Tumgik
#i have been working on this for almost a week and re-drawn several of these panels ground-up a few times over each and i am. tired.
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(click for higher quality, text description under the cut)
welcome to the hydraulic press channel
[Begin comic description:
Scene begins with Kokichi and Kaito during the offscreen Hangar Scene of Chapter 5. Kokichi, having been shot and poisoned, lay on his back on a hydraulic press. The first panel shows him from the side, with Kaito out of view behind machinery. Presumably, they are in the moments before enacting Kokichi's plan.
KOKICHI: "Momota-chan?"
KAITO: "Ouma?"
KOKICHI: "Before I die (which should be very shortly). I... need you to tell me something."
Zoom out. The camera focuses on the distance between the press and the control balcony. Kaito responds, "If robots didn't already have them I'm sure Miu—" Kokichi cuts him off. "Not that."
Zoom back in on a deliriously bemused Kokichi, who is slowly pulling the portion of Kaito's coat that will be trapped with him under the press over his still-bleeding right shoulder. "Did she hit it?"
Three small panels in succession show a confused close-up of Kaito's face: "... What?" as Kokichi fires back "On my jacket... the stitches make an 'X' pattern on the back!" Kokichi holds his crossed index fingers over his head, the intersection highlighted in purple-pink.
Cut to Kaito at the control panel of the hydraulic press, leafing through Kokichi's planning notebook with rigid shoulders and a determined expression. Meanwhile, from his position below, Kokichi less speaks to Kaito than in his general direction: "I'm such a nice murder victim, Momota! Ahahahahaha, I even showed her where to aim!"
Kaito is mildly alarmed as he hears a weak "Nishishishishi" from the press as Ouma loses steam, and he cringes as it progresses into a cough so severe it jars the outline of the speech bubble from its background with an overlain spatter of purple-pink blood. Kaito looks away from the press and toward the toilet where the two earlier attempted to flush Ouma's clothes and disrupt the future crime scene. A close-up confirms that the crossbow bolt went through between the large 'X'-shaped stitches on the back of Ouma's jacket, not through the center of an 'X'. Kaito sighs, and mumbles. "Oh, Maki...."
Regaining enough resolve to smile (and, perhaps, taking a few notes from Kokichi), Kaito forces a thumbs-up gesture Ouma cannot see. He lies through his teeth to comfort the dying kid with a morbid joke he just knows Ouma will prefer to any platitudes: "Yeah."
Kokichi, laying with his head tilted to one side and having determined he is isolated and out of view enough to cry, expresses genuine shock as he listens to Momota go on.
"She got it. 'Dead' center, Kokichi."
Ouma, crossing his arms over his chest as though he were to be lain in a casket, looks up at the top of the press with tears in his eyes. Even now, he forces himself to grin (or, since the expression is deep enough to affect his eyes, it may just be real. Dead men never need to tell.) "H-eh. Nice." His thoughts resound around the panel, unspoken. "but... I know that was a lie. Am I... proud?"
The camera pans over to a side-view of a sobbing Kaito and the shadow of an Exisal behind him as Kokichi's thoughts continue: "M-Maybe Mr. Luminary of the Stars..."
The final panel shows a side-profile view of a relaxed Ouma horizontally on the press, the sleeve of Kaito's coat dangling over the side behind him. He has one hand still crossed over his chest as the other lay palm-down at his side. His eyes have closed, perhaps for the last time. He smiles.
"wasn't so boring after all."
"Goodnight...."
End description.]
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hamaonoverdrive · 29 days
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How to get into Hokuto no Ken, A Guide
Hokuto no Ken, localized as Fist of the North Star, is the wildly popular and influential series penned by Buronson and drawn by Hara starting in 1983. It is a timeless tragedy about the power of love that taps into imagery from both Catholicism and Buddhism, while also being an homage to a variety of western 80's pop culture from Mad Max to Blade Runner to Rocky.
In the current anime fanscape, HnK is perhaps best known for being one of the key influences behind Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Berserk, however it should be known that the series' influence permeates the entire Shonen genre. Traces of the tropes and dynamics that it popularized can be seen throughout Shonen today, from Naruto's drive for love and friendship that contrasts with Sasuke's rejection of the idea and desire to sever any bonds of love, to the implementation of Haki in One Piece.
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So with all that in mind, let's get into the specifics.
The place to start with this franchise is very straightforward: read the original manga or watch the anime adaptation. There are a number of movies that retell parts of the original story, but they all have different downsides and cut important aspects of the source material and thus are a bad place to start.
This primary canon is broken down into two (three) parts, as follows:
HnK or "HnK1" is the core of the series, starting at the Shin arc through the originally intended ending at chapter 136/episode 108. Most of the time if someone is referring to HnK, this is what they are talking about. The beginning of the series is a bit of a slow start, bouncing between villains of the week before actually kicking off the primary conflict (especially in the anime, more on this later). This is somewhat typical for the era-- these early arcs were written while the authors had no idea if they were going to get dropped from Shonen Jump. For this reason, I highly recommend sticking with the series until the Fang Clan Chieftain and Jagi arcs even if the beginning hasn't clicked with you yet.
HnK2 is the continuation of the series, where the authors were pressured to continue working on the series because of the money it was raking in. This naming convention comes from the title of the anime for this portion of the story, chapters 136-210/episodes 110-152. Quite frankly, the fact that this is past the originally intended ending is very evident; Buronson has been quoted as never re-reading it after publication.[1] It's very much worth checking out at least once if you enjoyed HnK1-- there are absolutely memorable characters and fights, as well as some of the best art in the series-- but be prepared for a general drop in writing quality.
"Post-Kaioh HnK" or "HnK3" is the last leg of the original manga, which has never been adapted elsewhere. Chapters 211-245.
Content Warnings
Explicit Sexual Assault
The elephant in the room when discussing this series is that some social aspects of it are very of-the-era. There are two instances of explicit sexual assault, which get dismissed as "well the perpetrator didn't have the best execution, but he did have the right idea..." The pages/timestamps to avoid this are:
Manga volume 02 pages 287-289; volume 03, pages 063-066 (Ultimate Edition numbering)
Anime episode 24, 13:04-13:53; episode 26 08:29-09:22
Mild Gore
I almost feel like it goes without saying, but this is famously the series where the protagonist makes baddies heads explode. While this is never depicted in graphic detail, HnK as a whole is going to be a bad fit if this distresses you in any way.
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An early example of the aforementioned head asplosions.
Photosensitivity
The anime makes period-typical use of flashing lights in nearly every episode. If you are photosensitive (and can't take measures to mitigate the flashing), you should read the manga instead.
If you want to read the manga...
The manga is the way that I personally recommend getting into the series due to Hara's absolutely gorgeous art.
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The manga is also generally seen as the true 'canon'; For example, colorschemes used in subsequent works typically draw from colored chapter/volume covers rather than the Toei anime. For this reason, this version of the series is what the Japanese audience usually thinks of when they think of HnK.
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I know some people are very passionate about redhead Mamiya and crest toothpaste-head Rei, but the Toei colors functionally exist in their own separate continuity.
Reading the manga in English is far better now than it was even three years ago, as there are multiple English versions now available.
The official VIZ release is the defacto highest quality out there (support the print copies if you can). While there are a few odd translation choices and the SFX have been replaced with English ones, it has the highest fidelity copies of the original art and even has the original color pages that have not been published since the original Shonen Jump release.
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To think that these wonderful colored pages were completely inaccessible, even to JP audiences, until Viz started rolling out the English volumes.
However, the Viz release is ongoing and only covers until volume 11 at the time of writing. If you want to read the rest of HnK2 (or highly value the original SFX and a smoother translation), you should seek out the official eOneBook release. This is sometimes labelled as "Digital - 2018" and is a rip of an official English translation that was released for a specialized eReader, copies of which been floating around online since about 2020.
There is also an older set of scanlations out there, which I would not recommend reading; The image quality is low-resolution and muddy, and there are a number of edgy translation choices such as inserting a homophobic slur that was not in the original text. I only mention this translation because it's the one on many online manga sites. Please love yourself and look elsewhere if you realize that you are reading these scans.
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(left) English-language scanlations (right) Viz release from 2022. I distinctly remember first reading these pages and then immediately scouring the web to find a version of it that didn't have the contrast blown out, only to discover that this quality was all that available. Now, newcomers to the series don't have to worry about this at all.
There are two different versions of the complete manga, the original tankobons (27 total volumes) and the Ultimate Edition (17 volumes).[2] Both the Viz release and the eOnebook release are derived from the Ultimate Editions while the old scanlations are from the original tankobons, so this can be an easy way to identify which version you are reading.
As to what makes these versions different aside from chapters per volume, the Ultimate Editions clean up some of the art in the last few volumes and also includes "Last Piece", a one-shot by Buronson and Hara inserted between HnK1 and HnK2. This was written as a part of the 30th anniversary celebration, and Hara's art looks quite different 30 years down the road, making the abrupt change in style rather jarring-- consider this your heads-up.
TL;DR Read the Viz version for volumes 1-11, and the eOnebook rips for the rest.
If you want to watch the anime...
The 1984 anime adaptation of HnK is an all-time classic. It's often what western fans will think of first, between the manga being legally inaccessible in English until very recently and constant anime reruns in some markets (especially parts of Italy and France).
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Toei has a tendency to copyright-strike anime clips on Youtube, so hopefully this clip of the opening will stand the test of time.
The anime genuinely excels in a few departments, namely: music, sound design, and voice acting. Even if you don't decide to watch the anime, I highly recommend looking up the OPs/EDs and putting on the OST while reading the manga.
That said, there are definitely some downsides to the anime, a lot of which were typical for Toei animations of the era. Character models and direction are all over the place, some of the animation itself aged like milk, flashing light effects make the series difficult to get through for photosensitive viewers, and stock footage gets reused many times. There also isn't a complete English dub of the show, as it got cancelled after episode 36.
And the biggest caveat to the anime: Filler episodes. Oooooh boy, early HnK filler episodes are baaaad. They don't match the rest of the series tonally and completely botch any sense of pacing. Remember how earlier I said that the series takes a while to get its footing because of early bad-guy-of-the-week format? The anime drags this out for about twice as long by adding new bad guys of the week.
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The infamous "Nanto Cannonball Fist", where users are launched from a cannon and descend on their opponents with a sword. Yeah, I don't know how this counts as a school of martial arts, either. [img source]
For a first watch through, I highly recommend following a filler episode guide to skip these episodes in the Shin arc and get a better feel for what the series is about. Post Shin-arc filler tends to be a lot better, as these episodes match the manga's original tone and often fix pacing problems in the source material rather than worsening them.
That said, there are a few early filler episodes that are well-liked by fans for one reason or another, which I will detail here.
Episode 17: A (non-canonical) view into the internal politics of Shin's army.
Episode 18: In which Kenshiro fights a tank.
Episode 19: The goofiest of the goofy filler episodes. If you want to watch one filler episode to get a sense of what they are like, watch this one.[3]
Episode 21: A continuation of some of the conflicts from episode 17.
Episode 38: Features one of the best-written woman martial artists you'll see in this franchise. (This is after Shin arc, but I had to point her out. Watch this one.)
Rage Quitter 87's fansite also has an excellent episode-by-episode guide covering anime and manga differences, which can be very useful for highlighting some of the more subtle differences between the two.
An anime remake that more closely follows the manga has been announced, but we have no further details on it at the time of writing. (I wouldn't hold my breath for this, it could be several years before we know more.)
TL;DR skip the episodes listed here under "Shin arc".
So I got through the main canon, what next?
