulder. It wasn’t fair to him, not in the slightest, and if you ever wanted the chance to be able to look at him without looking for a ghost, you owed it to the both of you to remove the distinction. As you stepped into the shower and let the hot water ease your body into languidness, you intentionally took the time to think of who Satoru was without Suguru.

Gojo Satoru was your friend. Gojo Satoru was tall, and he always made sure you were aware of it. Gojo Satoru had eyes unlike you had ever seen before. His addiction was anything drenched in sugar and saccharine in taste, not unlike your favor for dessert before dinner, but contradictory in its severity. Gojo Satoru had a tendency to make you laugh in times of your distress, whereas Suguru had always offered verbal comfort first. Neither was more important than the other, just different. Gojo Satoru had high slanting cheek bones and a jaw that was more angled than curved and it made for a handsome face—,

You inhaled so deeply and abruptly that water from the spray above you forced its way down and into your lungs, and you had to hold yourself up against the shower wall from how hard you began to cough. You fumbled your arm out to find the knob that turned the shower off, and when you had regained just enough breath you grabbed your towel from over the glass wall and wrapped it around yourself. 

Satoru being handsome wasn’t untrue in its objectivity, and you remember thinking such the first time you met him, but the attractiveness of his appearance wasn’t something you had thought much of past that point. And now, when the idea of it jarred you so suddenly that you nearly drowned in your shower, you couldn’t quite get rid of how it lingered at the back of your mind. However, you saw no sense in dwelling on it, as it couldn’t possibly be pertinent information that your brain had just supplied you with, and made your way out of the bathroom to get dressed. The sight of your phone lighting up with Satoru’s name stopped you dead in your tracks and you swore out loud when you remembered why you had sought solace in the bathroom in the first place. The possibility of not knowing how Satoru would respond to your message was worse than whatever reply he could send back, so you picked up your phone to read what he said.  

Satoru: I love that you think of me while you’re out in the wild. 

You snorted, and the sense of urgently forthcoming dread vanished. 

You: Let’s not lie to ourselves, shall we?

————————————————

When December 24th flashed at you from the screen of your phone on the morning of the first anniversary of Suguru’s death, you were resolute in your decision to accept the magnitude of the day, but forbade it from swallowing your personhood whole.

I am not entirely what he made me. 

So, you spent the morning braving the winter weather to gather the meager supplies you could to prepare a holiday feast in the miniature version of a kitchen back in your hotel room. You grabbed a fancy looking bottle of wine from a glass cabinet in the grocery store and popped into a little bakery that caught your eye on the way home. You cooked and sang merrily to the music coming from your phone, all the while cursing the single-pot burner on your poor excuse of a kitchen counter when the water you had been waiting for to boil suddenly burst over the rim in a loud hiss of steam. Luck would have it that no other cooking mishaps occurred after that, and you were able to tuck into your attempt at a feast with a glass of wine in hand just in time for the sun to begin setting. 

The first couple bites took some effort to swallow as your mind wandered back to what was going on just a year ago, a time that felt so confusedly distant but vivid all at once, and you could at least acknowledge how Suguru’s death had indisputably changed the trajectory of your life. Some ways were more obvious to you as you sat alone on Christmas Eve in a country far from home, but the others unknown to you had you contemplating what could be next when you ultimately had the bravery to pursue them. 

And then your phone rang, always disturbing what little peace you had left, and you weren’t surprised this time when you saw Satoru’s name. He answered with his usual exaggerated enthusiasm and for once it made you smile. Hearing him chatter away in your ear, you pushed away from where you sat at your desk, wine still in hand, and situated yourself against the pillows on your bed to listen to him recount the events of whatever holiday gathering he had subjected Nanami and the students to. You laughed where appropriate, and chastised him when necessary, and you forgot all about the meal you had painstakingly worked on all day. You refilled your wine glass once and then again as the two of you went back and forth in easy conversation, and it wasn’t until your eyes started to grow heavy that you let it slip from your mouth. 

