#he spends the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling utterly destroyed

[comfortless]

What dungeoneer!König wants vs what he gets:

SO TRUE. he just wants a pretty lady that can sew and cook, willing to put up with his nonsense without hissing at him at every turn!! knight!gf simply lives to bully him (she gets good sword practice that way) <3

At some point, he does ask her about her strange demeanor: “Why do you pretend?”

It’s said in a hushed whisper while they’re both fitted beneath a thin sheet at some weatherworn inn along their route, cozy and safe as every night since she took to sleeping at his side like a contented little kitten. He can’t help but want to poke at her when she’s so soft and weary (and her sword is on the far side of the room).

Not that he dislikes her with the sharp edges of her armor, the jostling of her chainmail and her expert swordswomanship— he just can not comprehend why a lady as lovely as she is would want to explore dark crypts full of monsters and bully him into dueling with her! She should be in fields of flowers, caressed by the wind, laughing soft into the mouth of her lover while he strips her of her gown…

She’s already toyed with the idea of courting him as a man would, stuffing flowers in the cuff links of his tunic and kneeling before him as if to offer her loyalty, her blade. It’s always when she finds herself keen on the idea of potentially taking him as her own that he finds a way to ruin the moment with blunt words or a too-eager hand.

“What do you mean?” She drags the words, sleep addled and dumbed down by a pint of mead from the tavern below.

“That you’re…” He pauses.

König isn’t stupid, he knows he’s jabbing at the dragon’s mouth, daring it to breathe fire the second he asks his lady knight things like this. She is what she is, and he’s given up on the hope of ever changing whichever tangled bowstring in her mind is making her this way. Though he would prefer her to be like the soft women he’s seen wearing silken bliauts, eyes shimmering as they shyly avert their gazes from him… She is something else entirely and that both fascinated and unnerves him.

“… not fragile,” he finishes, turning on his side to face her properly.

His little knight pinches her brow at that, throws the covering off of them both and rises to her knees to climb over him. She means to be intimidating, surely, but he can’t help the way his cock twitches in his pants at the sight of her downcast glare and the feel of her fingernails biting into the skin of his bare shoulders, actually thinking that her delicate form is enough to properly keep him pinned.

“I saved your life.” Ever since the gnoll, she’s been using it as leverage, punctuating her words by tracing over the scar with a light stroke of her thumb.

“Ja, but… do you not want to be more…”

“Ladylike?”

If she were, they would already have settled someplace softer; a roof above their heads where he sacrifices every shift of the sun feeding her from his palm and bringing home gifts that make her eyes shimmery and her heart fill to bursting. Every hour of the night squishing her beneath him and bringing her to beautiful ruin.

The concept only further confuses her when König nods his head, a trace of honeysuckle wafting up from his throat where she had pressed them into the collar of his shirt only earlier that day. It eases her, makes her less annoyed when she remembers that this brute is entirely hers, equally devoted even if he is more keen on fucking her in a dress than in the armor she covets.

She tells him a story when she finally retreats to her side of the thin, straw-stuffed mattress. It’s one he’s heard countless times in his own youth, of a knight she seemed to believe a hero. When she finishes, expecting some protest from him about how little girls should have never heard such tales, she’s only met with a silence that further bewilders her.

His stare is less perplexed and more loving, now. So much so, that she isn’t surprised when he pulls her closer with a gentle grasp to her forearm and rests his chin over her shoulder.

“You want to be a little hero then, hm?,” he whispers into her ear, a prideful smirk plastered across his face when he feels her shiver.

“Aren’t I already?” No matter how much cold steel she coats herself in, it could never smother out the gentleness of her laugh, and when she does giggle, he bites his lower lip hard enough to draw blood to keep the urge to squish her tits and toy with her at bay.

“Knights don’t find themselves in bed with beasts,” he rasps, daring to inch his hand further down to her hip.

“You believe that a lady would be more keen to?”

“A lady would want the beast to fuck her, ja?”

Poor König finds himself entirely blueballed once more when she squirms away from him, shooting a glare as cold as a winter storm in his direction before facing away with the blanket pulled taut over the both of them.

She’s only grateful that he can’t hear the beating of her heart or catch sight of the giddy little smile pulling at her lips. It’s not his stature or his prowess in battle that’s caged him up in her heart, only the way he makes her feel as though she truly is apart of some fairytale.

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Broken trust, pt.5

Part one // Part two // Part three // Part four  

Summary: Meeting at the fold, Aleksander has a choice to make and this time, his anger threatens his control.

Warnings: angst (my apologies), fluff sprinkled on top, indicating smut

a/n - This one is the last one before the finale, I’m sure this time.

========================

Darkness stood before her, utterly filled with terrors spoken of in every tale in Ravka. Y/N stared at the fold from a distance, remembering the first time she had seen it. 

It unnerved her in the past, the unknown playing with her imagination to fashion something much worse than reality. She was no fool, Y/N understood the gravity of what she wanted to execute. This fold had taken countless lives since its creation – her parents as well. 

Exhaling loudly, she placed a hand over her chest as she closed her eyes. Whatever possessed Aleksander to create the fold couldn’t excuse the lives lost or the orphaned children who grew up the same way she did.

“Are you sure?” Mal’s voice is heavy, nearly pleading for her to give up her plan. She glances at him, not with uncertainty but with unwavering determination.

“I have to do this. You know this.”

Reaching for her hand, Mal’s fingers slip across her open palm, intertwining with her own. “It’s not too late to change your mind. This burden doesn’t have to be yours.”

A heavy sigh passes her lips, but it does nothing to relieve the true weight inside her chest. “I will never be free of it if we leave now.”

“Of him, you mean?” Mal frowns, his lips pressing in a thin line she wished she could turn into a smile. “You’ll never be free of him.”

“You could have been on that ship”, she reminds him, gently stroking his cheek. “If I wasn’t in that tent and I didn’t meet him, you’d have been on that ship with no survivors.”

Looking up at the sky, he sighs, “It would be better.” His eyes meet the surprise in hers, “I wouldn’t be sending you off into the darkness without any control over what will happen.”

“I’ll come back”, Y/N musses. “I always do”, she smiles softly, sniffling.

“You better!”

Slapping Mal’s arm, Y/N frowns, “I’m kind of insulted how little faith you have in me!”

Fingers running down her spine had caused shivers run throughout Y/N’s body. She chuckles, hiding her face in the crook of Aleksander’s neck.

“Don’t hide from me”, Aleksander complains. Trying to untangle himself in order to take control once more, his throaty chuckle furthers her need to cling to him.

Her arms wrap around him, pulling him closer as if he’s the air she needs to breathe. “I used to daydream about us.” Her small voice freezes him, his lips twitching with her confession.

“In what manner?”

Rolling to her side, Y/N glances at him only to shake her head. “It’s silly.”

Cupping her cheek, Aleksander leans in, close enough for their noses to touch. “Tell me.”

“I imagined how it would feel like to wake up and see your hair disheveled or how your lips would feel against mine”, her eyes flicker to his lips, causing her to lick her own. “Just about how I’d fall so hopelessly in love with you.”

“So you’re in love with me”, Aleksander raises an eyebrow, teasing her.

Wide eyed, Y/N blushed deeply with his heavy gaze upon her. He never blinks, never stammers or stumbles – Aleksander is a work of art and she couldn’t believe she blurted her feelings out  for such perfection in a foolish daydream ramble.

“I wanted to tell you I love you without making a fool of myself, but that didn’t work”, she huffs, turning on her back. Staring at the ceiling, she wished she could hide now. A man as serious as Aleksander must find her so immature after her display of childish behavior, but she couldn’t face him.

Instead, he propped himself up on his elbow, his face obscuring her view of the ceiling. “I find it adorable”, he whispers almost wistfully and Y/N couldn’t understand why. 

What is he longing for when she’s right there, under him? She didn’t miss the lack of a love proclamation on his behalf, but she could wait a while longer to hear him say it. After all, she’s the one he’s meant to be with.

“So you won’t run for the hills, screaming?” She kinked her eyebrows, beaming at his silent determination.

“Takes far more to frighten me, Sunshine. I’ll always be there for you.” He leans in, pecking her forehead. “For you”, he adds as his body presses her into the mattress. Staring intently in her eyes, his knee pushed her thighs apart. Resting his forehead on hers, Aleksander’s hand moved up her forearm until his fingers intertwined with hers, holding her hand tightly in his as he pushed inside her.

A moan escapes her, eyes closing as he whispers into her parted lips, “And inside you.”

Aleksander never wanted to leave his Sunshine. He wanted to spend the rest of eternity with her unraveling under him each and every night. He still loves her more than anyone else could. All he could think about is how it might need an eternity for him to make things right with her, because in time he believed she’ll see reason and understand he’s right.

But she fell in love with him as he is, temper and wicked plans and horrible notions of what love is. She knew that about him before she ever learned of who he is. She looked past everything he had done, Aleksander couldn’t figure out what’s so different about this.

“General”, Ivan stops at the entrance of his tent, out of breath. “Someone is spotted at the outskirts of the fold. The men believe they mean to enter the darkness on their own.”

Standing, Aleksander straightens his back. His eyes narrow and his jaw unclenches long enough for him to speak, “Who is it?”

“A woman and a man”, Ivan responds, swallowing thickly as he takes note of the general’s flared nostrils.

Forming fists, Aleksander lifts his chin. Despite the end of their relationship, Aleksander didn’t forget Y/N’s promise. He knew she’s brave, far braver than any Grisha he’d ever met. Aside from him, that is. 

His Sunshine had a persisting quality about her, one he used to appreciate before. She would defy the devil himself if he stood in her way and it used to bring a smile to Aleksander’s lips. This time around, he and the fold are her devil.

“STOP THEM”, he orders. “She had never been in the fold before!”

His booming voice surprised even him, but it terrified Ivan who nodded and ran out as if he would cut him in half right then and there. To make matters worse, Aleksander wasn’t sure he wouldn’t.

Looking at his hands, he could have sworn he caught a tremble in a usually steady right hand. “What are you planning, Y/N?”

Fingers grazing Y/N’s, Aleksander felt a tingle run up his arm and to his heart. He always felt like shadows clouded any chance for happiness. Somehow, through it all, he saw where the shadow ends and there she stood. He trusted in her light, the one he could see even when she didn’t conjure it to the surface. She was Sunshine incarnated, his saving grace.

“I’ll never be strong enough”, she croaks, turning away from Aleksander.

With a frown etched on her forehead, Y/N swallowed thickly. She didn’t expect Aleksander to slide a finger under her chin, tipping her face up to his. He smiles, the gesture lighting up his eyes, enough to lock her breath in her throat.

She wondered how many were as lucky as she is to see those dark skies hang stars to lead them out of a storm.

She hoped none did. Selfishly, she hoped to be the only one who knows how gentle, how kind the Darkling can be.

“You make me proud, you know that?” His words are honey, his lips set in a genuine grin as he brushes his nose against hers. “You are the strongest person I know.”

Biting her lower lip, she looks into his eyes briefly, but long enough to know he won’t judge her. 

“Could you hold my hand?” 

He had all the understanding she sought in his dark hues, a tenderness she always prayed to find in someone. There was no doubt in her mind she could trust Aleksander.

As his hand embraces her smaller one, she can’t help but look up at him with a look he wasn’t used to.

She looked at him with hope, with expectations of something he wasn’t sure he’d be able to rise to, but he was determined to try.

“Can you tell me more about you?” It felt vastly important to see the change in every line of his handsome face as he remembered the past and she didn’t want to miss a single word, expression or look he could bestow upon her. He felt more important to her than anyone and this wasn’t just a story, it was his story.