The sheer amount of secondary content for HnK out there can be overwhelming. It's one of the most profitable IPs of all time, with the bulk of those profits coming from pachinko machines that will never make it to the west outside Youtube phone clips and asset-flip games (more on this later). When the series isn't being used to sell soap, there are a number of supplemental works that are absolutely worth checking out. In this guide I will focus on works that are currently available in English.
The Official Gaidens
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A series of manga with different protagonists and created with different creative teams, the Hokuto side-stories fill in some of the gaps in the primary canon. Most of them are very loving additions to the continuity and are a good place to go after finishing the primary material.
Toki Gaiden: Silvery Savior follows Toki starting from the founding of the Village of Miracles and ends after his climactic final fight, providing his lens on the events of the series and his relationship with Raoh. This gaiden does a good job of understanding what fans like about the series, and has a lot of secondary character interactions that were missing in the original work such as conversations between different Ken-oh underlings.
Jagi Gaiden: Flower of Carnage follows Jagi through his childhood, interspersed with the events of canon. This gaiden does a lot to explain why Jagi ended up the way he did, provides additional context to what the Hokuto children's training looked like, and how the world changed when the apocalypse happened. cw: rape
Yuria Gaiden: The Affectionate Mother Star follows Yuria before the apocalypse happens, giving us a snapshot of domesticity with Kenshiro, a better understanding of her abilities, and illustrating how her life was always influenced by those who had fallen for her.
Juza Gaiden: The Wandering Clouds follows Juza as meanders around canonical events, giving insight into what he was like as he shifted from wandering without drive or purpose to becoming a sworn guardian to the Last Nanto General.
Rei Gaiden: Bloody Wolf's Darkness is one that I wish I could leave off of this list, but that I will include for completeness' sake. It follows Rei before his appearance in HnK as he goes through the exact same character arc that he has in canon. The city that he wanders into has a setup directly out of a porn plot, thoroughly justifying the manga's ecchi genre-tag. cw: sexual assault. repeatedly.
Souten no Ken and Souten no Ken: Regenesis
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Souten no Ken, otherwise known as Fist of the Blue Sky, is a prequel series that follows Kenshiro Kasumi, 62nd successor to Hokuto Shinken and uncle to the Kenshiro from HnK, as he has martial arts adventures and tumbles with gangsters in 1930's Shanghai. The series revisits many of the character archetypes from HnK and plays around with the same plot points in different contexts, ultimately dealing with themes of friendship and fate.
Souten no Ken is a complete manga, drawn by Tetsuo Hara with plot supervised by Buronson. Souten no Ken: Regenesis is a direct sequel that is currently ongoing, drawn by Hideki Tsuji and written by Hiroyuki Yatsu. Regenesis has been on hiatus since 2020 due to Hideki Tsuji's ongoing health problems.
While there are animes with both of these names, here I am referring specifically to the manga-- neither anime is worth your time.
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There. Now you've seen the only things that matter from both animes.
Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
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Released in Japan as "Hokuto ga Gotoku" (Like a Big Dipper), Lost Paradise is an action-adventure game from the studio behind the Yakuza/Like a Dragon/Ryu ga Gotoku series. Fans of the RGG franchise will immediately recognize the game structure and mechanics, which balance advancing the main story thread with a semi-open world where the player can stumble into comedic sidestories and play assorted minigames.
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Bartending is just one of the jobs that Kenshiro can take up in Lost Paradise.
The core story of the game features an entirely original cast, but most of the main characters of HnK show up for just long enough to have fights and cutscenes full of loving references to the source material. It's pure fanservice, in the non-horny sense of the word.
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Team RGG really knows how to nail dynamic fight intros and epic QTEs.
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage and Ken's Rage 2
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Even though some of the character design choices for this game are painfully mid-aughties (looking at you, tribal tattoo pattern Ken), this intro still goes hard.
For many years the Ken's Rage series were the definitive HnK games, and with good reason. A Musou game much like the Warriors series, you can play as most main characters from the series and mow down waves upon waves of bandits. Some may find the gameplay repetitive, but it can also be relaxing depending on how you look at it. (If you've played a Warriors game before, you know what you're getting into.)
Ken's Rage 2 in particular brings "Dream Mode" to the table, which is a "what if" story mode told from the POV of each playable character. This gives us a lot of interactions that we didn't get to see in canon (such as the delightfully shippy Jagi story featuring Amiba) and also expanding on some characters that should have gotten more screentime in the original material.
Hokuto no Ken (1986 animated movie)
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It's the movie produced by (largely) the same team as the anime, created simultaneously to the show. If you want to know what the anime would look like if it wasn't trying to stretch every yen as thin as it could, this is your ticket.
That said, there are some odd choices made to carve a 110 minute long arc out of the early manga. The movie starts with Ken receiving his iconic scars, and ends with the first confrontation with Ken-oh.
DD HnK
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This officially kicks off the "HnK comedy series" part of this list. I feel like comedy in particular can be subject to personal tastes, so keep in mind that each of these projects approaches the series from a different angle and that some may resonate better than others.
DD HnK is a comedic take on what the Hokutobros would get up to if the world didn't end. They end up working at a convenience store managed by Ryuken (voiced by Akira Kamiya, the original VA for Kenshiro), where hijinks ensue when other characters from the series show up.
It's worth noting that there are two animes and a manga with this name. The first anime is a Flash-based ONA (which is hard to find nowadays, for understandable reasons) and the second anime is the TV anime; Both of these series as well as the manga are very largely different. All series are complete, although the English fan translation for the manga is ongoing.
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DD stands for "Design Deformation", evidently.
Ichigo Aji (Strawberry Flavor)
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An average day with the Holy Emperor.
Ichigo Aji follows Souther on his quest to make some good friends. :) No really, that's more or less the premise of this spinoff.
While there are animated IA shorts at the end of every episode of DD HnK2, the meat and potatoes of this series are in the manga. The manga is ongoing (albeit on long-term hiatus) and the English fantranslation is currently incomplete (also on hiatus). Each volume of the manga also has a serious chapter following different characters from the series, serving as "mini gaidens" of sorts.
Genius Amiba's Other World Overlord Legend - Even If I Go to Another World, I Am a Genius!! Huh? Was I Mistaken...
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In what originally started as an April Fool's Joke, the Amiba Isekai is perhaps one of the most unexpected additions to this franchise. The story begins after Amiba's death at Kenshiro's hands, where he finds himself transported to a fantasy realm where magic and creatures like dragons are real. He decides to use his self-proclaimed "genius" to learn magic in lieu of the martial arts that he studied earlier.
This manga series started in 2021 and is is still ongoing, although the English fantranslation is incomplete and has been on hiatus.
End of the Century's Drama Shooting Arc
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The End of the Century's Drama Shooting Arc, more colloquially known as the Actor AU, is a retelling of the series as though it was a live-action TV show, covering the efforts and foibles of the actors and production crew as they struggle to produce the series.
The manga for this series started in 2021 alongside the Amiba Isekai and is ongoing, although the English fan translation is currently incomplete (Noticing a reoccurring trend here? a12 and Sakura Leaves, if you're out there, we really miss your work 🥹). If you can navigate the points system (new chapters are free within a few days of release) and use Google Lens, you can get a rough translation from the official Comics Zenon website.
The Winckler Dub
While not intentionally a comedy spinoff, I'm including the Winckler Dub in this section. There are apocryphal stories about this dub being produced as a means to teach Japanese schoolchildren basic English, interviews point to this dub being a sincere project to create a version of this series palatable to an English-speaking audience.
Please, just unmute this series of clips.
The only editing I did here was to append the files. They just. Speak with pauses like that.
With several downright bizarre directing decisions (Raoh is a pirate now, evidently?) and some of the strangest line-reads I've heard in an anime, this relic of an older localization industry can easily fall under "so bad it's good". Watch this with a group of friends after having a few drinks or late night at an anime convention, ideally.
The dub does not cover the whole series, instead bundling sets of 4 episodes into a series of 6 movie-length "sagas": Shin, Ray (sic), Souther, Toki, Raoh, and Kaioh.
Hokuto no Ken: Legends ReVIVE
I feel like it would be a bit disingenuous to finish this list without mentioning Legends ReVIVE, the current ongoing gacha for the franchise. (Worth noting: I am the admin for the unofficial discord server for this game, which is also the largest and most active English-speaking community for HnK.[4])
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This game is possibly one of the biggest lovenotes to the franchise as a whole, with character releases that reach into the most obscure pieces of fiction, from Last Piece to (formerly) Pachinko-only Gento practitioners. Early character models and story cutscenes were entirely asset-flips from pachinko models, but things have grown far past that in the game's past 4.5 years.
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As a part of the 40th anniversary celebration for the manga, it was mentioned that there would be a new continuation of the manga's plot featured in-game, but at the time of writing we have little elaboration on this.
For a gacha, the game is relatively F2P friendly and doesn't ask much of your time on a day-to-day basis. But at the end of the day, it is a gacha that relies on predatory monetization and exploitation of gambling addictions. Caveat emptor.
But what about [x]...?
Legend of the True Savior: this movie series is another adaptation of the manga's plot, but this one doesn't really bring anything novel to the table. The same caveats about making a movie out of the manga apply, in that some odd choices get made to get arcs to fit in a movie timespan. It's there I guess, if you can stomach the artstyle.
Shin HnK/New Fist of the North Star: is victim-blamey rape apologia. There really isn't any reason I can recommend watching it, outside maybe looking up the final fight (where Junichi Hayama's direction really stands out) and the closing song (Oasis by Gackt).
Animated Gaidens (ex Ten no Haoh, Kenshiro Den, etc): these are one of the few things I haven't seen, and for the most part they don't come up in discussion. They're probably fine, but I just don't have the knowledge to comment on them.
Live Action Movie: don't. It's not even so-bad-it's-good, just don't.
In Conclusion
I hope this guide helped take the edge off of trying to figure out how to navigate such a sprawling series, and that it was genuinely informative about both what each work entails and the general context around it. This franchise is something I've really enjoyed digging into over the years and I did my best to convey that love and enthusiasm in this guide.
I may write more meta about HnK in the future, because I absolutely have a lot more to say. There's a lot for me to go on about regarding what the series means to me and why more people should pick it up, as well as putting together standalone character analyses from assorted ramblings on Discord.
Thanks for reading!
References
[1] From running the provided link through DeepL:
Buronson: By the way, I don't read much when a work is published in book form. As far as Fist of the North Star is concerned, the second part has never been published. Interviewer: What? Not even once? You didn't read it at all? Buronson: That's right. But I read the whole book from the beginning the other day.
[2] Not to be confused with the unrelated Master Edition, which was the first attempt to bring the manga to the English market. This version is a full-color version of the original tankobon release, of which only the first 9 volumes were completed. It can be a neat novelty to check out once you're familiar with the series, but the non-Hara colorings can be a mixed bag.
[3] There is a story that this episode was so goofy that it made Hara and Buronson visit Toei in person and tell them to cut that shit out. This claim comes from the book "Our Favorite Fist of the North Star" , which is a fanbook that featured some interviews with members of the anime studio staff, with absolutely zero input from Hara and Buronson themselves. Between the fact that Hara and Buronson were both stated to have been incredibly busy with producing HnK and did not have time to watch the anime and the fact that this claim directly contradicts how they barely met in-person during the production of the series, it seems likely that this bit was made up as a gaff and/or hyperbole by the interviewee.
[4] There are also smaller, more fandom oriented, centers for discussion-- but I'm not about to link them on a post that gets recirculated publicly.
Special Thanks
@/KiliHito (discord) for helping me source the interviews, digging into the truth about the fabled Nanto Cannonball episode, and giving me context for some of HnK's influence in modern shonen.