“I miss him,” you whispered, interrupting Satoru in the middle of whatever tale he was recounting about his latest mission. He went quiet, and you instantly regretted bringing up what had been lingering at the edge of your minds this whole time. 

Satoru finally responded before you could spiral into panic. “I miss him too.” 

Hearing the same despondency in his voice that you were feeling slither into your chest helped ease the sting of tears in your eyes, and you were proud when you only had to wipe away one or two from your cheeks instead of descending into a blubbering mess. In an effort to continue, you cleared your throat and probed Satoru with another question about his mission, thankful when he threw himself right back into the story with the same level of theatrics from before you interrupted him. And if you closed your eyes to listen to him in an attempt to feel like he was right next to you instead of an ocean away…well, you wouldn’t probably remember doing so in the morning. 

When you did wake up, hours later and your room still blue in the early twilight, your phone was next to your ear from where it had slipped out of your hand once you had drifted off to sleep. The call wasn’t still connected, but there was an awaiting message from Satoru along with a low battery percentage warning. 

Satoru: You know you snore when you sleep?

The text had you sitting up in a hurry. You didn’t feel the need to confirm or deny that fact, not when you already knew whether you were affected by that particular habit (Suguru had long ago told you) and you simply responded with a snarky reply and a well wish for his day before getting up to tidy last night’s mess of food and pots and pans. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon when you took your phone from the charger to call Shoko and wish her a happy holiday that you caught a glimpse of the previous day’s call history. To your utter bewilderment, the call log indicated that Satoru stayed on the phone at least an hour more after you last recalled checking the time before you fell asleep. And if he hadn’t  succumbed to sleep himself and instead listened to the quiet or whatever there was on your end of the line, then there was suddenly one more person in the world who knew something about you that only Suguru previously had been privy to.

————————————————

A week later, nearly an exact year from your departure on assignment, Gojo Satoru called you in the middle of the night to beckon you home. 

“Do you have any idea of what time it is here?” You hissed, dazed in a way that could only come from being abruptly woken from deep sleep, and you just barely propped yourself up in bed on your elbows. 

“Absolutely,” he chirped, sounding none at all ashamed, “but that’s not really important right now. I—,” 

“I would beg to differ, Satoru.” 

“ As I was saying,” he continued, enunciation heavy on that first word, “I wanted to know if you could be on the first flight home in the morning?” 

You blinked a couple times, truly aghast at the nerve he had. “I’m going to hang up.” 

“Wait! I need your help!”

The urgency in his voice, however faint, had you sitting up in bed and partially more inclined to stay on the phone. “What happened?” You asked cautiously. 

There was a tired sigh from Satoru’s end of the phone. “I have a new student. Good kid, but he swallowed a cursed object and—,”

“Oh, god,” you groaned, throwing your head back against your pillows and slapping a hand over your eyes before it slid down your face, “not another one.”

Satoru was silent and you were just as stunned at the outburst that left your mouth. For as talented as Suguru was, you never quite got over the disturbing fact that he ate curses. Even thinking about it now made your skin crawl, and you were not keen on having to watch it happen again. 

Before you could offer some mumbled apology—for what, you weren’t even sure—Satoru erupted into loud, full-bellied laughter, and the sound of it proved to be gloriously infectious. In seconds you were laughing alongside him, and the simple joy of it made a pleasant tingle in your stomach. 

“I swear,” Satoru gasped, breathless sounding in the best of ways, “it’s not like that. Or not exactly anyways. There’s plenty to explain, but I could really use your help. There’s a lot going on and I’d hate to admit I might be in over my head.” 

The idea of never returning home hadn’t ever crossed your mind, even in the worst of your grief, but you hadn’t quite yet planned out when you intended to come back to Jujutsu High. You figured time would have decided for you in some sort or fashion, and you couldn’t ignore the inkling in your gut that maybe this was it. 