If he were honest with her then, Y/N knew she’d have forgiven him. There was no shadow of doubt about it as she stared at the fold mere inches before her. She could see what true darkness is and she never saw it in Aleksander. That’s when the guilt appears, taunting her. If she stayed with him, could she have managed to change his mind about it all without ever spending a day without him? She still missed him far too much, more than she should.

“Stop!”

Looking over her shoulder, she flashes an uncertain smile that disappears just as quickly it came to be, fading to give way for her tear-filled eyes to glisten like stars in the moonlight. She should be angry, she should be running away from him, yet the sight of Aleksander riding toward her only rooted her.

“You can’t stop me”, she remarked, her eyes brimming with tears as he frowned, his forehead forming a few worry lines she’d normally tease him about because their age difference is so vast despite him looking so young, but she reveled in knowing he actually cares enough to worry about her. 

Unless it wasn’t worry for her, rather the fold.

“You can’t possibly do this, Y/N! Even if I wanted to help you destroy the fold, I’d never send you in so soon with so few preparations!” He smiles, but the gesture is empty, it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’ll fail.”

"If you really thought I couldn't do this, you wouldn't be trying so hard to stop me", she snapped, "to distract me!"

For one instant, she feared she’d gone too far. There was something, a flash in his eyes, an expression that flitted over his face that locked her breath in her throat. But then he relaxed, not completely, but much of his frightening tension - battle-ready tension - seemed to flow out of him.

"I'm trying to stop you because you're going to kill yourself trying", he replied. "You begged me to let you go and I did, but look at you now.” His frown deepens, “You’re standing at the edge of certain doom and you have no one to guide you."

“So guide me!” Lifting her chin, she struggled to draw breath and forced herself to shrug as she looked away. “You said you'd always be there for me, with me”, she pauses as she remembers he also promised to be inside her. And he was right, he’s inside her, just not in a pleasurable way. He courses through her veins like a disease, an infection she can’t eradicate. ”So how did this happen? Why weren't you here?”

She wanted him to say something – anything. She wanted him to fight for her, to say he couldn’t imagine life without her and to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness which she’d give…even after everything, she’d give him the forgiveness and love he seeks.

The way her tears fell had grabbed onto his heart and squeezed it tight, those drops of salt filled with emotion had reached him too, tearing through him unforgivably.

“If you go in there, I’ll have no choice but to hurt you.” His voice is shaky, his resolution weaker than the words he’s using. “Don’t put me in this position.”

“So you really think I can’t read you? That I don’t know when you’re lying to me?” A meek smile appears on her dry lips, “Didn’t you promise me you’d never lie to me again? Never to hurt me?”

“Y/N”, Aleksander raises his voice as a warning, yet her smile refuses to falter as her eyes hold his gaze captive.

Her lips part, her mind screaming with every step she takes backwards toward the fold, yet she never felt more at peace. She didn’t know what is stronger – her need to run and save her heart from heartbreak by staying in his arms forever, or her determination to destroy the fold. Yet with every step, she’s more convinced that both those needs are one of the same.

“Don’t”, he holds out his hand once she turns away from him, a step away from the fold he created.

Looking over her shoulder, she knew there was no choice at all. The need to save herself from heartbreak and the need to destroy the fold both require her to save Aleksander from himself.

Pushing his hair back, he dismounted, taking a few steps closer to her. 

“Come on, love. Draw your invisible swords. Stop me”, she challenged, seeing the anger she evoked once his shadows began pouring from around him. 

He ignored her words as he advanced, his dark eyes growing darker. He bent over her, took her defiant chin in his hand. She tried to pull away but he held her fast. He kissed her, roughly at first but then his grip and kiss became gentle, deep – a proper lover’s kiss.

Y/N felt herself drifting. The pleasure of his hand on her cheek, his kiss, it weakened her resolve. He pulled away from her and looked deep into her eyes, the warm and glowing fire behind them setting his own light ablaze. All thoughts of hatred were gone from them, yet his darkness surrounded them slowly.

Narrowing her eyes, Y/N stumbles back. “No. No”; she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, her lips quivering. “You can’t just kiss me and make it alright.”

“You’re my weakness”, Aleksander admits, “the one thing I lack power against. Whether it’s loving you when you’re near and driving me absolutely mad or feeding your memory after you were gone. Letting you go was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.” He narrows his eyes at her with a simmering anger burning in them, “It’s just not in me to do nothing and let you slip away again.”

Scoffing, Y/N stands her ground, “We could have made it work. If you loved me, you'd have fought for me. You'd have listened to me and abandoned the foolish notion of power you seek. But you didn't, which means I loved you more than you loved me.” 

"I FOUGHT FOR YOU! You didn't let me win. What was I supposed to do, huh? Force your hand and drag you to Little palace by the hair?” Gripping her arm, Aleksander pulled her closer, her hand resting on his chest with her palm open toward his heart. She’s not a heartrender, but her touch does possess the ability to make his heart explode. 

“Should I have taken you by the throat until you submitted?” He speaks lowly, his voice darker than she had ever heard it before. “Did you expect I'd want to see your hatred for me every single day if I made you stay? Tell me, WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!"

Swallowing thickly, she was rendered speechless. She didn’t know what to say without provoking him further. A part of her wondered if she should fear him, if he would kill her if it came to it.

“I fucking need you more than I need to breathe.” He says through gritted teeth only to release her from his bruising grip. If she was anyone else, she’d be a corpse by now. He knew it, but so did his people. Soon enough, they’ll lose respect for him. People will stop fearing him if he keeps allowing her to defy him.

"You make them all think you're a heartless murderer, but you're not. I know you're better than that." Her voice is raspy and devastatingly painful. Y/N takes a few steps back, her eyes no longer holding back tears as they spill down her cheeks.

His heart is desperately flailing inside his chest as her grief overcomes her features and he can’t touch her again, he can’t make it go away. Time and time again, he’s the cause instead of being her cure.  

In her pain she sees him as the bad guy, yet in truth he’s drowning in a sea of uncried tears too. 

When you hurt a woman you love, most of them can’t even look at you, not even turn to you. But what does a man do when the woman he hurt, the woman he loves most in the world, stares right into his soul as he shatters her completely?

What can a man do when her teary eyes hold his with such bravery, such complexity as she crumbles and he has to bear witness? When he’s the perpetrator and sole witness of her fears and sorrow?

There isn’t a single thing in this world that breaks like a heart does, Aleksander knew that now for in this silent exchange between their souls, the silence has never been so deafening.

"But I am a murderer." His jaw clenches as he raises his chin, “If you take another step, I will prove it to you.”

Eyes narrowing, Y/N nods to herself. Averting her gaze, she pursed her lips before turning around so quickly Aleksander didn’t have time to react.

She held her breath once she entered the fold, moving left on instinct.

Covering her mouth, she looks up at the thundering clouds that seem to be the only light in the fold. Merely seconds after she moved, a knife like substance crossed into the fold, slicing the air where she once stood and a gasp escaped her.

She looks back, finding no trace of Aleksander, but she wasn’t a fool – that was meant to be his gift to her for defying him.

Swallowing thickly, she shakes her head at the devastating thought. Is he past saving? Would he truly kill her?

Part 6/finale

[kikilefangirl]

Phantom Love

Erik Lenhsherr x Reader 

(Word Count: 1.6k)

The knock on your apartment door was frantic and jarring.

You remained perched on your window sill, staring out at the busy street. You inhaled, taking a hit from your blunt. There was a light drizzle outside, and you could feel its pull on you and you pushed back. 

You made the water bend to your will, twisting and turning droplets as they fell. Never anything attention grabbing, but just enough to pass the time. As you exhaled, you pulled your knees up to your chest, and rested your head on them. 

Whoever was out there wasn’t invited, and you weren’t keen on visitors at the moment. 

Y/N, you know we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t serious.

You perked up at the familiar voice in your head. You sighed at the trouble Charles Xavier would bring to your door. He was interrupting your carefully crafted solitude for his shit.

“Fuck off, Charles!” You shouted. Smoke escaped your lips and up into the air, slowly dissipating into nothing. Your eyes followed its path, staring up at your ceiling.  

Charles knocked again. 

“Y/N! It’s Erik!” He called out. You clicked your tongue.

Of course it was. It was always Erik. Blunt in hand, you stalked over to the door. You stared at it with all the rage and scrutiny you had in you, then haphazardly swung it open. 

One hand sat on your waist as you lifted your blunt to your mouth again. Charles and Hank were waiting for you in the hallway. You let the smoke blow in their faces.

The two men coughed and sputtered as you headed deeper into your apartment without ceremony. 

“Y/N. He’s taken a turn.” Hank said. You snuffed out your blunt in the ashtray. 

Running a hand along the walls, you let the cool surface calm your growing anger.  You could feel the water rushing through the pipes. From there, you were connected to the complex plumbing network that made up the whole block. And the rain, too. 

“I could’ve told you he was crazy as hell the day I met him.” You scoffed. You took your hand away from the wall and sat back in your chair.

Charles frowned at your callousness as he stood in the middle of your living room. All around him, your plants and art were splayed across the room, a calming ecosystem in the midst of his panicking. 

“He’s joined up with someone dangerous. He’ll get himself and everyone else killed.” Charles persisted, “Let me show you.” 

Your leg bounced and you rolled your tongue under your bottom lip. Something in your old friend’s face gave you pause. 

“Fine.” You finally relented. You dropped your shoulders and let Charles place two fingers on your temple.

Images flashed through your mind, rapid fire. And it was worse than you could have imagined. It was Erik, well past his breaking point. His face was red and blotchy, his hair was unkempt, and his powers were in full force. The worst was watching how utterly and completely destroyed he looked. It was bottomless. 

You now understand why we need your help, Y/N.

You couldn’t find the words just yet, opting for a small comfort instead. Strategically hidden in the floorboard, you pulled out a velvet box. In it, was a simple diamond ring set in a platinum band.

“What did he get into, Charles?” You asked, almost absentmindedly. The ring was on a chain, sitting in your palm. It stared back at you, laughing at the phantom love you and Erik had. You met Charles’ gaze, final and resolute.

Your expression darkened. On the right side of you, the glass vase filled with fresh calla lilies shattered into a million pieces. Water sprayed everywhere, dowsing Charles and Hank the most. 

The sound sent you tumbling back into the moment— and you lifted your hand in the air. Water rose up from your apartment floor and your visitors’ wet clothes, gradually growing into a ball of water. You twisted your hand, burning the liquid off in mid-air.

“Thank you.”  Hank offered, albeit stiffly. Charles just nodded—he’d seen the full scope of your abilities before. He knew what you were capable of and that was probably the only reason he was really there. 

“A mutant called Apocalypse is planning something, and Erik is playing quite the role in whatever that is.” Charles spoke at last. Your eyes cut back down to the ring, twirling it between your fingers. You swallowed hard.

“He made this ring for me himself. Asked me to marry him with it,” you started, feeling the special groves and roughness of the ring, “I love him more than anything, and I still walked.  But I’ll be damned if I spend the rest of my life picking up after him just ‘cause I love him.”

You couldn’t bite back the bitterness or the love. It was all there, all the time. You found over the years that your relationship with Erik teetered from one to the other, and you went with it every time. 

“Y/N, we need your help.” Charles begged you. You put the ring back in its place. The box snapped shut. You stared blankly at it, then up at Charles and Hank. 

“No.” 

Your voice was barely audible and it was more felt than heard. You couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Not to Erik. 