@takis-breathing-dragon for having the Winckler Dub clips on hand and spotting some typos.
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nateascendingskies · 9 months
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A DISSERTATION ON ASTEROID CITY
Leaving a showing of Wes Anderson's latest film "Asteroid City" a few weeks ago, having pondered and puzzled over the anarchic, metatextual and science fiction vibes of the entire project, I was certain of one thing by the end.
I'm pretty sure that Wes Anderson is on the autism spectrum.
Like, there's really no other way to explain his quirky, offbeat, and matte painting filled style - the dude oozes hyperfixation and fascination with the strangest of details, and it's really proven by the way "Asteroid City" plays out.
Early on in the film, one of the three leads, junior astrologer and scientist Woodrow Steinbeck (played by Jake Ryan) is playing a name game of sorts with his fellow Junior Stargazer recipients, wherein one person mentions the name of a famous scientist or artist and the other person adds on to that, continuing in a Simon Says-like chain until it should, theoretically, be hard to follow.
After several names have been said and it's Woodrow's turn again, one of the other stargazers challenges him to name all of the people previously mentioned - in reverse order. He does it flawlessly. Since I know others on the spectrum that could do that with the entire alphabet at a young age, you can probably see where I'm getting at.
Later on in the film, following a military quarantine following the inexplicable arrival of an alien to the titular small town, we see the same stargazers - and what might they be doing now, you might ask? Continuing the same game with gleeful abandon and now throwing celebrities like Marilyn Monroe into the mix.
Of course, this isn't the only spectacularly bizarre detail that appears or re-appears throughout the course of the film. At three separate occasions, a slapstick worthy police chase and shootout involving no less than three vehicles passes through the main road of the town, with little acknowledgment from those who see it other than a shrug. It's not necessarily how the gag plays out in this case, though - rather, it's how it's set up and visually portrayed - almost with a sense of lucid unreality and focus on the particulars of what is happening. It's as if Anderson is relishing in the outright batshit insanity of it all - much like the entirety of the food critic hostage situation segment in The French Dispatch and the entirety of Fantastic Mr. Fox, two of his other works.
When you throw in various similarly odd running jokes involving a dancing roadrunner, someone burning their hand on a patterned griddle, a literal highway overpass to nowhere, real estate being sold from a vending machine, a Rod Serling style-guide who presents the play within a film setup in a loving tribute to the creation of such arts (and even intrudes on the "play's" narrative at one point by pure accidental happenstance), and nuclear bomb tests, it's easy to see why a case could be made for Wes' clear and uniquely neurodiverse position on the spectrum. Everything about "Asteroid City" might seem random at first glance, but there's a clear rhyme and reason to Wes Anderson's madness and how the entire narrative works and plays out.
Neurodivergent brains function in a state that is far from what might be considered societally normal or typical, tending to be drawn towards particular obsessive interests and playing with them in a style or voice that is uniquely their own. Over the course of a few decades, I have developed mine - with a love of films being among them. So, when I see a film like "Asteroid City" and admire its tonal consistency with such a wildly inconsistent set of characters and situations, having a clear love of well placed 50's and 60's musical needle drops and a song about the arrival of a benevolent alien told in an appropriately folksy style (Anderson even apologizes to the inspiration behind the song in the end credits for good comedic measure) in the same manner as my love of motorsports, Pixar films, and the scores of James Horner, I can only once again come to one conclusion.
I'm absolutely sure that Wes Anderson is on the autism spectrum.
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stevecoven · 1 year
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A Dozen Griffin Eggs
Steve sneaks out early to prepare a surprise for Murph. When he comes back, Murph is in tears.
~2k words, Steve (The Owl House) x Murph Hearthstone (OC). Established relationship, hurt/comfort, post-DoU, no major canon spoilers, no content warnings
The sun had barely dragged itself up over the rooftops of Bonesborough but Steve had already been awake for hours. The huge canvas bag cradled in his arms was full to the brim with goodies from the morning market - griffin eggs, manticore bacon, and fresh bread straight from the dragon’s-belly oven - and he had to stop several times in the middle of the street and re-adjust his grip so that nothing tumbled out. He should have brought two bags.
It had still been dark when he carefully extracted himself (a little reluctantly) from Murph’s sleeping embrace and snuck out of his mother’s house that morning, silent as a ghost. Nobody else was even there - Mattholomule was camping with friends that weekend, and his mom and stepdad were out of town visiting friends until that evening - but he hadn’t wanted to risk waking Murph and ruining the surprise. He’d been planning this for over a week and he was bubbling with excitement. He pictured Murph, still bundled up in bed and sleep-groggy (they never could manage mornings like he could) and the look on their face when he came in, tray in hand, with the most delicious homemade breakfast they’d ever seen. Or maybe they’d find him in the kitchen, lured down by the smell of sizzling bacon and fresh coffee, and hug him from behind as he stood over the stove and say this is so sweet, thank you, you shouldn’t have. Just the thought of their arms around him and their voice full of affection and admiration made his ears flush pink.  A little skip crept into his step as he made his way back through the streets to his old family home. He was going to win so many boyfriend points for this.
The curtains in the downstairs window were already drawn back as he came up the path. Damnit. Murph was up. Looks like he’d have to give away his surprise a little earlier than he’d hoped. Balancing the heaving bag of groceries precariously against his shoulder as he used his other hand to push the front door open, he called out into the house.
“Murph? Sorry I left early this morning, I went into town to get-”
Something felt off immediately. Normally he couldn’t get both feet inside the door before Murph materialised, kisses at the ready. The only exception was if they were working in the kitchen, and even then they’d call out to him right away (and that couldn’t be an option today. Steve had intentionally hidden all the frying pans to prevent Murph from getting their own breakfast-related ideas while he was gone).
“Murph?”
He called a little louder, in case they were still upstairs in his old childhood bedroom, or maybe in the shower. He took a few more steps down the hall towards the kitchen and passed by the doorway to the living room, glancing in as he went.
“What the-”
The living room was a mess. Chairs had been upended and the big fur rug had been snarled into a heap and thrown aside. Books and ornaments lay scattered on the floor below the windowsill. A broken mug lay in shards in the doorway. In the centre of the chaos, Murph lay in a crumpled, shaking heap, still in their pyjamas. Their hair was a wild mane around their head, not yet brushed and tamed that morning, and the sleeve of their shirt was stained with a splash of red. 
“MURPH!”
The bag of groceries tumbled to the floor with a thud, items spilling everywhere as Steve flew across the room. He hurled himself onto his knees and scooped up as much of Murph as he could fit in his arms. To his horror, as he lifted them up, not all of their body parts came with them; their prosthetic arms, newly-fitted and fashioned from Abomination matter, had almost completely destabilised and were pooling around them in puddles of amorphous goo. Thick tendrils of the stuff squelched between his fingers, stretching like putty as he pulled Murph closer to him and turned their head to face him. Their face was sodden with tears and their eyes had a glassy, lost look in them until they heard his voice.
“…Steve?”
They sounded very far away.
“Murph! What happened? Are you okay?!”
Steve’s mind was racing. Had someone broken in? He’d been gone for less than thirty minutes. Had the attacker specifically waited until he was gone? Or was he meant to be the target? Despite both of them having a hand in saving the day against Emperor Belos and then The Collector, not everyone considered them local heroes. But for someone to go this far? 
Murph looked up at him through tangled knots of hair, and the glazed look cleared away as their eyes blinked with recognition, then widened with realisation, and their whole face crumpled up as they started to sob again.
“Steve, Steve! I- you were gone…I woke up a-and you-you weren’t there…I thought- I-I thought…”
Oh, Titan. Stupid, stupid Steve. He’d been so caught up in his grand ideas of a big surprise, the excitement of sneaking around the house in the night, daydreaming about how pleased they’d be with his one-month anniversary gift, that he hadn’t even thought. Murph got anxious and restless if he came home even five minutes later than he said he would. When they woke up in the middle of the night, screaming and sweating and with no idea where they were, the first thing they did every time without fail was reach out for him. Of course waking up to an empty bed and an empty house, one they hadn’t fully acclimatised to yet, would make them panic. Of course, with the trauma of the Day of Unity and the ensuing chaos barely a few months behind them, they would assume the worst possible scenario. Of course they’d turn the whole house upside down trying to find a trace of him. Stupid.
Murph pressed their torso into his as tightly as they could and buried their face in the collar of his sweater. The strands of Abomination goo still attached to their scarred stumps pulsed feebly. The exposed skin underneath was red-raw and bloody from where a lot of healing was still needed. He tightened his grip around them and flinched when he felt just how much they were shaking. He could feel their heartbeat pounding loud enough to make his teeth rattle.
“I’m so sorry,” Murph’s voice was thick from crying so much and it quavered in time with their trembling bottom lip. “I panicked, I panicked, I’m so sorry Steve, I thought you were- you were gone- someone took you away from me-”
Another round of sobs wracked their body and a wave of shame washed over him. A surprise breakfast seemed like a pathetic, childish excuse for causing all this distress. They were going to be so mad at him for being so thoughtless. Negative boyfriend points for Steve. He pressed a flurry of kisses into Murph’s swollen, puffy cheeks and rocked them gently back and forth in time with their sobs, whispering fervently into their hair as their ragged breathing started to smooth out. 
“Oh, Murph, Murph, it’s okay, I’m here - I’m here, Murph. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you - I didn’t think. Oh Titan, I’m so sorry. I just wanted to give you a nice surprise, that’s all.”
The soothing motion of the rocking combined with the sound of his voice seemed to calm Murph down a little. The full-body spasms subsided, and as they regained their composure, the pool of Abomination goo around them started to solidify and return to its intended form, twisting back into thick ropes and fibres, and then morphing back into a pair of mottled purple arms. As soon as they had reformed, right down to the slender fingertips, the arms immediately wrapped around Steve’s waist and squeezed tight. They were still hot from the magical energy that powered them and he could feel the warmth seeping through his clothing. 
“Not my idea of a nice surprise,” Murph mumbled into his collarbone. The crying had stopped but they were still trembling in his arms.
Steve bit down hard on his lip to stop his own eyes filling up with tears. He always had been a sympathetic crier. He gave them one last comforting kiss on the forehead then drew back, wearing the best reassuring smile he could muster. 
“I know, I know, and I’m sorry, I didn’t think it through. I figured I’d be back long before you woke up and everything would be ready-”
“Ready? Ready for what?”
He averted his gaze and his face flushed in embarrassment. It sounded so silly now.
“I…I wanted to make you breakfast. Y’know, the whole works. Because you always do all the cooking, and you’re so good at it, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to do something in return…a-and I thought today would be nice, because it’s just us two here and it’s…y’know, it’s been a whole month since we-”
He trailed off, very aware of how red he must be. Did people even celebrate one-month anniversaries? Or was that just a thing for middle-schoolers? Murph was going to chew him to pieces for sure.
“Really? For our one-month anniversary?”
Steve nodded, bracing himself for outrage at worst and ridicule at best. To his surprise, Murph let out a laugh, wet and snotty from all the crying, and nestled their face into his chest.
“That’s actually really cute, Steve. I feel so stupid now,” they murmured, muffled by the fabric. “I didn’t think you’d... Augh, Titan, I should have just waited for you to come back like a normal person would. I’m so sorry Steve, I’ve made such a mess and I spoiled your surprise - oh, you’re so sweet, Steve, really, that was such a lovely idea, I love you so much-”
The words were tumbling out of them at a rate of knots. Murph took Steve’s face in their shaking, still-warm hands and kissed him one, two, three times, one for each of the moles on his face, and then a fourth on the lips. Even in the absolute state they were currently in, Steve couldn’t help but remark to himself that he loved them more than anything else on the Boiling Isles. He pressed his own hand against theirs, drawing reassuring circles over their knuckles with his thumb, and leaned in for another gentle kiss.