“I’d need a couple days to wrap things up here, Satoru…but yeah, I think it’s time I come home.” You felt more optimistic about the idea by the time it left your mouth, and it certainly didn’t hurt when the strongest sorcerer let out an ecstatic ‘whoop’ on the other end of the phone.  

With a promise to call him back at a more appropriate hour, you bid your friend goodbye and nestled deeper into the cocoon of your blankets to catch a couple more hours of sleep. The prospect of returning back home had you wiggling in excitement, and it occurred to your sleep-addled brain that it wasn’t the yearning for a familiar bed or your favorite home cooked meal that drove your desire to go back. Instead, in something you were scarcely ready to admit but unable to deny, the allure of home took form in delightfully rich laughter and a pair of pretty blue eyes.

————————————————

Satoru didn’t need to be here. There were trains that would get you back to the school in only half an hour, and if you didn’t want to have to participate in the publicness of it all, a taxi would do the job at minimal cost. So no, Satoru didn’t need to be standing outside the entrance of the airport as he waited for your flight to deplane, but he had wanted to, and that had been enough motivation for him to deal with the hecticness of evening traffic and pay for overpriced parking just so he could transport you and your luggage home. 

He hadn’t necessarily told you that he had planned to be present when you took your first steps back onto home soil, and you didn’t indicate that you expected him to be there to assist in any way. In fact, Satoru was mildly concerned that you wouldn’t exactly be pleased that he would be the first familiar face you see upon walking out of the airport, and the possibility of that happening nearly had him turning around to flee back home. But he was nothing if not impractical in his persistence and he rooted his feet to the ground until he could gain sense of you. It was a long held habit that he started with Suguru, always being aware of his best friend’s presence even if he wasn’t consciously seeking it out, and that range had extended to you at some point in your relationship with him. So now, even when there was face after face that passed by him in whirls of conversation and scuffling feet, he could feel the exact moment your foot touched down outside the terminal and began to close the distance between you and him. 

In an effort to stand out in the midst of the crowd, Satoru straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin just slightly above being level with the ground to ensure he was the first thing you noticed when you stepped out past the doors. He could feel the steadiness of your heart beating and heard the bumping of the wheels on your luggage as you pulled it behind you. Each step closer was a shot of adrenaline straight to his veins and he could feel the anticipation swell in his chest. With a burst of other people, he watched as you pushed past the exit doors, eyes sweeping across the pavement in front of you until they caught on his own (he had intentionally left this black eye band in the car). 

Satoru swore he wasn’t being dramatic when time seemed to slow ever-so-slightly. He saw your gaze widen in the same moment a deep breath lifted and expanded your chest, and the expression of surprise coloring your face might have been a touch overwhelmed. He took a step towards you and lifted a hand to wave only to be stopped when he saw your mouth begin to stretch into a shy smile. You bit at the corner of your lip as if to try and hide it, but the white of your teeth flashed and your eyes were bright with excitement, and the way you bounced lightly on the tips of your toes to wave at him had a jolt of energy traveling from the hair on his head to the bottoms of his feet. 

When Satoru’s heart leapt in his chest at the sight of you, stunning as you always had been and enticing in ways he hadn’t allowed you to be to him before, he had a startling realization that the feelings he was experiencing weren’t to be labeled under the guise of a reunited friendship, but instead something exhilarating and terrifyingly new. 

And oh, he was in so much trouble.  

————————————————

The calm before the storm, so to speak. I'm very excited to write the next chapter, so let's hope it delivers!

Brief ramblings from myself: I've intentionally written this fic to have the time gaps/skips it does mostly because a.) I was worried about the tedious repetetiveness of trying to include slower moving parts into a longer, more drawn out story and b.) there's supposed to be a sense of development going on between the lines/scenes. I've tried to hint at that and what it looks like, but not sure if I'm succeeding. Moral of such ramblings: writing is hard for me, and I am very grateful for anyone who is reading this <3

Taglist: @paprikaquinn & @kafanizdakicokiyi