“I didn’t know all of...please, Charles, just leave.” You were shaking, uncontrollably now. The pipes roared loudly behind you.

Hank protested, and Charles said nothing at all. You could feel his steady anger pulse throughout the room. You sparked your blunt again, trying to get a light to no avail. You were grateful when it finally gave. 

“I’ve shown you everything and you still refuse to act against him.” Charles spat out. The venom in his tone was harsh and unexpected. 

“You’ve been warned, and whatever happens you and I know you could’ve stopped it.” He continued. 

Charles gave you too much credit; he had too much faith that you could change anything. You headed back to your window sill, and turned your back to them. You heard the shuffle of feet and a door slam and then nothing. 

You took another hit, hoping to be nothing, too. 

                                                         …

That night, it rained harder than it had in weeks. Partly nature, partly you. 

“I know they were here.” 

You couldn’t look back at him to retort. It was true, and it was your apartment to begin with. Your anger surprised you, making you turn on him faster than either of you expected. You pulled a wall of water straight through the window. The glass shattered and some minor cuts appeared on your shoulder, but it didn’t matter. 

You caught Erik off guard and had him pinned to the wall. He squirmed under your grip, but he could only do so much. The water reached past his neck, successfully keeping him where he was. 

“If you decide to burn the world down, the only thing I’m doing is getting the hell out the way.” 

The words stung coming out of your mouth, probably as much as they stung hearing them. The two of you were doing that thing you did when you broke each other’s hearts again. 

You slung your bag over your shoulder. It was all you were taking with you. 

“You would leave me, again.” Erik pleaded. You stopped dead in your tracks. Mesmerized, you could feel the blood pumping through his veins. Tentatively, you pressed your forehead in the crook of his neck. You pressed your lips onto his, and he craned his neck as best he could to kiss you back. He tried to put every ounce of desire he had for you in that kiss, and you did too. 

Pulling away from Erik was hard to do, but you closed your eyes and did it anyway. 

“When Charles Xavier shows up to my house and I have no defense, no words to give him about you. I sat up here looking like a goddamn fool and you let me.” Your gravelly voice was weak at best.

Erik couldn’t muster a reply worth shit, so he chose silence. In that, a pained expression took over his features. You ran your palm across his face, savoring the laugh lines, the ridges, the stubble. As you passed over his lips, he kissed your hand and you let him. 

“I love you, Erik, and don’t you dare go around thinking I don’t. But whatever Apocalypse has given you, I hope it was worth it.” You admitted. 

His eyes went wide, first with shock, then they settled on something bordering shame. 

You took a deep breath, and gave Erik your back just the same as you gave it to Charles, slipping out the door and into the rainy night.

[finitevoid]

fairytales for children with no souls, an addendum: a requiem for genevieve grimhilde. read the rest here.

grimhilde pets evie’s black hair and whispers to her. whispers to evie about auradon, about princes and kings and golden bejeweled crowns and velvet-silk-cashmere gloves that reach your elbows. and grimhilde dresses evie in soiled clothes hastily cleaned in a bathtub full of old bleach because its the best they have, and she pets her black hair and cooes when evie pulls on her best pair of cotton gloves.

evie’s favorite person in the whole world is her sister genevieve. genevieve has dyed-blue hair and brown eyes that glitter in the gray light of the island of the lost and evie wants to be just like her someday. to be as graceful, as cool and calm and collected as genevieve. she calls her sister “jenny” and her sister calls her “eve” and they whisper the nicknames like a well-kept secret.

grimhilde pets evie’s dyed blue hair and tells her things. “men don’t like to feel intimidated,” she tells her. “you must keep your intelligence close to your chest, where they cannot see it.” she brushes evie’s hair well into the night and helps her dye it blue with berries and chemicals wasted from auradon. “a man must think you are easily swayed. that you are soft, malleable. able to be molded.” and grimhilde’s eyes glint silver in the light as she whispers, “you must never let him know that he is the one being molded by you.”

men hold all the power, she is told. she must allow men to think they have power over her, when in reality, they do not. she must marry a prince and turn him into a puppet-on-a-string. she will whisper ideas into his ear with such ease he thinks they were his own. she will be the one to order trade, to begin wars, to control the populace, all by pulling a silly man’s face close to her’s and effortlessly swaying him to her ideas. all the power with none of the glory. she must marry a prince, a powerful prince. so that when he is crowned ruler, the true king, controlling the kingdom from the shadows? is evie.

jenny never talks about princes or kings or riches and power. jenny always talks to evie about fairytales. she reads storybooks to her and points at the drawings waterlogged pages. but evie never cares about the drawings, no. she listens to jenny describe the perfect world of auradon, with its rich colors and thriving wildlife. she seems to spin the image of fields and fields of flowers in the air, uses her voice to create the picture of the richest of red apples, held to perfect lips and ineffably poisoned.

jenny has never met snow white, but evie can tell that she wants to. “she’s our sister, in a sense,” she explains. “she’s a queen now... living with her prince charming in auradon.”

“have you ever been to auradon?” evie asks, because she is still young and naive and thinks that such a thing is possible.

jenny’s laugh is like bells, but her eyes are drooping with sadness. “no, eve.” she continues to smile, despite the tenseness in her shoulders. jenny smiles through it all. whenever grimhilde rages at them, screams at her own reflection, jenny would hold evie close and hum a lullaby in her ears, smiling.

she smiles at the boy next door, who had sullen brown eyes and curly salt-and-pepper hair when he comes to their tower with blood spilt all over himself. his name is diego, and jenny would smile as she tended to his wounds. would smile as she cupped his face when traitorous tears fell, and that was always when evie left to go spend time in the garden, granting them privacy.

jenny tried so hard to keep up their garden. “we’re witches,” she told evie, once, a hand-woven basket hung over her arm as she stood over the meager flower bed. “it’s customary we keep a garden.”

it was mostly weeds, but jenny would stay out in the garden until late at night, pressing her hands together in fruitless prayer and desperately trying to call upon magic she didn’t have to make flowers grow. “we are supposed to be connected to nature,” jenny whispered, once. fell on her knees beside the flower bed, wiping tears as they fell down her cheeks. “we are supposed to be one with life.”

evie did not say that their mother was hardly “one with life” when she poisoned snow white with an apple. maybe we are cursed, evie thinks. cursed by nature to never grow another flower, for our mother’s sins. she forsook life, and so it forsakes her in return.

but her theory is dashed when, one day, a single flower peeks through the sea of weeds. it is white, and fragile, its veined petals swaying in the hot, garbage-smelling breeze. “you are like this flower,” jenny told her. holding her close, her voice was hoarse with something like terror, her chapped lips pressed to evie’s temple. “beauty among garbage.”

“if that is the analogy,” evie replied, conerned by her sister’s distress. “then you are more like this flower than I.”

and jenny began to weep, sobs shaking her shoulders as she cried. evie tried to wipe her sister’s tears, but they continued to fall, cascading down her face and plonking onto the white flower’s petals.

the tears watered the flower, and after that day, it grew another bud.

“who is the fairest of them all?” grimhilde asks, and it is a question she has asked a million times before, but there is something different, now. something metal in her voice, something cold in her eyes. genevieve has graduated highschool and evie has only just started it, and they stand at attention in the dining room like soldiers, their hands held behind their backs.

“you.” genevieve says, and there is a cruelty in the way she says it, rage hanging around her shoulders, a cold undercurrent in her tone. “it will always be you.”

grimhilde takes a step toward genevieve, and grips her chin in her fingers. “remember your place, girl.” she says, all haughty pride and cool rage. “i put you into this world, and don’t you ever forget that.”

“you are the fairest.” genevieve says. “i don’t want to be the fairest.” her voice breaks on the word ‘want’.

“yes,” grimhilde murmurs. “i will be.”

evie doesn’t remember what she did that night. but she woke up to the iron smell of blood. clouds and smog covered the sky outside her window.

jenny was covered in the iron-steel-tang of hot-red-maroon blood of her own throat. her own gore covered her nightgown and the bedsheets, staining them so thoroughly it would never wash out. her throat was- was cut, torn, shredded, destroyed. her throat was a gaping open wound, still oozing gore. a dagger sat next to her sister’s face, glinting in the candlelight. her eyes stared dully at the ceiling, unseeing. her face was purely and utterly blank.

diego de vil helps bury her, next to her flower bed.

evie does not weep. she is not wracked with sobs. she is not consumed with despair like the pretty perfect doll princesses of the storybooks.

she is filled with a white hot, all-consuming, vicious rage. she shakes with the force of it. it burns beneath her skin, lighting up her core like magma, like lava, like fire, slow-moving and murderous. the rage is agony, burning, powerful agony. it fills her from the inside, fills her up, up, up, until she cannot contain its burning, and it pours out of her from every angle like vomit. but instead of snarling and shouting, she smiles. she forces her muscles to tense into that of a disarming smile, never letting it fall, never letting it falter.

evie takes the dagger used to murder her sister and sets onto the town. she asks around, finds out who grimhilde paid to do the deed, and she finds him. in a backwater house somewhere in downtown, and she sinks his own dagger into his throat as he sleeps. he awakes with a gurgle, stares up at her in horror, and then dies in his own bed. covered in his own gore, his sheets stained so red it would never wash out.

flowers bloom over jenny’s grave, and evie spits on them. how dare they only bloom after jenny died covered in her own gore. how dare they ignore her prayers, her cries, her tears, only to appear over her corpse. how dare they take suffering so violent and disgusting and turn it into something beautiful. jenny deserved for the world to be bathed in the same suffering she felt in her last moments. parasites, the damn things are, evie thinks. feeding on her corpse for nutrients. sucking up what little is left of genevieve grimhilde.

there was no peace, no beauty. only agony. hot, burning suffering. evie would make the world feel her sister’s agony one person at a time if she had to. she would make herself feel the agony of her sister’s suffering. she would suffer, in her honor. in her memory.

(it was the least evie deserved.)

evie smears snow white’s storybook in red. she covers it in the red stain until evie can taste the iron and she sinks the dagger into the pages again, and again, and again. she slashes and rips and tears until nothing is left but puply, bloodstained scraps of paper. she dumps the mangled storybook over the flowers, and prays to any god that deigns to listen that it kills them.

it does not. the flowers flourish, the only garden on the isle. they grow high above the gore, absorb the paper and iron-steel-tang-hot-red-maroon blood into their veins and grow higher, and higher. they tower over evie’s reach, dancing in the breeze and reaching toward the sky. reaching for escape, in auradon. evie spits on them.

“who is the fairest of them all?” grimhilde asks, gray sunlight filtering in through the windows.

evie forces her face muscles to tense into that of a smile, hands clutched dutifully in front of her. “you, mother.” she tugs the smile a little wider, a little happier. “always you.”

grimhilde fixes evie with an appraising expression, until her wrinkled, aging face curls into a cruel smile. her face, stained permanently from bleach being smeared on it, stretches and tugs into a wicked smirk. “you hate me, darling.” grimhilde chuckles. “and you should. your smile is perfect.”

she pets evie’s dyed-blue hair as she passes, dress swishing around her ankles, her other arm flourishing. “nobody will be any the wiser, if you use that smile. you make a perfect grimhilde, indeed.” she whispers.

[reannotfound]

karlnap fluff???? hell yeah!!! enjoy yall ajshgdjhasdg

Karl woke up with a huge smile on his face. It was his birthday! Even better, this was the second one he was celebrating with his boyfriend, Sapnap. He rolled over, expecting to be surrounded in his boyfriend’s warmth, but instead found himself reaching for nothingness. He cracked an eye open in confusion, his brain still a bit muddled from sleep. He was almost always the early riser between the two, Sapnap being more of a night owl.