“No no, don’t apologise. It’s okay, Murph. I’m the one who messed up this time. You’ve every right to be mad at me, if you want to be. And there’s no real harm done, okay? I don’t think Mom liked that mug very much anyway.”
Murph laughed softly into the side of his face. The tears on their cheeks had finally started to dry.
“I’m not mad at you, Steve, I promise. Just don’t ever do it again, okay? Don’t ever just… leave like that.”
Their voice was still small and sad when they said it, but Steve knew better than to take it lightly. It was absolutely a threat and he had no interest in incurring Murph’s wrath or distress again any time soon. 
“I promise I’ll leave a note next time.” 
Steve wrapped his arms around Murph once more and pulled them into the tightest, most loving hug he could manage. They returned the action in earnest, sinking into him like it was the most natural fit in the world.
“Why don’t you go have a shower and get dressed, yeah? I’ll get this cleaned up. And then I’m gonna start cooking, and you’d best have your best surprised face ready when it’s done.”
Murph craned their head over Steve’s shoulder to look behind him. 
“You might need to get some more griffin eggs first.”
Steve shifted round to look where they were pointing. The bag of groceries, long since forgotten, lay where it had been dropped in the hallway, half the contents strewn in its wake. A bright-orange syrupy patch of liquid had managed to ooze through the lining of the bag and was now making its way into his mother’s favourite rug. He groaned, but his resolve was sturdy.
He was going to make Murph breakfast today even if it was the last thing he did, and he was going to earn himself so many boyfriend points.
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starsnheroes · 7 months
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"I got you a ring pop." He holds it to the other, it's already out of it's wrapper and everything. Peter was licking his own watermelon sour flavor (is it on his left hand? but his index finger.. what does this mean? nothing of course.)
"Cherry is your favorite right?" It's just an innocent ring pop. Nothing more, nothing less. (Or is it?)
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It was at Peter Parker's apartment that he had decided to roost. Taking the stack of papers, tucked in those ugly yellow folders, and brought it HOME ⸻ this place that was no longer precisely a destination; the meaning of the very word changed.
TO FOCUS ON THAT FEELING ⸻ HOME WITH A DIFFERENT MEANING. Clint would find himself pondering, often in moments like this (sitting down, leant over a collection of papers). Today specifically he's at the small table that has been designated the dining table, which on several days was the catch all table.
Clint often disposed many objects at this table, anywhere from packages to arrow-making kits (all to be dealt with at a later). THIS PLACE HAD BECAME A HOME ⸻ But THE HOME was a different place entirely; lacking of, in fact, being a place at all. IT WAS A PERSON, IT WAS BECOMING PETER.
Another one of those things that he pondered was how had he GOTTEN SO LUCKY. It sure wasn't in his nature of luck to end up completely smitten (no, that part was par for the course) but it wasn't in his nature for that to last without any major SCREW UPS or something hindering them.
LIKE ⸻ you know, he wasn't going to get into the old aches. Clint needed to get this paperwork done, because YOU ARE THE TEAM LEADER ⸺ AND ⸺ NEED TO SET AN EXAMPLE. Being all official, government approved and city sanctioned, meant doing paperwork. The Avengers had that too; but the point standing that being all OFFICIAL meant heaps of paperwork.
Actually, he just needed to do this before Helen started holding hostage, or booking him for more interviews (who ever let him open his mouth made a mistake). ⸻ DISTRACTION !!
The front door opens, with Peter wandering in with a few re-usable tote bag in arm, returning from a grocery run. FINALLY ⸻ PETER'S WHINE ABOUT HAVING NOTHING IN THE FRIDGE FOR WEEKS (it's cause he has been mooching off the fridge at their brooklyn home which one of them needed to say something and move in to one apartment or another).
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Clint only mumbles a greeting, leaning over to the side that Peter come up on, letting him kiss him before focus is put back onto the paperwork (with much more frustration now). He listens to his talkative love (OH GOSH HOW HE LOVES HIM) go on about three and a half tangents while he restocks his own kitchen. ❝ Oh, yup, that's great, baby. ❞ He'll input here-there, until Peter's back at his side again interrupting Clint's train of thought as he's trying to transcribe Eegro's writing (which why the hell did whatever Eegro was need to write reports as well).
He's doing that crouch that he liked to do, which why hadn't Peter jut pulled up a chair. HE'S SO GODDAMN RIDICULOUS. A red ⸺ A RED RING POP ⸺ is presented in front of him.
"I got you a ring pop."
YES, HE SEES THAT. There's other things that he has clocked because Hawkeye was not literal but to some degree, Clint's trained himself in visual perception. KNOWING HOW TO TAKEN IN A SIGHT, A SCENE, AT A GLANCE. Picking up on small things, points where an arrow might cause a chain reaction, and so on. Something anyone can do with practice. THE OTHER THINGS BEING ⸻ The crouched position at his side, could almost be a kneel if he squinted really tight ⸺ and ⸺ Peter's got his own RING POP on his left hand (index finger but that's probably because it fit better).
"Cherry is your favorite right?"
Clint sets his pen down, which was a poor choice to work with because he's got scribbles of pen ink drawn over his palms whenever the ballpoint would die on him and he couldn't just scribble on government documents. LOOK HE'S TAKING HIS JOB SERIOUSLY (as much as Peter gets to hear Clint bitch about a system he hates, and worrying that he has become a part of the system; mourning the days of old).
IT'S NOT A PROPOSAL ⸻ but there's that smile on Peter's face, all too innocent that makes Clint pause for a moment. THEY HAD JUST CELEBRATED AN ANNIVERSARY NOT ALL THAT LONG AGO. They had been working well enough together, Mayday was walking and talking.
He takes the ring pop, give it a lick. ARIFITICAL FLAVOUR ⸻ HIS FAVORITE.
❝ Oh gosh, is the big bad, be your boyfriend question? ⸺ You know I had thought we were already doing that, I mean what I am doing here? Was I not your boyfriend already? 'Causse if not, boy, do I feel embarrassed. I thought we had a great thing going here. ❞ He jokes, but that was something couples considered after a time and they really did need to have the talk about a permanent living situation. Peter's place was better, Mayday was going to want and need her own room. In the bedroom with Clint and Peter, or the couch was not ideal or permanently situation for a growing kid.
Gosh, who could he ask on the top floor that he move them to lower apartments (his apartment with the loft) and made a lot of barbecue for the neighbors, for some light construction to make a larger apartment on the top for room for. . . FAMILY.
❝ Sure thing, baby, I'll be your boyfriend. ❞ AND MORE, EVENTUALLY. Sooner than later. Keep asking him.
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not-poignant · 1 year
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🤯, 🤭 & 💔 for the kinkmeme
🤯 What's a genre you struggle with as a writer (ex. romance, action, etc.)?
The ones I'm not writing, lmao.
Okay but in all seriousness, I would say I struggle with mysteries, because I don't enjoy them in general. (I'm that person who always looks up the answer so I don't have to deal with the 'mystery' part which I generally find incredibly boring, so no, I can't really write the genre either). Ditto westerns.
I actually don't think I really struggle with romance, contemporary, action, fantasy, adventure, science fiction, erotica etc. I don't even struggle with hard science fiction. I don't think I'd struggle that much with horror or psychological or even supernatural thriller. Every time I've written elements of horror or thriller genres into my works, it's been pretty well-received actually. I'm just not really drawn to it. Genres are pretty easy to 'get' frankly (I did a media degree, I have done tertiary study of genre, so...formulas I understand). I struggle less with genre and more with base conceptuals that can be found in any genre - for example, I struggle with plot-based over character-based storylines. And that's true in any genre.
Oh! Actually I think maybe I struggle with procedurals and 'case of the week' style writing. That's what Eversion was supposed to be, and I profoundly did not like doing it, so basically removed Connor from the case and told a different story, lol, so I think that's one too!
🤭 Do you have a favorite tag to use when posting your works?
It's two and they go hand in hand: Angst and hurt/comfort. I think they're on just about every single one of my works. And they're usually among the first two I add.
💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?
Hmmm.
Strange Sights because it represents a time in my life that was extremely damaging for me, to the point where I nearly have deleted it several times (I won't though, it doesn't hurt in the same way anymore - time heals some wounds and all that).
All of The Ice Plague because it just did so badly re: engagement (Underline the Black is about to eclipse TIP 3 for kudos in almost a quarter of the time and far less words, lol, sigh), and it became the death knell of the Fae Tales canon, which was supposed to continue. I grieved that for years, on and off, until I finally accepted reality. In TIP 1, we could say it was just...teething issues. In TIP 2 (which did worse than TIP 1) we could be like 'oh well, these things happen.' In TIP 3, which has done the worst of any long fic I've ever written, across two separate accounts, I just put my head in my hands and never felt further away from trying to draw in readers and keeping my career going. I can't tell you how many times I nearly quit.
(I had some great times writing it, but I also had a lot of 'why am I even still doing this to myself' times while writing it too, and then I'd remember the readers that were engaging with it and commenting on it, and I'd remember like... I need to make a living, and I'd also remember that the characters deserved their happy ending, and I'd keep going).
Honestly, nothing else really comes close to TIP, especially TIP 3. I actually felt relieved when it ended. Everything I've written since has been more popular and drawn in more people. It speaks for itself. It just makes me sad as well, that proportionately, less than 1/7 of the readers of Game Theory ever got to read Augus and Gwyn's true happy ending and epilogue, in All that We Were, All That We Will Ever Be. It's just a massive drop off overall, and makes me feel like I let folks down.
-
From the fandom meme
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Text
More than just a game
Warnings: dark elements including noncon and rape, oral, fingering, doxxing, stalking, and other explicit content. 
This is dark!Jake Jensen and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.
Summary: You find a new gaming buddy but he sees you as more than that.
Note: So this is my first Jake Jensen fic and it was lots of fun so let me know what you think and hope you enjoy. :D
Thank you. Love you guys!
As always, if you can, please leave some feedback, like and reblog <3
Special shout-out to @navybrat817​ for helping me with this idea
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After too many nights scrolling through subreddits and searching for something to keep you distracted, you decided to bite the hook. Several other redditors agreed to hop on Minecraft and it had been a while since you logged in. You missed the almost relaxing ritual of mining and building.
You joined the chat, quick to hit the little microphone emblem as you listened to the voices in your headset. You learned long ago to keep your mic muted on the servers, especially with strangers. The last time you dared to speak up as a woman in a game chat, your DMs had become so overwhelmed you deleted and started a new account on Discord and changed your ID on Steam.
You were all given your tasks as players called out coordinates and you kept to chopping up the side of a mountain. You mostly worked alone, chatting through text instead of voice chat. As you placed a crafting table in your little mine, another player, JJ-Smooth, popped up and dropped some iron for you. 
He stayed close but you didn’t mind. A lot of players tried to work together the deeper they got and you were used to it. As you uncovered some lava, he dumped water before you could get burned and helped you hack up the obsidian. 
He thanked you on the voice chat but you knew any courtesy in return would earn you the attention of the entire server. So you dropped some gold for him and went on your way.
“I hear a zombie,” he warned.
You turned to hack up the undead before it could get you, only to be shot by a skeleton hidden on the next level. Another appeared and you died before you could hide, the bony villain killed by your ally as you watched your possession scatter over the death screen.
“Hey, I got your stuff,” he said as you loaded back up, “I’ll find you.”
You typed quickly in the chat, ‘sorry, mic busted, give me your coordinates and I’ll come to you.’