He stretched, feeling the satisfaction of his bones popping after a long night’s rest. He and Sapnap had originally planned on watching movies last night, but had ultimately fallen asleep, cuddling each other. Not that he was complaining.

He took a few more seconds in bed, before getting up to get ready for the day. Sapnap had been completely tight lipped about what he had planned for Karl’s birthday. Karl wasn’t stupid, he knew that Sapnap did have something planned for him. He wasn’t one of those people who instantly thought everyone had forgotten their birthday if they went 2 minutes without attention. Last year, the first birthday he had spent with Sapnap, they had gone to a late night arcade. He smiled softly as the memories of that night flooded his brain. How Sapnap had utterly destroyed him at DDR, or their cliche photo booth kiss. He definitely considered it one of the best nights of his life, and he was excited to see what was in store for today.

He threw on a light tee shirt and sweatpants, knowing full well he would probably have to change into more normal clothes later on in the day. Then again, he still had no clue what Sapnap had planned. For all he knew, they could spend the day inside cuddling and watching movies. That didn’t sound half bad.

Taking a quick glance out the window as he brushed his teeth showed him that it was nice and sunny outside. He hoped that the weather would feel as good as it looked. After all, humidity is very deceiving. 

After he finished cleaning himself up in the bathroom, he made his way over to the kitchen in their shared apartment. They had moved in together long before they had started dating. I wonder if that’s why we even developed feelings for each other in the first place, Karl thought to himself, knowing full well that he had his crush on Sapnap a long time before they ever met in person. He had always admired the other man, a bit jealous of the chemistry he had with the other members of the dream team. All his jealousy had gone to waste once he had gained the confidence to fess up, and discovered that oh, his crush felt the same way about him. Nice.

Karl was so lost in thought, that when he walked into the kitchen, he didn’t even notice the mess. It was when he spotted Sapnap standing in the middle of the kitchen, covered head to toe in random food scraps and smiling bashfully, he took in the state of the room.

There were splatters of food everywhere. Bits and pieces of egg stained the cupboards, the yolks still running down the pristine white wood. There seemed to be a white substance, which Karl assumed  was milk, that was leaking from the fridge. Pancake batter seemed to coat the countertops, and the ceiling too, by the looks of it. The main thing that caught his eye though, was the saucepan that was currently up in flames on the stove top. He knew Sapnap had some arsonistic tendencies, but this was a little out of hand, even for him.

Karl took a deep breath, before speaking in the calmest voice he could muster. “Sapnap,” he started, watching as the man in question fidgeted in front of him. “Why the hell is the kitchen on fire?” Karl watched as Sapnap opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, seemingly looking for a valid answer. “Well, technically only the pan is on fire?” Sapnap said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. A small, weaker part of him started cooing at how cute Sapnap looked like this, all embarrassed and shy, but he pushed those thoughts to the back of his brain. He could deal with those thoughts later.

“Okay fine.” Karl agreed. “Why is that saucepan on fire?” Sapnap looked away from him. “Well, uh,” he mumbled, trying not to jumble his words together, hands rubbing each other. “I was trying to make you breakfast, because, well, it’s your birthday, and i know that last year’s birthday was epic, and i wanted this one to be epic as well, but i just can’t cook, and ugh, i’m sorry for ruining your special day, i’ll clean it up-” Karl cut off Sapnap’s self-deprecating mumbles with a kiss. He could feel Sapnap practically melt into it, holding onto him. It was a soft kiss, a simple press of lips, and they could both feel the love radiating off one another. Karl smiled into the kiss, which caused Sapnap to start giggling. Soon, his giggles turned into laughter, and Karl joined in. They both laughed as they pulled apart, staring at the mess around them.

“So, just to clarify, you’re not mad about the mess?” Sapnap asked hesitantly after a minute, causing Karl to give off a chuckle. “Of course not,” he clarified, wanting to make sure Sapnap knew he wasn’t upset. “ It’s the thought that counts, and this is by far one of the more, interesting birthday breakfasts i’ve had.” They both giggled, and went to grab the cleaning supplies. Scraping off cold pancake batter from the ceiling wasn’t how Karl imagined his birthday would go, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

[anonbebe97me]

𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤. (BTS Reactions ||Maknae Line)

A/N: So, I had previously posted this on my separate BTS blog (@anonarmy97​) but I’ve decided to just merge both blogs. I’ll still be writing for Monsta X of course, just trying something new- hope you enjoy!

“Candles”-Daughter.

Prompt: You’ve been sleeping together for months, and you both swore it was only sex. But, when something that was supposed to be primal and indulgent, turns into love, you can’t hold it in anymore…you just hope he’ll feel the same way.

DISCLAIMER:  No smut, but is suggestive.

HYUNG LINE HERE

1.) Jimin

You sit up, hair disheveled and matted upwards against the bed frame as you lean back, eyes low while you watch him dress. 

He’s so beautiful. 

“Keep looking at me like that and I’ll never fucking leave this place,” He chuckles, walking over to sit by you so he can put on his shoes.

You smile softly, “Would that be such a bad thing?”

He bites his plump, pink bottom lip, stifling a smile, “You just can’t get enough of me, can you?”

You laugh, “Get over yourself.”

“I can’t, I’m always under you,” He smirks.

You lightly smack his arm, a wide smile on your face, “You’re so snarky. That’s unattractive, you know.”

He leans over so that he’s talking close to your face, “And you love that shit.”

He meets your lips with his own, pressing gently as he cups your face with his hand. 

You feel the butterflies again, and it’s not lost on you how rapidly your heart is racing in your bare chest. 

“Mm…Y/N, you’re killing me,” He groans, pulling away lightly. His breathing is uneven again, eyes low as he stares down at your lips.

“Stay with me,” You say, nuzzling his nose with yours, “Please.”

“I wish I could, beautiful…” His smile just makes you want to wrap your entire body around his, if only to keep him from leaving.

He gets up and fixes his collar, “Alright, I’m off to work,” He says, making his way to the door.

“Jimin.”

“Yeah?” He asks, looking toward you before he reaches for the handle.

“I love you.”

You’re slightly surprised at yourself, wondering where in the hell those words just came from,

but he doesn’t seem to miss a beat, 

“I’ll be back later, beautiful.”

2.) Taehyung

You’re entangled in each other’s arms, much like you have been before.

This became a common occurrence after sex, maybe about six months ago. 

You’d unwind from the *ahem* hard work by just talking or joking around together,

though tonight, it’s oddly quiet.

“You okay, Tae?” You ask, craning your neck upwards to look at him.

You’re a bit surprised to find that he’s already looking at you.

He nods, running a lock of your hair through his fingertips, “Yeah, I’m just…kinda lost in my thoughts, I guess…” 

“…anything you wanna share with the class?” You ask, raising an eyebrow.

He smiles back, though it doesn’t quite seem to reach his eyes. 

“Tae, what’s wrong?” You ask, propping yourself up on one arm to better look at him, “You’re all…distant.”

He looks up at you with those beautiful, brown puppy eyes, and it practically melts your heart, 

“Talk to me. Please.”

He turns onto his back so that he’s staring up at the ceiling, “I feel like…if I say what’s on my mind right now, it’s gonna…change things.”

“Change things?” You ask, confused.

He nods wordlessly.

“Tae, come on. We’ve known each other for years; I’m sure whatever you say, won’t be able to change the way I-” You catch yourself mid-sentence, and immediately switch to ‘clean up’ mode,

“I mean- it won’t change…anything.”

He seems not to have noticed your slip up, “I need you to promise me that, if I say it, you won’t run away…”

Your heart picks up a bit, and you’re feeling uneasy. 

“Did- did you like…kill anyone or something?” You ask, only half-joking.

He snorts, “No, what the fuck?” 

His laugh eases the tension, and you’re able to relax a bit, “Okay then. Go on.”

His smile fades, and he sits up, turning his body toward you.

Instinctively, you sit up as well, hugging your torso so that your breasts aren’t as exposed- though it’s not like he didn’t have his mouth all over them only fifteen minutes ago.

His eyes are low, and he can’t even bring himself to look up at you as he begins speaking, “Y/N… I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world, and I actually really enjoy the time I spend with you, you know that right?”

You tilt your head, “Uhm, yeah. I know,” You snort, motioning to the destroyed state your bedroom is in, from just how much you’d been enjoying your time together.

He shakes his head,

 “No, Y/N. I mean more than just the sex. I mean like, even those days when we’re not all over each other. 

I mean those days when we go to the record shop, or the arcade-

hell, even to the fucking grocery store,” He laughs, still not making eye contact with you.”

You’re still trying to figure out where he’s going with this.

“Every second I’m spending with you, is just another step closer I am to-to…” He swallows, 

“To breaking the rule.”

You furrow your brows, “The rule?”

He finally looks up at you, lips pulled tightly together, 

“Y/N, I think I’m falling in love with you.”

You blink, taking in and processing his words, and when you take too long to respond, he finds himself fidgeting a bit, 

“I get it if that’s too much for you. I know we said that this was just sex, and I understand if that’s all you want, but if it is, then…” His heart is breaking as he continues,

“Then we need to end it. For my sake. Because if not, I’m just going to get hurt-”

Before he can even register what it is you’re doing, you’re lunging at him, toppling him over onto his back, mouth crashing into his.

Without breaking the kiss, one of his arms wraps around your waist, while the other comes up to rest on the back of your neck, pressing you even closer against himself. 

You part your lips, “Taehyung…” 

He kisses you once more, before pulling away to look at you, “What?”

“I have always loved you.”

3.) Jungkook

His lips graze the sensitive skin of your neck, making you quiver involuntarily. Your eyes are close, but your imagination does well in portraying what you assume he looks like right now;

Hungry. For you.

His fingertips dance on your stomach, traveling further and further down to your waistband.

“Jungkook,” You say breathlessly, biting your bottom lip, both in complete bliss and nervousness.

He licks a stripe up to your jaw, before pulling away slightly,

“What’s up, baby?” He asks, before resuming his task.

You can hardly focus as you feel a large hand cup your barely clothed breast,

“I-I need to talk to you about something,” You say.

“Mm…” He nips lightly at your earlobe, “Can it wait?”

His question brings you to your senses, and you gently rest a hand on his chest, “No, it-it can’t.”

He looks up at you, quite out of breath himself.

When he sees your serious expression, he props himself up on his elbow, “What-what’s wrong?” 

You shake your head lightly, “No- nothing’s wrong…” You give him a small smile and let out a deep breath, “Actually- everything’s kind of perfect…”

“Great- then…why’d we stop?” He asks, chuckling a bit,

You take in his beautiful, bunny smile, and your heart feels so at ease as you finally say what’s been on your heart for so long,

“I love you.”

You and him are so incredibly compatible; you share so many of the same passions, humor- not to mention, the physical chemistry that you’ve had from the very first time you met.

You both just makes sense.

Why, then…is he looking at you like this?

“J-Jungkook?” You ask, confusion written all over your face.

“Why are you doing this?” He asks, his mouth in a tight line.

“What?” You furrow your brows, “Doing what?”

“Ruining things.”

His words make your heart stink.

Have you been misreading things?

“Wait- I- Ruining things? How am I ruining them?” You ask. 

“I told you. I told you what I wanted from the first night we met.”

You’re at a complete loss as he gets up from the bed, running his hands down his face exasperatedly.

“Damn it, Y/N.” He yanks his shirt off of the floor where he’d flung it only minutes before.

“Are you…leaving?” You ask, voice shrinking.

“Yeah, I’m leaving.” He can’t even look at you, 

“This- this wasn’t supposed to happen. We agreed, Y/N. We agreed that this could only ever be what it is. I told you this. Did I not?” He struggles to button his shirt.

“Jungkook, I- I thought we were both feeling the same way. I didn’t- I wouldn’t have said anything if I thought it would ruin this-”

“Yeah, well, it did,” He says, his voice finally dropping, his anger suddenly leaving him, leaving a strange feeling in its place.

He sits on the edge of the bed, his back to you as he leans forward, putting his face in his hands, 

“It did ruin things…” His voice comes out much like yours,

“I needed this. I needed you. I needed things to stay like this, at least for a little while longer, Y/N…. why couldn’t you have just given me a little while longer?” He asks, a certain bitterness to his tone.

Your mouth hangs agape as you process what he’s saying, “A-a little while longer?”

He doesn’t react.

“’The fuck does that mean, Jungkook? A little while longer? What, so you were just going to use me and then toss me aside?” You ask, your heart starting to race.

When he finally turns to you, his eyes are soft, broken,

“Don’t even pretend like that wasn’t your plan from the beginning, Y/N. You don’t get to make me the fucking villain. We both agreed to this. 

I told you what’s expected of me. I told you my situation, and I told you about what I could and could not offer, and you accepted,” He snaps, getting up from your bed,

“So, you don’t get to flip the fucking script on me and make me the bad guy.”

Before you know it, tears are streaming down your face; angry, bitter, hurt tears.

He’s utterly shattered your heart in a matter of two minutes.

His mouth falls open, and you instantly see the regret in his face,

“Y/N. Y/N, don’t cry. Please. Don’t-”

“Well fuck me then, right? How dare I fall for you. How dare I see something good in you that actually makes me want more than just a late night fuck,”

 You jump out of bed, grabbing your t-shirt from the nightstand and pulling it quickly over your head before walking over to the bedroom door, opening it wide, 

“Get out.”

“Y/N-”

“I said get the fuck out of my room.”

After only a moment of staring at you in disbelief, he finally walks out; face completely fallen, much like the shattered pieces of your soul.

It isn’t until you hear that click of the front door, that you’re leaning against the wall, bawling your eyes out in your hands.

                                            »—————————–✄

And that’s it for the Maknae line! Hope you enjoyed!

[me-myself-and-my-fos]

Groceries

Pairing: Castor Nax x Nicole Blake

Word Count: 1.5k

Summary: Nic takes Castor out to get groceries for the first time

A/N: Another Castor fic!!! I love this Kryptonian, I just can’t get enough of him

As they walked into the large grocery store, Castor stopped in his tracks and stared. His mouth hung open slightly as he looked at all of the people and carts full of food. Nic grabbed his wrist and pulled him along, somehow managing to pull the Kryptonian. Maybe it was because the moment she touched his wrist, his feet came to life and he was able to carry himself once more. She pulled him over to some carts, and let go of his wrist as she grabbed one, pulling it away from the others.

“What is this place?” He asked, still gaping at the high ceiling and smell of baked goods from the store’s bakery.

Nic laughed lightly. “This is a grocery store. I told you this.”

“I didn’t expect it to be this… big.”

“Well,” Nic smiled, “if there’s one thing that humans love, it’s food. Now come on.” She pushed the cart in a random direction. “We have to stop by the pharmacy first.” Castor followed her curiously. They arrived at the pharmacy, and she stopped the cart. “Wait here.”

“What, um, what is a pharmacy?” Castor asked her as she walked over to the counter.

“Oh it’s where we get medicine. I needed to pick up my medication first!” She called over her shoulder before approaching the counter and smiling at the cashier.

Castor’s face dropped, and he paled. Medicine? Was she sick? Dying? Have some sort of disease? No, no, no. She just took him in and she’s dying? That couldn’t be, Castor thought to himself. His mind started forming all sorts of thoughts, attempting to find out the cures to a million different unknown human diseases. He lost his family, he wasn’t about to lose his friend too. Nic walked back over and put the white bag in the basket.

“Are you dying?” He asked her bluntly.

“W-what?” Nic paused, staring at him.

“You came here to get medicine, are you dying? Sick?” He repeated.

“No, no, I’m not—” she let out a nervous laugh. “I’m not sick, or dying. I was just… picking up my birth control medication.”

Castor furrowed his brows. “Oh? Does it control the rate of which you give birth? Humans are… they’re fascinating—”

“No! No! That’s—” she cleared her throat, taking a deep breath. Her face grew bright red. “They, uh, they prevent me from… conceiving if I were ever to… you know…” Castor stared at her, and Nic wasn’t sure if he really understood what she was talking about. It still embarrassed her. “Anyway, let’s go shopping!” She laughed nervously, pushing the cart in the direction of the food aisles. Castor followed her, eager to see what else the grocery store held.

They headed down a few aisles, Nic grabbed things off the shelves and crossed them off her grocery list. Castor followed, observing all of the people buying their own food and how many varieties of the same food there are. He asked more than once why there were so many different kinds of pickles, and how many different types of cheese existed. Nic tried to answer any of his inquiries while shopping.

Castor had wandered off a few minutes ago, and Nic was only slightly panicking. It was a big store, and it was Castor’s first time in one. If he got lost… it would be almost impossible for him to find her. She stayed where she was at, browsing the different cans of tomato paste and diced tomatoes. She was starting to wonder if she should buy some, make some spaghetti one night and introduce Castor to the world of her favorite Italian cuisines.

There was a rustling noise, and the cart justled a bit. Nic looked over to find Castor smiling, and then she looked into the cart. Her eyes widened at the various cereal boxes, bags of gummy candy, and even some chocolate bars.

“Castor what the—” she looked at him in shock. “You can’t get all of that.”

He frowned. “But I want it.”

“I’m—I’m not paying for all of that. Put it back.” She told him sternly, almost like a mother scolding her child. Nic never believed she would have to be the responsible one for once.

“I thought you might say that, so I got you something as a bribe.” Castor almost boasted. He reached into the cart and grabbed a chocolate bar, holding it out to her. It was a Snickers bar, her favorite. “I, uh, recognized the label. I saw you had one in your room.”

“You went into my room? When?”

“...when you were at work.” He admitted. “Do you want this or not?”

Nic stared at the chocolate bar in his hand for a moment before gently taking it from him. “You can have one, but put everything else back okay?” Castor sighed, pushing his glasses up before picking up the contents he put in the cart. He left a small bag of gummy worms, then went to go put the rest back.

When he got back, Nic was trying to reach the top shelf for a can of corn. She had climbed the shelves, but it was so far back she still couldn’t reach it. He approached her, and pulled her off the shelves.

“Allow me, Nicole.” He said, and she swore she heard a little bit of arrogance in his tone. She watched as he did exactly what she had, but he reached back and grabbed the can. He got down and handed it to her. Nic’s eyes widened at the metal shelves. The bottom shelf was bent where his feet had been, and the top shelf was nearly crushed by his hand.

Nic quickly placed the can in the cart before grabbing his arm. “Move, move, move.” She whispered, pulling him along. She hoped no one noticed him utterly destroying the store shelving.

The next few aisles went by without incident, and Castor mostly behaved himself. He asked many questions, including about the nutrition labels on the food packets and why Nic wasn’t looking at their helpful information. She was pretty sure she’s never talked this much on a grocery trip before, not that she minded any. It was just a new experience, although next time she was determined to keep him on a tighter lease.

A cart nearby had stopped, and Nic smiled at the baby that sat in the basket, sucking on its fist. She gave it a small wave, and the baby stared at her. Nic giggled to herself and whispered a small “Hi there.” to the baby.

Castor looked between Nic and the baby for a moment. “Why are you smiling at that baby?”

“Because it’s cute.” She said giggling, then pushed the cart to go to the next aisle. Castor followed close behind.

“But you don’t know that baby do you? And it can’t be yours, it looks nothing like you.” Castor rambled. “Why would you greet a stranger’s baby?”

“I love babies and little kids, and I just wanted to smile at it.” She explained, browsing the jars of peanut butter. “Honestly, Cas, nothing is cuter than a baby in a shopping cart.”

“If you say so…”

The shopping was done, and Nic got all that she needed, along with a few extra things as per Castor’s request. They got to the counter and Nic started putting items on the conveyor belt with the help of Castor. The cashier rang up the groceries, and Nic began packing them into bags and placing them into the cart. Castor watched, intrigued and curious. He wanted to help, but he was unsure if he would break something. He was still getting used to his strength, even if it’s only been a few weeks. Just the other day, he accidentally ripped the bathroom door off its hinges. Nic never showed any anger towards him, though, when he accidentally broke something with his strength or accidentally destroyed the tv with his heat vision. She was patient, much more patient than he ever expected her to be.

“Oh my god.” Nic muttered as she looked at the almost $300 total for her groceries. She was used to it barely passing $100 on a good day, but now she has someone else living with her, and she’s learned that he has a very big appetite. As she swiped her credit card, Nic looked back at Castor. “We really need to find you a job.”

He pushed the cart out of the store, Nic finding it a little too heavy even for her. Once they reached the car, Nic started loading the bags into the trunk. As she finished, Castor smiled at her.

“This was fun.” He said before opening the passenger door and getting in.

Nic laughed a little, shaking her head as she put the cart away. She walked back to the car and got in the driver’s seat. “So you had fun? I did too. It’s… it’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun shopping with someone.” She admitted softly.

“I would love to come back here with you again.” He told her.

“Oh trust me, you will.” She said, putting in the keys and starting the engine. “But you are getting a job. That’s for sure. I can’t spend all of the money that I make.”

“Maybe one day I can do the shopping for you.” He smiled.

[starryeyedsweetheart]

What Happened to Us? | Part Four

Author: @starryeyedsweetheart

Pairing: Peter Parker & Reader

Word Count: 3693

Note: so this is the last part of the mini fic thank you everyone who has shown their support and made the experience of writing this so much fun i love you all

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

I hadn’t even gone inside yet and I already hated my life. Before I could even rethink my decision, my mom’s car is nothing but a dot in the distance. Blinking slowly, I wonder if what I’m seeing is actually what Flash’s parties are truly like. I’ve heard rumors of how wild they get, but never in my life did I think I’d witness George Hewitt peeing in one of the shrubs while three of his best friends egg him on with blissful cheers.

Nothing could have stopped me from staying outside the rest of the night and avoiding human interaction. Nothing until I see George Hewitt turn around, his pants still down around his ankles and a red solo cup raised to the sky. I quickly turn away and that’s when I decide to glide towards the front door, hand over my eyes as I pass by the gleeful laughter of him and his friends.

As soon as I’m through the threshold, the pungent, sour smell of alcohol smothers me. Flash was behind a booth, bopping his head and fist pumping to the beat of the song he was playing. The bass of the music shakes the whole house, yet no one seems to care as they bounce around and grind in the large living space. Looking to my right, people were pouring drinks into red solo cups. Others were making out on the counter. Then, through the raunchy bodies of high school teenagers, I see a familiar mess of brown curls and tired eyes eating a piece of toast.

Upon noticing her, I flock towards her. Her brows rise in question as I stick to her side, eyes frantically searching the party and disliking everything I see about it.

“What happened to you don’t like Flash, so you’re not going to the party?” Michelle questions, voice flat, yet there was a hint of teasing.

“What happened to you don’t like people, so you’re not going to the party?” I retort.