You waited as ‘JJ-Smooth is typing…’ appeared at the bottom and finally he sent the numbers. You hopped over the blocky hills and through the forests until you found the mine again. He was just outside and handed over all your tools and ration. He headed back into the mine and you followed him. This time, you began your own path in the opposite direction.
Before you knew it, you’d lost track of time. You sat back as you realised it was only you and JJ on the server. The silence should have tipped you off earlier. He was the host and you felt super awkward for staying so long. You typed that you were logging off for the night and thanked him. 
You hit the keyboard with your knuckle and yawned as you opened the screen, 
“God, it’s late,” you muttered.
“Hello?” he said.
Your eyes rounded as you looked at the mic symbol and the lack of red line made you cringe. You’d hit an extra button without noticing.
“Um, hi, sorry, I just--”
“Mic busted, huh?” he asked.
“No, I--” you didn’t know what to say, “anyways, I should--”
“So, you’re a chick? Is that why you mute?”
“Uh, well, it’s just… easier, sorry, I--” even if you weren’t trying to hide from gamer dudes, you weren’t the best at conversation.
“A gamer girl, nice,” he said and you sighed, “sorry, that sounded weird, didn’t it?”
“Mhmm,” you touched your bottom lip as you cupped your chin, “it’s late, I have to work tomorrow.”
“You comin’ back?” he asked, almost hopeful.
“I don’t know--”
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said abruptly, “promise, lips sealed.”
“I really don’t know if I can do this too much, I usually work early mornings so… yeah,” you said.
“I get it but you know you’re always welcome, hope you don’t mind if I send you an invite now and then. No pressure,” he offered.
“Uh, sure,” you shrugged, “okay, yeah, good night.”
You left the chat quickly and pulled off your headset. Shit.
‘I’m Jake by the way,’ a pm popped up, ‘gg.’
You typed back, ‘gg, it was fun’ and quickly logged out. You sat back and rubbed your eyes. Well, he didn’t seem like a total creep, maybe just a bit awkward but so were you. You shut down for the night and stretched out as you switched off the lamp. You were going to pay for your session in the morning.
🎮
A few nights later you got an invite to the server. You debated it but as it was Friday, you decided to make good use of the PC you’d saved up forever to build. You spawned in the middle of nowhere and built a bed before you found the half-finished settlement. You joined the chat but you must have been early as you were the only one there.
You headed back to the same mine, some work done since the first night, and laid your torches as you ventured into the depths. You jumped in your seat as a voice broke your peace.
“I don’t think anyone else is gonna join,” JJ-Smooth, or Jensen said, “you think maybe you’ll unmute?”
You stopped your mining and stared at the screen. You hovered over the mic button and re-read his name, he was the only other one there. You clicked and gave a strained smile to the screen.
“So, um, what’s the goal tonight?” you asked.
“Get some materials and go back to the settlement, keep building, oh, maybe we could try a portal, you ever gone to the nether?” he said but before you could reply he kept on, “shit, I shouldn’t assume, you seem like an experienced player.”
“Yeah, a few times, but I’m more a casual miner,” you went back to harvesting stone and ore.
“Ah,” he said, and it was silent for a moment, “so, you work again in the morning?”
“Not tomorrow,” you said as you focused on the game, “daycare isn’t open on the weekends.”
“A daycare, huh? That sounds fun, I love kids… not in a weird way but you know, I… urgh, I have a niece,” he said with a nervous chuckle, “nah, that’s cool though, sounds more fun than my gig.”
“Oh?” you turned and kept your axe moving.
“IT. You know, some people would be like ‘hey Jensen, why do you spend all your free time staring at a screen when that’s what you do at work?’” he scoffed, “well, who says I’m not mining there too.”
You wrinkled your forehead and gave a small laugh. He was rambling and it was kinda odd. You were happy for once not to be the strange one.
“But anyway,” he said, “I found lots of diamond over here. If we get some lapis lazuli we can build an enchanting table and get some sick armour.”
“Awesome,” you pressed your fingertips to your lip as you leaned on your elbow, “should try to head back before dark…”
“Hard to tell down here. How about you mine and I’ll keep an eye out for monsters?” he offered.
“Sure,” you agreed as he came onto your screen, “that works.”
🎮
Another week went by and you ventured back into the server a few times but not for very long as late nights did not mix with young children. The next weekend, you joined again on Saturday night and like the last few times it was just you and Jensen. You wondered why no one else was joining when the subreddit was so popular but you didn’t worry about it for long.
You mostly played in silence, Jensen did most of the talking and it was never about anything more than the game or his niece’s last soccer game. That night when you left the game, he kept typing on Discord.
‘I like playing with you,’ his message blipped up.
‘Same, thx.’
‘Really, you’re awesome.’
‘Thx :) Tired, gotta sleep.’
‘Sweet dreams.’
‘Night.’
You changed your status to offline and dragged yourself to bed. You opened your phone as you laid in the dark and went to the subreddit, you scrolled through the builds and screenshots of other people’s catastrophes. 
You came to Jensen’s last invite post from that night but all the comments complained that the world code was incorrect. Hmm, you should tell him next time.
You blackened your cell and plopped it on your night table. You rolled over and buried your face in the pillow, the light still etched into your vision. You fell asleep quickly and woke the next day to another invite from Jensen.
‘How about some Fortnite? If you’re into it?’
‘Srry, can’t, my mom’s expecting me for lunch.’
‘2 bad, maybe later.’
‘Maybe’.
You got ready to go see your mother for your usual Sunday afternoon visit and it went by like any other. When she asked you what you’d been up to, you didn’t mention the gaming, she was never a fan of it. When you got back home, Jensen was messaging you again. You didn’t open the notification and settled in to catch up on some streaming before another week of work.
Monday hit you like a train and you were glad you hadn’t spent the night mining again. If you had, you doubted you’d even be able to open your eyes. You got to the daycare centre and welcomed in the kids. You got them set up for the morning snack then cleaned up as Sandy took them over to the reading circle.
You wiped the tables and then did some painting before you went out for some play time in the yard. As you watched several of the children on the swings, you glanced around. There was a man across the street. You squinted through the chain link as he seemed to be watching but assured yourself it was nothing as he quickly headed for the corner and disappeared.
Inside, the kids were due for quiet time, some napped and those who didn’t, stared at the ceiling and yawned. You could have joined them but knew that wouldn’t be acceptable. The end of the day came and you helped the kids pack up their paintings and their sweaters. You waited in the yard with them as the parents showed up and handed them off one by one.
You waved to Danika as she clung to her mother and your eye was once more drawn beyond the chain link. The same faded grey jacket, the same glasses, and the hat with the frayed brim. It was a better look at the man. Was he looking at you? Why on earth was he hanging around outside a daycare?
“Sandy,” you turned and lowered your voice as she neared, “see that man?”
She peeked over and shrugged, “which one? The guy crossing the street?”
You looked up again and like before, he was walking away casually as if he hadn’t just been staring through the fence. You shook your head and huffed. “Sorry, never mind.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” she waved her fingers, “come on, let’s clean up.”
With the kids all sorted out, you went back in and tidied up the last of their mess. You and Sandy were friendly but like with any, you weren’t very talkative. You never really knew what to say but you were never unkind.
You pulled on your jacket and checked your purse for your phone and wallet. You checked the time and turned off the lights. You bid Sandy goodbye as she headed for her SUV and you took your usual route down the sidewalk towards your bus stop. 
You stopped short as the man was there. You were paranoid, he must just be waiting for the same route. You approached and he turned to watch you as you sat on the bench. He smiled and the dread sank deep in your chest. 
His rectangular glasses gave light to his blue eyes and a goatee trimmed his jaw. He was tall and well-built, you could tell even under his comic book tee. He was going to talk to you, another weirdo in the city.
“Hey,” his voice was chillingly familiar, “how was your day?”
You stared at him and blinked cluelessly. You looked around, it was only the two of you. You opened your mouth but you had to be wrong. He said your name and you winced.
“Jensen?” you breathed as you stood and squeezed the strap of your bag, “why? How--?”
“You weren’t answering me, I was worried,” he said, “just making sure you’re okay.”
“What the-- I don’t understand how--” He stepped closer and you backed up against the bench. “Don’t, I’ll scream.”
“Scream? Why? I’m just-- You know me, it’s me, Jensen.”
“You doxxed me?” you snapped, “what the hell?”
“No, I didn’t-- I’m just checking on you--”
“I don’t know you,” you said as your heart began to race, “so please, leave me alone,” you edged away from him, “and don’t message me again.”
You sprinted across the street and as you came up on the curb, you looked back at him. He watched you but didn’t follow. You could tell from there he wasn’t happy but the brim of his cap shadowed most of his face so you couldn’t guess if it was hurt or anger. You quickly spun away and continued down the next street to the nearest stop.
You couldn’t believe he’d just shown up like that. You couldn’t believe he would think that was okay. You couldn’t believe he’d think that much about you.
🎮
You blocked Jensen on Discord and left his world on Minecraft. That night you were shaky and nervous, afraid that he would show up at your apartment. Did he know where you lived? He must if he could figure out where you worked.
You didn’t open Steam that night. You paced your small apartment, jumping at every noise. Sleep didn’t come easily but in shallow spurts that left you even more tired. You watched over your shoulder as you walked to your stop and boarded with one eye on the door.
Work was little better as you found yourself distracted in the room full of toddlers. Sandy asked if you were okay as you kneaded play-do violently. You shook yourself out of your paranoia and assured her you were only short on sleep, not a complete lie.
You took out your phone when you stepped out for a small break. Your mom had called but you would have to get back to her when you had two hours to waste. There was another notification, that one from Discord, a friend request from JJ-NoRematch. It wasn’t hard to guess who it was and you declined it right away.
There were several others from Jensen, too. He followed your Insta, blocked; he followed your mostly empty twitter, blocked; and he even commented on your LinkedIn like a weird. You closed your phone and took a breath before you headed back into the kids, their voices rising in their excitement to go outside.
In the yard, you had another look around, expecting to see him there on the other side of the fence. You were slightly relieved when he wasn’t but still on edge. You joined a game of tag then watched several of the kids line up for the slide. You lost yourself in your job as you told yourself he must have gotten the hint, at least not to bother you irl.
Just like the day before, and every day, you left work and headed for your stop. He wasn’t there either and you sat down and phoned your mom, hanging up as the bus pulled up with a promise to call her again when you were home. At home, you felt almost normal again and checked your notifications; no more follows, no more requests, nothing.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday passed in a similar fashion. Each saw your anxieties less than the day before. You even resolved to open Steam and start a new world for yourself. You spent hours mining and almost fell asleep in your chair. When you nearly tipped over, you decided it was time for bed.
You slept better than you had all week and woke up before noon. You wanted to log right back on but you had life to deal with; groceries, cleaning, and of course, making that call to your mother you’d delayed the night before. After all that, you felt accomplished and you decided to treat yourself to take out, a rare divulgence.
You called the local Chinese eatery and waited eagerly for your feast as you turned on a new episode of your current binge. You played on your phone until the battery was low and had enough juice to buzz up the delivery man. You dug for your wallet as you went to the door and unlocked it without looking up.
“How much--” you asked as you opened the door.
Your eyes met a familiar pair, two blue gems behind a pair of narrow glasses. Jensen wore the same cap and held the paper bag of take-out with a smile. You grabbed the door and tried to swing it shut but he was too quick as he slapped a large hand against the peeling paint.
“It’s on me,” he said, “I love spare ribs.”
“What the--” you gasped as you pushed on the door helplessly, “please go away.”
“You’re not answering me,” he said as he stepped closer and forced you back as his body brushed against yours, “you blocked me and I can’t even get a hey, Jensen, how are you?”