A ghost of a smirk flashes over her. Before she could respond, we both see the slight movement of the front door opening, two people sneaking inside. Peter and Ned. And would you look at that? Ned was wearing his new hat. My heart twists at the sight.

“You know, maybe you should try talking to him.” I rip my gaze from the two boys to see Michelle’s somewhat sorrowful expression. This was the first emotion I’ve seen on her that wasn’t disgust or indifference.

“He doesn’t want to talk,” I mutter, surprised she could even hear me above the loud music.

“Then make him listen.”

A body appears on the other side of the kitchen island, causing myself to jump but for Michelle to stay utterly still. Before me was no other than Flash, his smile wide and excited.

“I’m so happy you came!” he cheers.

Michelle rolls her eyes as I mutter a sorry excuse of a reply. As Flash begins to ramble on and on about how great his hair looks because he bought a new hair gel from Macedonia, I look over his shoulder to see Peter. Surprisingly, our eyes meet. His brown eyes, even from here, are blank and emotionless. The only tell I had to see if he felt anything towards me was the way his jaw clenches. Before another second can pass of our shared eye contact, he whips around and storms off deeper into the party, leaving a confused Ned in his wake.

My heart falls as I watch the place where he stood. Michelle, who saw the whole ordeal, subtly nods her head to where Peter went off to before giving me an encouraging smile. Yes. A smile. A whole, teeth showing, lips curling smile. Determination flows through my veins at that  and that’s when I nod back to her. Excusing myself, missing the look of disappointment wash over Flash, I’m taking off to follow Peter, going deeper into the party than I ever thought I would.

I shove against sweaty bodies, internally crippling from the inside when I’m pushed against someone and they take it as an invitation to dance with me in their drunken state. A wasted girl from my English class compliments the blue shirt I’m wearing, but it’s not even blue. My feet are being trampled with each beat of the song as people jump up and down like maniacs. By the time I’m through the bustling crowd of my rowdy classmates, I’m met with a sitting area.

There were two couches, a large group of people lounging amongst them. Some were casually sipping at whatever was in their solo cups as others seemed to have already had too much alcohol. To my surprise, Peter was wedged between Ned and Liz Allan, and my heart did another thing where it flipped a million times and then plunged into a pool of despair. Why did seeing him with her hurt more than it should?

Before I could even get his name out, his head shoots up. Our eyes don’t lock this time as he mutters a quick excuse to the people around him and he’s running away from me once again. My eyes feel glassy and I try to contain myself but this was a whole other level of rejection.

“Hey, let’s go somewhere quieter.” Looking up, I see Ned, his mouth turned into a pitiful smile as I allow him to lead me towards an unknown hallway. He opens a door and then, he plops himself down on the cold tiled floor of the bathroom. He pats the space beside him as I slowly slide down the wall with a sigh. “He’s an idiot,” Ned says.

“I know.”

“You know he never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“He doesn’t hate you.”

Ned’s head slowly turns at my lack of a response. He may have been expecting me to constantly repeat those two words with each of his statements, but he doesn’t truly understand how I can’t believe his words when Peter doesn’t act upon them. He screamed at me in his bedroom. He talked about me in the library. He’s avoiding me at this stupid party. It was enough for me to prop my head against the wall behind me and sigh so deeply, it rattled the pain in chest.

“Why does he keep running away from me?” I ask almost inaudibly. A part of me didn’t want to know the answer. I wasn’t sure if I could take more of the anguish swirling within me like a hurricane waiting to destroy.

“Because he’s scared,” he states simply.

“Of what?”

“Of you. I don’t think he can stand to see you hurt by him again.”

My hands restlessly fold in my lap, thumbs spinning around one another as I try to steady my breathing. Thinking of him always made my heart race, but now it beats with a different kind of longing. “I miss him,” I whisper.

“Do you miss him enough?” he inquires. Furrowing my brows, I look at Ned oddly. “Do you miss him enough to stay in this bathroom with me or enough to fight for him?”

I lunge towards Ned, a genuine smile on my face as I hug the life out of him. I forgot how much I love him, and would never want to spend another week without him or his idiot jokes. His own warm arms wrap around me as I sigh into his shoulder. “I really like your hat,” I mumble into his shirt, feeling his body shake with laughter.

“I wore it just for you,” he says.

With a grateful thank you and one last squeeze, I get up from the floor and leave the bathroom. The first place I go to look is the couch area, where Liz Allan remained, but no sign of Peter. I take off through the bustling crowd of teenagers, pushing against them like they’re a part of an obstacle course. As I’m going deeper into the party, I can’t help but feel this massive surge of adrenaline.

I love Peter Parker. I’ve known this since I was eleven years old when we watched the city life from his fire escape. I remember his laugh and how it made my heart dance around, even if I could barely hear it over the car horns and shouting citizens.

I love Peter Parker. I’ve felt it deep within me when we were lying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling of glow in the dark star stickers because the city lights always masked the real ones. I remember the way his hand brushed against mine as we mumbled sleepily to one another about future plans. At first, I could feel my cheeks redden at the touch, but they were set ablaze when his fingers suddenly weave through mine.

I love Peter Parker. Even when he was yelling at me. Even when we were standing less than five feet apart and it felt like a whole ocean, I’ve never loved him more.

The more I run through this house, the more love I have for him. He needs to know that I’m willing to fight for us. As my chest heaves up and down from climbing the massive staircase to the second floor, I suddenly spot Ned’s hat amongst the crowd. Beside him, was no other than Peter.

And as if he felt my stare, just like he always has, his head turns to me. Our eyes meet and for the first time in a week, my heart explodes with pure, genuine joy. But, as he slowly drops his eyes, hand coming up to rub at the tip of his nose, his body is spinning around as he pushes past people.

Before my heart could feel the full effect of his absence, I begin to sprint down the steps, praying to whomever that I won’t tumble down. I’m shoving against the crowd once more, practically dodging the couches as I pass through them. The dance floor was a war zone as I attempt to squeeze past.

Amongst the sea of teenagers, I suddenly can’t breathe. The way their bodies press against mine as I fight my way through causes my breath to hitch in my throat, clogging any possible airway. I think of fighting for Peter, but the adrenaline is gone.

What’s the point? I can’t keep chasing someone who won’t stop running.

Blinking back the tears, I finally emerge from the dance floor, seeing Peter walk through the front door. Despite the constant agony tearing me apart, I fight through it. One chance. I just need one chance to make things right, and afterwards, this feeling will subside. The love I have for him will fade. Time will go on. Things will get better.

But now is not the time. I sprint through the front door, it slamming behind me as I take in the sight of Peter walking down the front lawn. And just like that, the little sanity I have left disappears.

“Stop avoiding me!” I finally find it in myself to scream, voice cracking from the pain brewing within me. His back turns rigid, his muscles tensing and his body stopping in Flash’s front lawn. With the door closed behind me, the bass of the music barely moves us. The smell of alcohol is no longer pungent and time stands still. I could already feel my eyes sting from the tears I’m already holding back. Peter’s back continues to face me. He may only be a couple of feet away, but it feels as if there’s an ocean lying between us when I whisper, “Please stop.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the first of my tears fall. I instantly wipe them away as he keeps ignoring me. My hands shake, but balling them into fists only causes my nails to dig into my palms. I chew on my bottom lip, feeling my chest shake with each passing breath. The pain suddenly hits me like a bus, the adrenaline gone. Sadness sweeps over me as we stand idle, waiting for something unknown.

Is this really how this is going to end? What happened to being at each other’s weddings? What happened to all the idiotic plans we had for when we were 18? What happened to forcing our kids to be best friends so our legacy would live on?

What happened to us?

I press my lips together, heart aching. The tears well up in my eyes and I continue to squeeze them shut to get rid of them. I had to stay strong. I had to push through. “Please,” I plead, not missing the wavering in my voice as I spoke. “Just…just turn around.”

He didn’t. I could clearly see his body breathe heavily, probably from the annoyance and hatred he felt for me because I couldn’t let him go. I couldn’t leave the broken remnants of our friendship as easily as he did because he had time. Peter had time to detach himself from the picture perfect friendship I thought we had. Me? I was thrown into the cold water, drowning beneath it all as he stands on land with a lifejacket.

“Peter, I can’t help how I feel,” I say, even if talking to his back was like talking to a brick wall. “I didn’t want to fall in love with you.”

“So, why did you?” he finally speaks, yet his voice is small, barely audible above the muffled chatter from inside the house. My breath hitches in my throat just like it always does when I hear him talk. I suppress another cry, almost choking on it when he suddenly turns around with his big brown eyes filled with tears of pure sorrow. His cheeks were as puffy as mine. Peter’s bottom lip quivers the same way mine does because I couldn’t keep the despair in anymore. “Why did you have to make saying goodbye harder than it needed to be?” he questions harshly, his voice full of misery.

“I told you, I didn’t mean to fall in love, but I did. And I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, but you did. So, can you just please, give us another chance?”

“I already told you how I feel!” he shouts, but it doesn’t pierce through me like it did the first time he raised his voice in the small space of his bedroom. It didn’t add salt to the wound when he said it again in the library.  Instead, it just fires up this undeniable, searing rage within me. I’m so fucking sick and tired of constantly feeling helpless. I’m over being the only one hurting. Whatever it was that Peter wanted to do was fine by me, but I’ll be damned if I let him walk away without trying one last time.

I can’t help but stalk towards him, anger fueling my actions. “So, tell me again!” I yell back. Different emotions swirl within me, my heart not knowing which is to act upon anymore. The determination, hurt, and anger concots into one feeling as I breath heavily.

His face falls for a moment, expecting me to crumble before his eyes once more. Not this time. This time, I’ll stand my ground. I’ll fight for this. I’ll fight for us, even if we’re only friends because not having him as a boyfriend is nothing compared to not having him at all. “Tell me, Peter. I want you to tell me the truth, even if it hurts me. Look me in the eyes,” I say, my voice matching one of a raging storm. Our eyes meet and a shooting pain tears me apart from the inside. “Look at me, and tell me you hate me.”

“I…” he begins. My stomach twists, but our eyes never leave each other’s. “I h-hate…” he says again, his voice strained with anguish. He blinks before mumbling out a jumbled mess of words. I shake my head, a small feeling of hope creeping up on me. “I hate y-you,” he chokes out. “I hate you,” Peter repeats.

“You don’t.”

Peter sniffs before breaking eye contact to look at his feet. He wipes at his face with the back of his hand. His posture looks so beaten down, so different from the tense stature he tried so hard to maintain when his back was to me. Even if his eyes were hidden from a curtain of his wavy curls as he longingly stares at the floor, I could still see his bottom lip shake and the tears stream down. Peter lets out a broken cry, as if he didn’t want it to come out in the first place. Amidst his sorrow, he hiccups the one thing my heart had been yearning to hear. “I don’t,” he confirms. “I don’t hate you.”

“Look,” I say. The fury that had pumped through my bloodstream slowly diminished at the sight of Peter’s weak state, but it still lingers. When we were younger, Peter would always be the strong one, holding my hands and calming me down with his soothing words. The tables have turned. I grab his hands delicately, worried that he’d pull away at any moment. To my surprise, he allows it to happen and even looks up at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. “It’s okay if you don’t want to be friends anymore, but you don’t have to lie to me. I’ll let you go if that’s what you want, if that’s what you need.”

Peter nods solemnly.

“I just have one question though, and you don’t even have to answer it if you don’t want to,” I say, voice strained. “Did you ever love me? At any point in time?”

Looking up from our intertwined hands, I see Peter with a sad smile on his face. Another tear falls from his miserable eyes as he whispers, “I always have.”

Furrowing my eyebrows, I suddenly realize something. Those words sound so familiar, but I was too caught up with what Peter had just said to me. “Why would you...What? Then, why’d you leave?” I question, pure sadness laced into my words.

“Because…” he trails off. His thumbs begin to run over the back of my hand, a thing he always does whenever I feel like I’m falling apart. A thing he always does even when he’s falling apart too. “Because….I loved you too much.”

And that’s when it hit me.

And that’s when I hit Peter in the shoulder as hard as I possibly could.

“You idiot!” I scream, Peter’s eyes widening. His hands go up to deflect my next hit that would never come because I threw my arms into the air out of frustration. “You’re Spiderman?!” I squeak.

Peter instantly lunges forward, his hand covering my mouth. I smack him off. “Get your little webby fingers off me,” I seethe. Before he could defend himself, my shoulders suddenly slump forward and I realize the truth. “You...you didn’t want me to be in your life to protect me, didn’t you?” I question, voice small. He nods and I groan, rubbing my face with my hands. “You’re so stupid. So, so, so, so stupid.”

“For wanting to keep you safe?”

“For using the same words Spiderman said to me on the rooftop. Oh my God, I confided in him. I confided in you!”

“But you’ve always talked to me about your problems,” Peter defends.

I throw my hands up in the air. “But never about you to you!”

All of a sudden, in the messy blur of my stressed home gestures and rambling comments, Peter suddenly grabs me by the arms and tugs me into him. I could feel his breath fan against his face. His nose grazes mine. Peter’s eyes fondly gaze into my own and I can’t help but melt into his touch.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, barely audible above the pounding music behind us. His words were smooth and sincere, face contorting into a painful expression of guilt. “I thought that keeping you out of my life would keep you from getting hurt, but you did anyways. By me. And I never want to see you so broken again.”

“You could have told me. I would have understood.”

“I didn’t want you to understand; I wanted you to find someone who deserves your love and attention.”

I furrow my brows, still wondering how I’m able to function when one small movement of my neck would cause Peter and I to kiss. “You don’t think you’re good enough to be with me?”

He shakes his head, and that’s when I realize that none of my words will ever convince him of how much I love him. Maybe that’s why the night in the his room didn’t work. It was because he didn’t believe the entire truth to my words. Smiling to myself,  I quickly lean forward, closing the small distance between us without another second to spare.

I could have lived through so many lifetimes, met so many different people, but none will ever compare to the feeling of my heart bursting with pure ecstacy in my chest. He tugs me closer and I revel in the feeling of his lips pressing against mine in the same passion. I’m the first to pull away, taking notice of the way his eyes were still shut and the way he kept leaning in as if he couldn’t get enough. My amused laugh is what finally got him to flutter his eyes open, his lips turning into an excited smile right after.

“I love you,” he whispers to me. Something about those three words and the way he said it, as if they were only meant to be heard by me, made my heart dance and my smile shine with absolute wonder.

In an excited fit, I lean in once more to bask in the happiness that has washed over us in a warm light. I kiss him. Then, I kiss him again. And again. And again because with Peter Parker, actions speak louder than words.

--

tag list:  @minispidey @gerardway-has-socks-yeah @tomshufflepuff @peterfuckingbenjaminparker @meyrapp @adventurousbooknerd @bookworm06 @roxximc @mackers125 @wolfshifter4life @embrace-themagic @sighspidey @itsa-meemarieee @fdxbiksohag @katielbowen @ss-seguso @alienadvocate @rivaea @scarlett-is-in-deep-shit @noodleboylester @fairylightsandflyingbunnies @angstyween @maddieisaacs @fan-of-many-bands @redridingthroughthehood @peter-spider-parker-man @popluckbih @euphoricmads @multifandombackpack @lou-la-lou @abrupt-aesthetic @thatsstupid @its-docete 

[docholligay]

Silverleaf 9: Shadow Puppets

HEYO and welcome to your next edition of Silverleaf, GRACIOUSLY sponsored on my patreon by Benjamin! Please thank him for this series, it’s people like him that keep my bills paid and content coming! My patreon is HERE and my ko-fi is HERE, if you want to thank me or chip in! Also, i LOVE comments, so I would LOVE if you left one. The entire series is here. 

Her heels clicked against the marble of the entryway as her coat was taken from her, Michiru barely waiting long enough for the butler to remove it properly. She glared at the flowers on the side table, the way they were bright and cheap and inelegant and lovely, too lovely for a place like this. Too lovely for the cold, carved crystal of the vase in which they sat.

“Get rid of those.” She said to her butler dismissively, and he nodded, not bothering to ask why the bouquet she’d been so pleased with when Haruka had brought it was suddenly to be destroyed.

He had been with the family long enough.

Michiru clicked again, the tone changing as the floors changed from marble to the tile of the kitchen, the cook looking at her strangely but again, without question, as she clicked into the wine cellar and grabbed a bottle and a glass, gripping them firmly as she went toward her room.

“Miss Kaioh?” The cook asked for a moment.

“Yes?” Michiru stopped and looked at her, her hair winding around her face like a furious wave, eyes sharp, but mouth open slightly, like a rosebud, asking please. Please ask me what’s wrong.

“Have a good night, miss.”

No, of course she wouldn’t ask, because she was afraid, because Michiru was the queen, and to become the queen you must be fearsome, and you must prey.

She clicked down the hall from tile to marble to the wood of the family bedrooms, thinking over and over how Haruka hadn’t wanted her, how she had pressed herself upon Haruka and felt her recoil, and as she she shut her bedroom door behind her, the hot shame of it all gathered in her face, and she could feel the heat of her blush, so unfamiliar to her that it burned like hot embers under her skin.

She was not used to being refused, Michiru Kaioh. Women wanted her, she played their passions and affections as she did her own violin, and each piece, from the Paganinis to the folk songs, bent under her bow. To have a woman, a gym teacher no less, refuse her...it was a strange melange of shame and anger and confusion, and she did not appreciate the cocktail.

She pulled the cork from the wine, pouring it into the glass in front of her as she sat at her desk, looking out at the cool emotionless pale of the moon.

What did you want from Haruka? The wind seemed to ask as it bent the branches of the trees in the moonlight, writing the words in perfect script against the bright paper white.

“What a ridiculous question,” she took a sip of her wine, minorly embarrassed she had responded to the wind, but unwilling to retreat, “I believe I made it quite clear.”

But nothing Michiru ever did was clear, her emotions and motivations and desires all part of the crashing and churning sea that rested in her heart, and there were times that even she could not see the bottom, could not sense whether it was deep or shallow.

Did you desire to possess her? The unkind wind continued its manuscript. Did you wish to add her to the list of women who have loved you, the siren which calls them to the rocks?

Michiru picked up her glass, poured it to the top, and walked away from the window. Sirens were beautiful, in the modern day, weren’t they? It was a beautiful fiction, spinning monsters into mermaids, but Michiru knew the truth. It was only that sirens sounded beautiful, that the images they left in your mind’s eye were lovelier than any other, lovelier even than the will to live.

But sirens were ugly, when it mattered, and perhaps it was not so incorrect to call her a siren, lovely and pleading and full of desire from far away, but too ugly up close. Perhaps she had only wanted Haruka as she had wanted all those other women, something to place as a jewel in her hoard, something to own and destroy at her whims.

All of these things might have been true, and certainly they were true of the women she had known in the past, but a more horrifying thought nagged at her, one not carried by the wind she had heard in perfect script, the one that lived inside her head, the one she foolishly tried to escape by leaving the window.

No, this wind was simple, and quiet, and simply said:

Maybe you wanted her to love you. ‘

______

“Haruka you’re allowed to say no to sex, you know that, right?” Mina looked at her with a mix of irritation and disbelief. “I feel like I’m talking to one of my girls, here.”

Mina poured the noodles into a bowl, and put them in the microwave, leaning against the countertop as she looked over at the back of the couch.

“I know.”  Haruka lay on the couch, Mouse resting on her shoulder as she petted him softly.

Mina shook her head as the microwave’s timer beeped frantically, and pulled the noodles out of the microwave. Haruka was so simple that she occasionally made it all the way back to being hard. She was straightforward and easy to read, but the way she went about things was utterly confusing, the ways she seemed to think of how to present herself, her awkward fumbling when it came to her own emotions.

“You don’t ever have to have sex you don’t want to have.” she plopped across from Haruka and slung her legs up across the oversize chair.

“But I did--” She pushed back her hair and sighed heavily, “it’s just, I wanted other stuff, I just…” she closed her eyes. “I’m bad at this. I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. But like…” Mina thought carefully for a moment, twirling a noodle, “Ruka, what do you want?”

“I don’t know.” she shook her head, “I...I wanted to go on a date with her.”

Mouse headbutted her cheek, purring loudly.

Haruka looked over at Mina. “The problem is me. It’s been so long and I,” she nuzzled against Mouse, “I’m out of practice, I don’t know what to do anymore, and it was easier when I was younger, and I’d just stuff it all and do whatever and be the cool butch girl who just...did things.”

Mina slurped a noodle into her mouth. “Bud, you were never the cool butch girl who did things,” Haruka sat silent, “I’m teasing you. I know what you mean.”

“I want a relationship,” She dramatically slapped her forehead, and Mouse scowled at her, “UGH! I can’t believe I said that, I sound so pathetic.”

“You don’t have to be me, Haruka,” Mina set down her bowl and sat up, leaning toward her, “I don’t know why you think you have to be, but for a lot of people, liking someone is pretty strictly necessary to fucking them. I’m grateful we don’t have to wait til we’re fucking married anymore, but there’s nothing wrong with taking time to warm up, if you’re that kind of person, and you pretty clearly are.”

“I don’t want to be.”

Mina shook her head and shrugged. “Well.”

Haruka looked up at the ceiling, the plain white an open canvas for her thoughts. It was true, she supposed, that what she really wanted was love, and to know Michiru was invested, and to go to summer festivals and eat strawberries on a stick and sit under the flowering trees together. She wanted to snuggle up under her afghans and watch TV together, eating takeout between them. It was dumb, and every queer website she read led her to believe she should be having group bondage sex while doing a tarot reading or otherwise she was replicating heteronormative values within her life, and no matter how many times Mina told her to stop reading shit that made her feel bad for being herself, it was what she was supposed to do, wasn’t it?

“Can I ask you a question, Ru?” Mina said, interrupting Haruka’s disastrous line of thinking, peering at her as if she could read her mind.

“Sure.” Haruka glanced back over at her, giving a weak shrug.

“When has what other people wanted you to be ever helped you?” Mina leaned back in her chair, “When you tried to like dresses for you mom? When you tried to do track again for your dad? When you tried to be tough in college? When? When has it been good for you?”

Haruka didn’t say anything, just shrugged.

“If Michiru doesn’t like you for what you are, if she doesn’t want to date you the way you want it, then you’re gonna have to stop being so twitterpated and get over her.” Mina knelt down next to her and looked her in the eye “Haruka, you’re one of my favorite people on earth. But you get so caught up in the possibility of shit that you put everything into that one thing. And then it becomes a crushing blow every time it doesn’t work. Remember when you were trying to get an apartment near mine? Remember that debacle?”

Haruka looked away. “I get...into things...sometimes.”

“I know, and I know how emotional you are, and who you are is totally fine. But also, don’t hang everything on one date. You’re not stupid, you’re not wrong, you’re just you. This isn’t a crisis. You just want different things. Apparently. I guess. God forbid you two actually talk about expectations.”