“I don’t want you here,” you tried to shove him and he shouldered you away easily, “get out!”
He slammed the door and you flinched. He put the bag down on the corner table and reached back to twist the lock without a look. His eyes roved around your entryway and further into your apartment. He smiled as they stilled and focused on you.
“This place is cute… like you,” he said and you heard a slight hesitation in his voice.
You swallowed and backed away from him. You spun on your heel and ran for your couch. You reached over the back to your phone and unlocked it as the battery icon flashed. You had just enough juice to make the call. You dialed as you turned back to him.
“I’m calling the police so you b-better l-leave,” you warned as your voice and hands shook, “I me--”
He was quick and before you could pull away, he swiped your cell out of your hand. He scoffed and tossed it across the room. It hit the wall and landed screen down on the hardwood. You bit down and pressed yourself to the couch. You stared at him and kicked yourself forward as you tried to slip past him. He caught you and wrestled you back into the front room.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked calmly as you struggled in his grasp, “I’ve been nothing but nice to you.”
“N-no, you’re-- you-- let me go,” you stammered as he angled you around the couch. He pushed you down so you bounced on the cushion. You tried to push yourself up and he pointed his finger in your face and wagged it. 
“No, you stay,” he growled and wiped his other hand on his jeans. He was nervous, even if he was angry.
“Please, why-- what do you want?” you grasped the cushion and hovered at the edge of the couch.
He sighed and sat in the chair. He took his hat off and set it on the table as he ran his fingers through his short hair. 
“Good question,” he said as his jaw squared and his eyes turned to pinpoints, “better one, why did you block me?”
“Are you serious? You-- you--” you struggled to get your words out, your voice even more splintered by your fear, “you doxxed me, you came to-- to my work-- and…”
“I thought we were getting along. I thought you liked me,” he said with a frown, “I really did, you sure acted like it and-- I only wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“But why wouldn’t I be? I--” you shivered and crossed your arms as you withered beneath his gaze, “Jensen, this was only supposed to be online.”
He scoffed and stomped his boot on the floor. He shook his head as he looked to the ceiling and his anger bulged along his temple. He tilted his head and looked at you again.
“You know, for years, I have been a nice guy, I am a nice guy,” he pushed his shoulders to his ears as he threw his hand out, “I’m so patient and caring and you girls, you don’t even give me a second look.”
“Jensen--”
“No, really, I mean look at you, you’re no supermodel and yet it’s the same thing, ‘let’s just be friends’,” he spat, “but I watch guys all the time treat women like shit and they don’t have any trouble at all, they got them hanging off of them and I’m a creep for giving them a compliment or opening the door--”
“I don’t… know you,” you eked out, “you have to understand--”
“I don’t understand,” he stood abruptly, “I’m done trying to understand.”
He pulled his jacket open and slid it down his arms. You watched him sling it over the chair and as he turned back to you, you stood. He caught your shoulders and held you in place. His strength was plain in his grip as he squeezed then slowly moved his hands to cradle your face.
“I just wanna be nice,” he said as he leaned in. You tried to pull away but he moved a hand around the back of your head and forced your lips against his. He poked his tongue inside your mouth roughly as you tried to shove him away. Finally, he parted, his hands still firmly around your head, “wasn’t that nice?”
“Please,” you begged as he ran his thumb over your bottom lip.
His eyes searched your face as you stared back at him in terror. He sighed and dropped his hands back to your shoulders. He pushed you down to the sofa harshly and backed away.
“Fine, I won’t be nice,” he snarled as he took his glasses off and folded them carefully. He put them on the table beside his cap and twined his fingers together, loudly cracking his knuckles.
You blinked at him as your eyes grew glossy. You brought your legs up under you and pressed yourself to the back of the couch. You grasped the upholstery and turned as you launched yourself over to the other side. You stumbled as you landed on your feet and ran for the door.
You were yanked back as he snaked his arms around you and took you off your feet. You kicked out and screamed but it was cut off by his palm as he kept one arm around your middle. You scratched at his hand as he dragged you back to the couch. He pushed you face down onto the cushions and planted his knee in the middle of your back, slipping his hand away as he put enough weight on you to keep your voice suffocated.
“Listen, I know I look like some IT nerd but I’m a lot more than that, now don’t make me hurt you,” he played with your hair as he smiled down at you, “you try that again and I will shut you up and if someone hears you, I can take care of them too.”
You sniffed as tears pricked in your eyes and nodded frantically as it felt as if he would snap your spine. He pushed off of you and you stayed as you were, paralysed with fear. He sat and unlaced his boots one at a time. He looked up as he set them neatly beside the foot of the chair and he bent to catch your eye.
“Well?” he pointed at you and traced the line of your body in the air, “let’s go.”
You stared at him dumbly and he stood to pull his tee over his head. His torso was sculpted perfectly and his chest trimmed with hair that trailed all the way down to his pants. He stepped forward and tugged at the back of your shirt.
“You want me to do it for you, baby?” he purred, “I can help you.”
You swatted him away and sat up. You bent your legs to your chest and hugged them. “Please, I’m scared, just leave me alone--”
His hand rested on his belt and exhaled again. His fingers moved swiftly to unloop the striped belt and unbutton his jeans. He pushed them down, nearly tripping as he stepped out of them. He stood in his boxers, tented with his impatient excitement, and gripped his hips.
“It’s okay, baby, I know you’re shy, I am too,” he neared and you winced as he grabbed your wrist. He tugged on your arm and you resisted until he bent your hand back painfully and you cried out. He tickled your jaw as he looked you in the eye and tutted, “it doesn’t have to be like this, alright?”
You went limp and let him pull your arms apart. Your legs slipped down and your feet dangled above the floor. He got to his knees and pushed between yours. He slowly rolled up the hem of your shirt and bent to kiss your stomach as he bared the flesh. You trembled as he forced your arms up and swooped the fabric over your head. It fluttered through the air and to the floor as he cupped your tits through your bright pink bra.
“Is this so bad?” he asked as he nuzzled your chest and pushed your tits up. 
He glided the straps down your arm and slid your bra lower so that you popped out. He nibbled at your flesh and traced your nipples with his tongue. You sat rigid and let him explore your body, too terrified to move a muscle. He reached around you and struggled with the hooks, frustrated he snapped the clasps and the band came free.
He continued to play with your chest, his fingers crawling up and down your stomach and sides. There was a genuine curiosity to his touch and it sent a chill through you. His fingertips pressed to the top of your pants and he pulled at them as his lips travelled down to your hip.
He tugged on your pants and jerked your entire body. He tore them lower as he pushed you up and you lifted yourself to let him peel away the layer. He added them to the floor and toyed with the elastic of your panties. The little bow in the front drew his attention as he pushed your legs wider and ran his nose along the cotton.
He hummed and rubbed his fingers down your crotch, pushing the fabric to your folds as he teased you through them. You inhaled sharply at the tingle it inspired and he pressed firmer against you, flicking his fingers along your bud as he noticed how it made you squirm.
He gently pulled aside the cotton and you felt his hot breath against you. You pushed on his head before he could delve into you. “Please, don’t--”
“Shhhh,” he threw your hand away from his head and bent over you, “just relax.”
He dragged his tongue along your cunt and lingered around your clit. You clenched as it sent a thrill through you and he moved his lips against you, suckling at you bud as your breaths grew raspy. You pushed yourself against the back of the couch and dug your nails into the cushion.
He slid a finger along your cunt and circled your entrance. He rubbed up and down as he kept his tongue swirling over your clit and you swallowed back as gasp as he poked inside. He felt around and added another finger, stretching you as he carefully pushed them in and out of you in time with his mouth.
He lapped you up and you closed your eyes, desperate to resist the coil winding within you. Your legs tensed against the couch and you tilted your pelvis without thinking. He sped up, the noise of his mouth and your slickness filled the silence. You let out a puff and moaned as you slapped the couch. The waves rolled over your flesh and you came into his mouth with a pathetic mewl.
He stilled his fingers as he lazily teased you with his tongue. He pulled his fingers out and sat back, the heat between your legs cooling in his absence as he licked up your juices. He watched you as he sucked his fingers and stood. Your head lolled and you edged forward on the couch. You tried to stand but he caught you and flung you back.
“We’re not done, baby,” he winked at you as he grasped the top of his boxers, “go on, lay down.”
You murmured your refusal and once more tried to get up. You slipped onto the floor and shakily crawled away as he dropped his boxers to his ankle. He grabbed you before you could get around the side and lifted you easily. He turned you and shoved you down onto your back as he lifted a leg over you.
He straddled you and again his hands roved over your body. You smacked at his fingers weakly but he easily ignored you. He kept one hand moving along your curves as he stroked himself with the other. He groaned and shook as he stroked his dick. Your eyes followed his hand and you gulped, he was thick.
He moved his knees back and pushed them up beneath your thighs as he kept a hand planted on your chest. He ripped your panties down your legs and untangled them from your feet. 
He held you down as he ran his tip along your cunt, wetting himself with your coerced arousal. You groaned and grabbed the arm of the couch above you. You tried to pull away from him.
He pushed against your entrance and you looked at him in shock. You couldn’t stop him. His eyes were set between your legs as he inhaled and slowly eased into you. He gasped as he got his tip inside you and his muscles tensed. He bit his lip as he dove further in and you gasped as he filled you inch by inch.
“Shitttt,” he moaned as he reached his limit and you whined at how full you were, “oh, baby.”
His hand slid from your chest and he gripped your hips as he pulled back and thrust. You exclaimed and he did it again, slowly as he watched himself impale you over and over. You curled your fingers against the couch arm and your feet arch as you pressed your thighs around him. He lifted your pelvis high as he angled his dick even deeper.
“You feel so good,” he rasped, “oh, baby, you’re so good. Ahh-hh-hh,” his voice fizzled as your walls clenched him and you closed your eyes as you felt the heat building. 
He moved his hand along your thigh and stretched it over your pelvis, pushing his thumb to your clit as he kept his pace. He purred as you writhed helplessly against him and you panted through the rising ecstasy.
“Please, please, please…” you chanted, unsure if you were begging him to stop or for more.
He moaned as he sped up and you sucked your lip under your teeth as you neared your peak. You quivered as your orgasm crashed into you and you let out a strangled cry. He snarled and planted his hands beside your head as he leaned over you, his hot breath tickled your face as he pounded into you.
Your legs bent around him as his pelvis rubbed against you and the friction drove you to another climax. You held onto the arm of the couch as he fucked your harder and harder. He kissed you and nibbled at your lip as he groaned and hooked an arm under to hold you close.
“You’re gonna make me cum, baby,” he said against your cheek and you turned your head away from, “ah, here I--”
He spasmed and slammed into you. He took several long thrusts and stilled. He grunted and drew heavy breaths as he rested his weight over you. He grabbed your head and turned your head up as he pressed his forehead to yours. You kept your eyes closed as the flames slowly dwindled.
“Was that so bad?” he stroked your cheek and trailed his finger down to poke between your lips, “No, it’s what you wanted, isn’t it, baby?” he wiggled his hips and you hissed, “yeah, you want me.”
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ladyyatexel · 3 years
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I Went On A Manga Binge
So you don't have to
For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.
I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.
Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.
Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.
I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.
Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)
I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.
That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha
Ryou Bakura.
Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself
On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.
Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.
Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.
Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.
Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.
Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.
Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"
Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.
Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes
Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.
I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.
Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow
Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media
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sodone-withlife · 3 years
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one sentence
i saw sumayyah‘s answer to an anon’s ask (so all credit for this idea goes to them) about that scene in Omnivore where Rossi is offering Hotch his gun and this thing pretty much wrote itself (which is exceedingly rare lmao), so here is something that i thought would be just a few hundred words but ended up being a really long interpretation of the Foyet arc with hurt/minimal comfort with a good amount of pre-Mortch (or you can see them as platonic, i think it’s up for interpretation). 
also, just a quick heads up, i love Papa Rossi, but for the purposes of this fic, it might seem a little bash-y towards him
warnings: quite a bit of suicidal ideation, (almost) attempted suicide, implied/referenced suicide, canon-typical violence, canonical character death
word count: 7.9k words
The highlighted words stared back at Hotch as Shaunessy’s words echoed in his mind.
A deal with the devil.
“Yes, that’s exactly right,” he told Garcia.
“Because I found it, do I get to know what it’s about?” the analyst asked, unrepentantly curious. Hotch sent her a look.
Might as well. Shaunessy’s not going to last much longer, and we’ll be called in…  “The Reaper,” he said simply.
“Like—the Boston Reaper?” Garcia lowered her voice as she named the notorious killer. Hotch nodded. “I didn’t even know the BAU worked on that case,” she remarked. 
“1998,” Hotch informed her, remembering caffeine-fueled sleepless nights and the palpable fear on the streets. “It was my first case for the BAU as lead profiler.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but we don’t have a profile for the Reaper in the system, do we?”
Not in the system, no. “That’ll be all Penelope, you can go home now,” Hotch told Garcia, turning to the bottom drawer of the shelf behind his desk as the analyst nodded and left. Pulling out a worn folder bursting with papers and photos, he placed the newspaper clipping and the evidence bag protecting the contract into it. He left it to the side and refocused on the folder in front of him filled with sheets of old handwritten notes filled with annotations and crossed-out sections. 
There will be no sleeping tonight.
Early September, 1998
“You’re sending me?” Hotch was sitting ramrod straight in surprise, blindsided by Gideon’s sudden decision.
“Yeah,” Gideon answered simply, leaning back in his chair as much as he could in the cramped space and looking supremely unperturbed. “Do you not want to go?”
Hotch shook herself out of his shocked state, scrambling to gather his wits. “No—I mean, I’ll go, but—”
“But?”
Hotch carefully evaluated his words. “I’ve only been here a few months, and you’re sending me to Boston—alone—to help with the Reaper case? The case that has been going on for three years, longer than I’ve even been an agent, involving a killer that could probably put the Zodiac to shame?” 
The older agent shrugged. “I have to stay and hold down the fort since we are severely understaffed, but I’ll always be a phone call away, and you’re mainly there just to act as eyes for the both of us. You’re not working on this alone.”
Hotch stiffened as a sudden—but careful—warm touch on his hand pulled him out of the spiral of self-doubt he had been teetering over and grounded him. He brought his eyes back to Gideon and was surprised to see complete openness and no signs of deception or maliciousness that he had been forced to learn long ago at the hands of his father. 
“I’m not Dave,” Gideon began seriously, “I wasn’t the one who pulled you over here or the one you started out shadowing under, but I do talk to people. I know about your record in prosecution, in Seattle, and in SWAT, and it is very telling. You never doubted yourself before, and I have no doubt that you can handle yourself, so why are you starting now?” 
He leaned back, clearly done with the impromptu pep talk that Hotch, still frozen, figured happened once in a blue moon based on what Rossi had told him about the unit before he retired. The cramped room was silent as Hotch felt Gideon watching him struggling with internal strife. Slowly, he released some of the tension that was coiled within him, and Gideon turned back to his stack of consults with an air of satisfaction. 
“Start packing, Agent Hotchner. Boston awaits your presence.”
Late November, 1998
“Do you know what the hell is going on?” Hotch immediately asked when the call went through, pacing around his hotel room.
“And a good evening to you too.”
“Gideon.”
“What is it, Hotch?” his tone changed from dry to worried in a heartbeat, hearing the uncharacteristic urgency in his agent’s voice and the lack of nervousness that usually showed his agent’s discomfort towards using the less-formal form of address.
“Shaunessy, the lead detective,” Hotch spat out, throwing the case file that was in his hand on the bed. “He closed the case.”
“And that warrants a phone call at eleven PM, why?”
Hotch bit back a sharp retort, letting out a sharp breath. “You know I’ve been re-interviewing the victims’ friends and family, going through everything they had and lines of investigation that may have been dropped, working the profile along the way, but there have been no viable suspects, even with the accelerated killings,” he said quickly, a mess of emotions swirling inside him. “Gideon, no arrests have been made but he closed the case, just like that.”
“Remind me, when was the last victim?”
“Just over six weeks ago, a month after I got here. I know what you’re thinking,” Hotch said when Gideon didn’t respond, “that the case just went cold, but there were still things I had people following up on. It’s not cold,” he insisted.
“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it, Hotch. I know you don’t like it, but the locals have point on this.”
Hotch sighed, but it did nothing to calm him down. “I know,” he said, annoyed. “I’m catching an early train back to DC, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
January 2003
“The Reaper?”
Hotch slammed the folder shut and looked up from his desk, startled. He sent Gideon a glare, glad that no one else was there to see his composure slip, but he only looked vaguely concerned. 
“It’s been just over four years,” Gideon commented neutrally. “You’ve had that folder at the bottom of your third drawer, and you’ve pulled it out at least forty different times since ‘98.”
Hotch stared up at him in a challenge. “Is there something wrong with that?”
Gideon shook his head. “Just be careful. Don’t get too drawn into the chase.”
~~~
Sighing as he rubbed the familiar ache on the back of his neck that always appeared during paperwork days and especially stressful cases, Hotch closed his battered folder of notes and opened it back up again. It was almost compulsive at this point, repeating every twenty minutes and each time with the hope something new would catch his attention.
Hotch shifted, the bedsheets suddenly feeling unbearably scratchy and coarse even through his slacks. The case details buzzed around his head incessantly, distracting him from feeling the physical exhaustion and strain caused by the lack of proper sustenance and the stress of a day filled with dead ends.
The sudden ringing shattered the silence of the room, knocking him from his focus. He got up from the bed and warily walked over to the source, picking up the hotel phone and bringing it up to his ear. 
“Hotchner,” he said out of habit, only to freeze as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up in reaction to the sudden, heavy breathing. “Who is this?” he demanded, throwing the folder he was still holding back on the bed with dread rising within him. 
“If you stop hunting me, I’ll stop hunting them.” His question about the caller’s identity went unanswered, though the cursed words of the contract spoken by the same distorted voice that was heard on the 911 calls from ten years ago was confirmation enough.
Anger flared inside him at the audacity, and he snapped back, “You think I’d take that?”
“It’s a good deal,” the Reaper replied flatly.
“I’ve misjudged you,” he said, some distant part of him wondering how Shaunessy felt when he himself got the offer ten years ago. “I thought you were smarter than this,” he was unable to help the derisive tone.
The silence was long enough for him to wonder how much he had caught him unawares with his response. 
“You should take it.” 
“And you’ve misjudged me.”
“This is your last chance,” he warned.
Hotch didn’t hesitate. “I don’t make deals. I’m the woman who hunts guys like you.” That got the reaction he was hoping for.
“There are no guys like me,” the killer growled, anger bleeding into his tone.
He scoffed. “You all think that.”
“You’ll regret this,” he warned.
It was said with such certainty that a chill shot down his spine, but it was overshadowed by his anger. “I’ll see you soon,” he promised, promptly hanging up without another word. He walked back around the bed, feeling a sudden need to put as much distance between him and the phone as possible. It was with some hysterical hilarity that he wondered if the next people to stay in this room would know about what had just happened—that a serial killer tried to threaten an FBI agent into surrendering in this room.
Those feelings faded away when a terrible feeling suddenly came over Hotch as he realized the Reaper knew which hotel—which room—he was staying in.
It wasn’t unusual during their cases for an unsub to contact another person in the midst of their crimes, but the memories of Elle in the hospital bed and Morgan in the interrogation room had been seared into his brain. 
Both times, unsubs directly went after members of the team.
Unable to remain in the room any longer, he went around unceremoniously throwing his things inside his bags before leaving the hotel room. Paranoia quickly crept back into his consciousness as he quickly made his way down to the parking garage with a hand near his gun, intent on heading straight to the field office.
Only half an hour later, Hotch was staring at the glinting gold ring on the bus driver’s hand, feeling oddly detached from the situation as he was confronted with the consequences of that cursed phone call.
“6 bodies, not including the driver,” Rossi said from the back of the bus. “He put them down with a gun—or, more likely, guns—and finished them off with his knife.” 
The call had come straight to the field office, just minutes after Hotch walked into the empty conference room that the team had taken command of. A beat cop had heard a series of gunshots and went to investigate, only to see the macabre painting of blood on the side of the bus with its occupants slumped over inside, unmoving. “Arthur Lanessa’s wedding ring,” Hotch heard himself say for the other agent’s benefit.
“What’d he take?” Rossi made his way down to him in the front. 
He snapped back into the present with a sudden surge of anger. “Does it matter?” he asked bitingly, turning and storming away from the crime scene for the relative privacy of a nearby alley.
“Hey,” Rossi called in worry, taken aback by the brash response. “What’s going on with you?”
Hotch stopped some way into the alley and took a deep breath, taking his time before turning to Rossi, who had followed closely behind. “He called me tonight at my hotel room and offered me the deal.” 
“What did you say?”
“I hung up on him,” his eyes burned with the sting of tears—whether out of anger at the Reaper or himself, he wasn’t sure. “And then he does this.”
“So you think this is your fault?”
How could it be anything but? He looked away, trying to hide just how shaken he was. “It is.”
The familiar sound of the safety of a gun being released pulled his attention back to the man in front of him. “Well, here, use mine,” Rossi said, holding out his gun to him. “You convinced me. No, no, you hung up on him,” he pushed as he waved him off, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You practically killed them yourself—”
You practically killed them yourself.
You practically killed them yourself.
Killed them yourself.
Killed them. 
Yourself.
You.
You did this.
You should have made the deal
Hotch flinched away from the touch of cold metal against his head only to freeze in his place, ice settling in his bones as he processed what was happening. Barely seeing the horror on Rossi’s face, he stared at the other man’s empty hand before he focused in on the gun that was resting against his own head, tilted at an angle. There were five things he knew:
I have a finger on the trigger. 
My hand is trembling. 
I am still one of the best shots of the agents that are not in a tactical team.
Make one move, fire the gun, only the hearing in my right ear will be gone and the darkness continues to creep towards me.
Make a different move, fire the gun, I’ll leave Jack the legacy of a coward and Haley the knowledge that her efforts back in high school and college were for naught.
You did this, a malicious voice in his head said, sounding oddly like his father. And suddenly, he recalled the memory of the blood droplets hitting him and the ringing in his ears the first time he witnessed a gun go off when he was nine.
Slowly, deliberately, Hotch met Rossi’s horrified and guilt-filled expression and lowered the gun from his head. Carefully measuring his steps, he moved forward and pressed the gun into the older agent’s hand, which dropped down to the side, the weight of the gun now accompanied by something unseen, something much heavier.
Not sparing him another glance, Hotch turned and walked back out of the alley.
This isn’t the time nor place to break. 
But in the end, he didn’t have a choice. 
“Foyet escaped.”
Hotch’s blood ran cold as he processed JJ’s words before he roughly placed his mug onto the desk and stood up from his chair, following JJ outside to the bullpen that was full of noise and movement.
“Guards found him in his cell vomiting blood and convulsing, they rushed him to the prison hospital,” JJ explained quickly as they made their way down the catwalk. Hotch twitched as he heard Rossi’s office door open behind him, the man coming out to see what the commotion was about.