Haruka scowled at her. “That’s not romantic!”

Mina stared at her. “You’re right. This is a way better option.”

Haruka held Mouse above her. “You’ll always love me, right Mousie?”

Mouse meowed in assent.

Mina stood up. “On the offchance you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with a cat, I think you should be more honest about what you want. Try going on some dates and learning how to talk to a girl. Forget Michiru, she’s this whole...thing. I’ve seen her chew girls up and spit them out, Haruka, she’s no good for you.”

Haruka toyed with Mouse’s collar. “Yeah?”

“Tell you what.” Mina smacked Haruka’s hip, and she scooted over so Mina could sit on the edge of the couch. “Let me set you up. Super low key, no pressure date, I promise. I know a girl who’s getting back into the game too, you two can just drink coffee and stare at each other like nerds.”

Haruka snorted. “That’s your answer? Go on awkward dates?”

“Training wheels!” She grinned, “Naw, it’ll be fine, I promise. And go someplace you feel comfortable, what the fuck do you know about tapas?”

“I thought it would be classy!” Haruka chuckled, “but I guess that proves your point.”

“Move over, Amazing Race is new on Hulu.” Mina nudged her, and she sat up, passing Mina a blanket.

“Thanks for coming over.” Haruka picked up the remote, passing it to Mina.

“Eh, my fridge was empty anyhow,” she smiled, “So what else was I gonna do, go to the grocery store?”

The wind carried a song, a word, a spoken poem, a call to love, a call to question, a call to know, in a foreign language no one knew, each only with their own piece of the Rosetta stone.

Across town, staring up at a mansion in the international district, where all the diplomats lived, Hotaru Tomoe held a letter in her hand, the wind whipping by her as she stared up at the lit house, in front of the mailbox reading “Serenity.”

[recentanimenews]

Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.)

Simply diving into a review immediately after watching a film as devastatingly gorgeous and emotionally affecting as Kimi no Na wa is probably not a great idea, but this is an anime review blog, so here goes.

Kimi no Na wa isn’t just a charming body-swap rom-com, or a time-travelling odyssey, or a disaster prevention caper, or a tale of impossibly cruel temporal and physical distance between two soul mates, or a reflection on the fragility and impermanence of everything from memories to cities, or a tissue-depleting tearjerker.

It’s all of those things and more. And it’s also one of, if not the best, movies I’ve ever seen, anime or otherwise.

After a cryptic prologue, Kimi no Na wa starts out modestly: Miyamizu Mitsuha, Shinto shrine maiden and daughter of a mayor, has grown restless in her small town world, so one night, shouts out tot he night that she wants to be reborn as a boy in Tokyo.

This, mind you, happens after an odd incident in which Mitsuha essentially lost a day, during which all her family and friends say she was acting very strange and non-Mitsuha-y…like a different person.

That’s because she was. She and a boy from Tokyo, Tachibana Taki, randomly swap bodies every so often when they’re dreaming. As such, they end up in the middle of their couldn’t-be-any-different lives; the only similarity being that both of them yearn for more.

Despite just meeting these characters, watching Mitsuha and Taki stumble through each other’s lives is immensely fun. And because this is a Shinkai film, that enjoyment is augmented by the master director’s preternatural visual sumptuousness and realism. Every frame of Mitsuha’s town and the grand vastness of Tokyo is so full of detail I found myself wanting to linger in all of them.

As the body-swapping continues, the two decide to lay down “ground rules” when in one another’s bodies—albeit rules both either bend or break with impunity—and make intricate reports in one another’s phone diaries detailing their activities during the swaps.

Interestingly, Mitsuha makes more progress with Taki’s restaurant co-worker crush Okudera than Taki (she like’s Taki’s “feminine side”), while the more assertive Taki proves more popular with boys and girls when Taki’s in her body.

Taki happens to be in Mitsuha’s body when her grandmother and sister Yotsuha make the long, epic trek from their home to the resting place of the “body” of their Shinto shrine’s god, an otherworldly place in more ways than one, to make an offering of kuchikamisake (sake made from saliva-fermented rice).

While the three admire the sunset, Mitsuha’s granny takes a good look at her and asks if he, Taki, is dreaming. Just then he wakes up back in his own body to learn Mitsuha has arranged a date with him and Okudera—one she genuinely wanted to attend.

Okudera seems to notice the change in Taki from the one Mitsuha inhabited; she can tell his mind is elsewhere, and even presumes he’s come to like someone else. Taki tries to call that someone else on his phone, but he gets an automated message.

Then, just like that, the body-swapping stops.

After having cut her hair, her red ribbon gone, Mitsuha attends the Autumn Festival with her friends Sayaka and Teshi. They’re treated to a glorious display in the night sky, as the comet Tiamat makes its once-every-1,200-years visit.

Taki decides if he can’t visit Mitsuha’s world in his dreams anymore, he’ll simply have to visit Mitsuha. Only problem is, he doesn’t know exactly what village she lives in. Okudera and one of his high school friends, who are worried about him, decide to tag along on his wild goose chase.

After a day of fruitless searching, Taki’s about to throw in the towel, when one of the proprietors of a restaurant notices his detailed sketch of Mitsuha’s town, recognizing it instantly as Itomori. Itomori…a town made famous when it was utterly destroyed three years ago by a meteor created from a fragment of the comet that fell to earth.

The grim reality that Taki and Mitsuha’s worlds were not in the same timeline is a horrendous gut punch, as is the bleak scenery of the site of the former town. Every lovingly-depicted detail of the town, and all of its unique culture, were blasted into oblivion.

Taki is incredulous (and freaked out), checking his phone for Mitsuha’s reports, but they disappear one by one, like the details of a dream slipping away from one’s memory. Later, Taki checks the register of 500 people who lost their lives in the disaster, and the punches only grow deeper: among the lost are Teshi, Sayaka…and Miyamizu Mitsuha.

After the initial levity of the body-swapping, this realization was a bitter pill to swallow, but would ultimately elevate the film to something far more epic and profound, especially when Taki doesn’t give up trying to somehow go back to the past, get back into Mitsuha’s body, and prevent all those people from getting killed, including her.

The thing that reminds him is the braided cord ribbon around his wrist, given to him at some point in the past by someone he doesn’t remember. He returns to the site where the offering was made to the shrine’s god, drinks the sake made by Mitsuha, stumbles and falls on his back, and sees a depiction of a meteor shower drawn on the cave ceiling.

I haven’t provided stills of the sequence that follows, but suffice it to say it looked and felt different from anything we’d seen and heard prior in the film, and evoked emotion on the same level as the famous flashback in Pixar’s Up. If you can stay dry-eyed during this sequence, good for you; consider a career being a Vulcan.

Taki then wakes up, miraculously back in Mitsuha’s body, and sets to work. The same hustle we saw in Taki’s restaurant job is put to a far more important end: preventing a horrific disaster. The town itself may be doomed—there’s no stopping that comet—but the people don’t have to be.

Convincing anyone that “we’re all going to die unless” is a tall order, but Taki doesn’t waver, formulating a plan with Teshi and Sayaka, and even trying (in vain) to convince Mitsuha’s father, the mayor, to evacuate.

While the stakes couldn’t be higher and the potential devastation still clear in the mind, it’s good to see some fun return. Sayaka’s “we have to save the town” to the shopkeep is a keeper.

Meanwhile, Mitsuha wakes up in the cave in Taki’s body, and is horrified by the results of the meteor strike. She recalls her quick day trip to Tokyo, when she encountered Taki on a subway train, but he didn’t remember her, because it would be three more years before their first swap.

Even so, he can’t help but ask her her name, and she gives it to him, as well as something to remember her by later: her hair ribbon, which he would keep around his wrist from that point on.

Both Taki-as-Mitsuha and Mitsuha-as-Taki finally meet face-to-face, in their proper bodies, thanks to the mysterious power of kataware-doki or twilight. It’s a gloriously-staged, momentous, and hugely gratifying moment…

…But it’s all too brief. Taki is able to write on Mitsuha’s hand, but she only gets one stoke on his when twilight ends, and Taki finds himself back in his body, in his time, still staring down that awful crater where Itomori used to be. And again, like a dream, the more moments pass, the harder it gets for him to remember her.

Back on the night of the Autumn Festival, Mitsuha, back in her time and body, takes over Taki’s evacuation plan. Teshi blows up a power substation with contractor explosives and hacks the town-wide broadcast system, and Sayaka sounds the evacuation. The townsfolk are mostly confused, however, and before long Sayaka is apprehended by authorities, who tell everyone to stay where they are, and Teshi is nabbed by his dad.

With her team out of commission, it’s all up to Mitsuha, who races to her father to make a final plea. On the way, she gets tripped up and takes a nasty spill. In the same timeline, a three-years-younger Taki, her ribbon around his wrist, watches the impossibly gorgeous display in the Tokyo sky as the comet breaks up. Mitsuha looks at her hand and finds that Taki didn’t write his name: he wrote “I love you.”

The meteor falls and unleashes a vast swath of destruction across the landscape, not sparing the horrors of seeing Itomori wiped off the face of the earth—another gut punch. Game Over, too, it would seem. After spending a cold lonely night up atop the former site of the town, he returns to Tokyo and moves on with his life, gradually forgetting all about Mitsuha, but still feeling for all the world like he should be remembering something, that he should be looking for someplace or someone.

Bit by bit, those unknowns start to appear before him; a grown Sayaka and Teshi in a Starbucks; a  passing woman with a red ribbon in her hair that makes him pause, just as his walking by makes her pause. But alas, it’s another missed connection; another classic Shinkai move: they may be on the same bridge in Shinjuku, but the distance between them in time and memory remains formidable.

Mitsuha goes job-hunting, enduring one failed interview after another, getting negative feedback about his suit from everyone, including Okudera, now married and hopeful Taki will one day find happiness.

While giving his spiel about why he wants to be an architect, he waxes poetic about building landscapes that leave heartwarming memories, since you’ll never know when such a landscape will suddenly not be there.

A sequence of Winter scenes of Tokyo flash by, and in light of what happened to Itomori quite by chance, that sequence makes a powerful and solemn statement: this is Tokyo, it is massive and complex and full of structures and people and culture found nowhere else in the world, but it is not permanent.

Nothing built by men can stand against the forces of nature and the heavens. All we can do is live among, appreciate, and preseve our works while we can. We’re only human, after all.

And yet, for all that harsh celestial certainty, there is one other thing that isn’t permanent in this film: Taki and Mitsuha’s separation. Eventually, the two find each other through the windows of separate trains, and race to a spot where they experience that odd feeling of knowing each other, while also being reasonably certain they’re strangers.

Taki almost walks away, but turns back and asks if they’ve met before. Mitsuha feels the exact same way, and as tears fill their eyes, Taki asks Mitsuha for her name. Hey, what do you know, a happy ending that feels earned! And a meteor doesn’t fall on Tokyo, which is a huge bonus.

Last August this film was released, and gradually I started to hear rumblings of its quality, and of how it could very well be Shinkai’s Magnum Opus. I went in expecting a lot, and was not disappointed; if anything, I was bowled over by just how good this was.

Many millions of words have been written about Kimi no Na wa long before I finally gave it a watch, but I nevertheless submit this modest, ill-organized collection words and thoughts as a humble tribute to the greatness I’ve just witnessed. I’ll be seeing it again soon.

And if for some reason you haven’t seen it yourself…what are you doing reading this drivel? Find it and watch it at your nearest convenience. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll pump your fist in elation.

By: sesameacrylic