“Get me the US Marshal’s Office,” Hotch ordered, making the executive decision to ignore the older agent in favor of getting down to business. 
“I already called Don Reilly. I offered our assistance, he said they’d call us if they needed it.”
Prentiss rushed to the trio, holding a phone up to her ear. “The Boston field office just identified documents from Foyet’s house,” she reported.
Reid approached the agents gathered in the middle of the room, holding out a printout of what looked to be a set of blueprints. “They’re schematics for the electrical, heating, and water ducts of the East Woburn Correctional Facility.”
Hotch looked at him blankly. “He had the schematics.”
“And not just for Woburn—for every jail, prison, and courthouse in Massachusetts.”
“And ten years to plan,” Rossi added, a heavy silence following as everyone turned to the TV.
Finally, Garcia turned around. “They’re going to find him, right?” she asked worriedly.
Eyes still trained on Foyet's mugshot on the TV, Hotch was completely certain in his answer. “No, they’re not,” he said, just as the memory of Foyet’s words rose to the forefront of his mind, unbidden.
If you know me so well, how come so many had to die to bring you here?
I’m going to be more famous than you realize.
“Excuse me,” he muttered, trying to get a hold of the wave of nausea that suddenly overcame him. He brushed past the team, purposely heading out of the bullpen for one of the bathrooms that was further away for the sake of keeping the team and their concern off his back.
Within minutes he was throwing up bile and the small amount of alcohol he had drank back in his office into the sink, thanking the god he never believed in that the bathroom was rather secluded so there wouldn’t be anyone catching him in this moment of weakness. His eyes burned for the second time in less than twenty-four hours—only this time, a few traitorous tears managed to escape from underneath his eyelids. 
The taste of bile was strong as he turned on the tap and splashed his face with cold water, stiffening when he heard the door swing open and closed. Looking up to the mirror, he was both relieved and unsurprised to see Morgan locking the door behind him. 
“You’ve been avoiding Rossi,” Morgan commented quietly. Hotch huffed a sardonic laugh, straightening up and turning around to face him, leaning against the sink for support. It was a familiar situation, one first started years ago when it was just them and Gideon, and stopped after the team started growing. Then New York happened and Hotch had to de-stress in a gas station they stopped at on the drive back to Quantico, and their secret rendezvous started happening again, when cases hit too close to home for either of them.
Somehow he always knows what the root problem is. “Was I that obvious?”
Morgan shook his head. “You know you hide it well. I’ve just known you far longer than any of the others, besides Rossi, of course.” He didn’t go on, waiting on the other to decide the direction the conversation would go. 
Deciding to go for complete honesty, Hotch swallowed, tilting his head up and avoiding Morgan’s eyes. “He called me at my hotel room and offered me the deal.”
To his credit, Morgan only stepped closer, face creased in concern and a hint of knowing. “I said no, and he shot up a bus,” Hotch continued tonelessly. “I lost it in an alley near the crime scene. Dave had pulled out his gun and was trying to make a point about self-flagellation, but—” he cut himself off and shook his head frustratedly.
“I don’t know what happened. One moment I was just angry, and the next moment I was aiming a gun at my head,” he met Morgan’s eyes desperately, stern facade completely gone. “I don’t know what I wanted to do—I don’t,” his voice cracked as he sagged against the sink and his trembling became more pronounced. He quickly covered his mouth as a sob tried to escape his throat, prompting Morgan to move.
It was surprising to both him and Morgan how willingly he melted into Morgan’s body when the man reached out to stabilize him, but the sensation of the embrace was oddly calming for both of them. Neither spoke as they stood in the bathroom, not even as Morgan felt his shirt getting wet from the tears that Hotch finally let fall, and not even as the crying became more audible. 
Now, they would stay in the bathroom and soak up the comfort that they offered each other. They would talk about Foyet’s taunts and what Hotch confessed later. 
But later never came, because life never waits, and neither do unsubs.
Soon, they were racing against the clock as Reid got infected with an engineered strain of anthrax
Soon, they were investigating one of the worst, stomach-turning crimes they had seen. 
When they got back from the pig farm, Hotch only asked the team for a bare-bones report of the investigation and let them leave to the comfort of their homes while he stayed behind and dealt with the rest of the paperwork and red tape that was involved because of their foray into Canadian jurisdiction. 
It was past midnight when Hotch finally left the office and entered his apartment with the intent of pulling out a glass of scotch and staying on his couch with a book, knowing there was no way he was going to fall asleep that night.  
But Foyet was waiting, and Hotch was weakened by the exhaustion and stress of two all-nighters in a row.  
That night, as his team was sleeping in their beds, dead to the world while he was slowly bleeding out and floating in and out of consciousness in his own apartment, he could only take comfort in the fact that his death sealed Foyet’s fate. There was no way Morgan the team—hell, even Strauss, or anyone in the bureau—would stop hunting his killer to exact their revenge. 
He faded into unconsciousness with the expectation that that was it.
He slowly regained consciousness to the sharp smell of antiseptic and the unpleasantly familiar beeping of a heart monitor. Fatigue settling heavily over his whole body was the next sensation that registered in his foggy mind, and then the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Where am I?” he forced out through a dry throat, eyes still closed.
“In the hospital,” Rossi, his mind told him. He opened his eyes only to close them again when he was met with blindingly bright lights, letting out a pained breath. 
“How did I get here?”
“Foyet drove you.”
Morgan. He drew in a shaky breath as dull, pulsing pain finally made itself known through the painkillers.
“Can you remember what happened?”
That’s Prentiss.
He vaguely felt his head loll to the side before the memories rushed back into the forefront of his mind. Foyet’s words, the same exact words he remembered thinking back in that alley echoed unpleasantly,
You should have made the deal.
Hotch swallowed again and forced his eyes open through the heavy fatigue. “What did he take?” he asked quietly, unwilling to delve deep into what he remembered and deciding to mentally run through the details about the Reaper case instead.
“What do you mean?” Rossi asked, uncomprehending.
“The Reaper always takes something from his victims.” you’re one of his victims now—shut up and think about that later “Do we know what he took?” 
“There was a page missing from your day planner,” his eyes flew open and he looked over at Prentiss as she continued talking, “in the address section, the Bs.” 
No— “What did he leave?” Hotch asked, eyes slipping shut as a trickle of fear went down his spine and his brain screamed out in denial. 
“I don't know,” Prentiss said, floundering.
“He also leaves something with his victims,” he trailed off in a breathless whisper, unable to sustain the volume he had been speaking at as the throbbing grew stronger.
“I looked over your whole apartment,” Prentiss told him helplessly. “Nothing felt out of place.”
A thought came to him. “Where are my clothes?” Hotch asked, slowly trying to force his eyes open again. He turned his head, watching Prentiss bring a plastic bag over to the hospital bed. Careful to avoid looking directly at his bloodied clothes, Hotch managed to pull the bulging manila envelope closer to him on his chest. 
His hands froze as his credentials slipped out and he noticed a folded paper tucked inside. Slowly, shakily, Hotch pulled them out of the envelope and carefully flipped it open. 
He sank deeper into the bed as the breath he had been holding was almost punched out of him by the sheer terror that pulsed through him, the treasured picture of Haley and Jack staring back at him tauntingly. That’s my blood, he thought blankly, staring at the red streak he knew was deliberately painted over his family’s smiling faces.
“Haley’s maiden name is Brooks,” he finally said, almost numb to the implications. “I always listed her in the Bs in my personal information in case it fell into the wrong hands.” 
Some kind of precaution it turned out to be. 
“He knows where they live.”
And that was that. As Hotch was stuck in flashbacks and lied to Prentiss about what happened, Morgan led the SWAT team in sweeping Hotch’s old house and picked Jack up from his playdate. As Hotch talked with Haley and failed to not think about that night in the alley with the cold metal against his head, Morgan played with Jack outside and failed to not think about Foyet using his credentials so he could continue to torture his friend boss. As Hotch remained confined to the hospital bed, Morgan watched through an upper-story window as Haley and Jack were driven off into the distance to a location unknown to anyone but a select few in the Marshals service. 
Nine stab wounds, thirty minutes down time, and six days in the cursed hospital.
The numbers circled through Hotch’s mind when he stepped back into his apartment and had to work through the panic that rose within as he stared towards the place where he knew Foyet had been hiding. 
In the end, what brought him back from the edge was when his eyes caught the new security panel that had been installed over where he knew the bullet had made a hole and the sticky note with what he recognized as Morgan’s handwriting that was stuck over it, concisely written instructions on how to use it. If he looked around carefully enough for other signs of Morgan’s presence, he could see where the section of bloodstained carpet had been replaced, and that was only because there was the tiniest spot that had been missed. 
The tiniest reminder was enough to send Hotch into a panic, but he knew there was no way he could tell Morgan about it. 
Is this what you felt like, Elle? Unsafe in your own home, having to sweep each room for fear of another one of the monsters we hunt lurking in the shadows?
Slowly, numbly, Hotch worked his way through medical leave and physiotherapy, during which everyone in his team came over at least twice, Prentiss and Morgan the most often to help change his bandages. He knew they worried, but he couldn’t summon the will to care nor the words to thank them for keeping him company and preventing the darkness in his mind from taking over. 
And maybe it was a good thing, because there were things they didn’t know, things that he lied to them about. He lied and he lied, and he knew that if he had the words, they would all come tumbling out, and what little of himself that he had left would be exposed for all to see. 
Even if Morgan had tried to take everything he might be able to use, there was still his mind, and so if he had the words, they would all know how many times he envisioned holding cold metal against his head just as he had back in that alley.
On the thirty-fifth day after he was discharged from the hospital, when they were discussing Darren Call on the plane, they came close to finding out. 
So why hasn’t he killed himself yet? Sprees usually end in suicide. If he's got nothing to live for, why hasn't he ended it?
It was much later, after a day of being on the receiving end of careful, worried glances, and overhearing Morgan’s firm declaration from inside his office that he realized his slip. 
“I’m not going to stand by and watch this man kill himself,” Hotch had heard Morgan snap towards Rossi. Moments later, Morgan passed in front of his office window and made eye contact with him, making it clear that his choice of words was deliberate. 
Suddenly Hotch was back in the alleyway with the gun pressed to his head and managed to talk himself off the ledge he didn’t know he was standing on while Rossi stood there, frozen and horrified that his brazen attempt at making a point had backfired so disastrously. His own words on the plane came back to him, then thought about what others would have seen when he walked into that house unarmed, and he understood. 
He hadn’t been thinking at all when he went in to try and talk Darren Call down, but though he didn’t have a background in psychology, there were some things that didn’t need expert opinion to be said, and so he knew exactly his action could be classified as. 
Don’t lie to yourself, you know exactly what that was.
Hotch swallowed convulsively and broke eye contact with Morgan, turning back to stare at paperwork until the other man walked back to his desk in the empty bullpen. As much as he tried, he couldn’t forget Morgan’s impassioned exclamation nor the depth of the worry that was present in his eyes when they made eye contact through the window.
Maybe that was the day when things shifted. It wasn’t a complete change—the team still hovered around Hotch in uncertain worry, his thoughts never completely disappeared, and he nearly broke down in the bathroom the day Jack turned four in witness protection after seeing what footage of his child on a playground Garcia could enhance. 
There was, however, a different air to his and Morgan’s interactions after that case. Perhaps it was a long time coming, stemming from the painful understanding that was formed that day in the secluded bathroom when they found comfort in each other.
It wasn’t news that the higher-ups were watching him again, but then he walked back to his office after helping JJ triage consult requests to see Strauss fixing him with a stern stare. The next few days he spent trying to work through the frustration of recording and justifying every decision while trying and failing not to antagonize Morgan. And so while he waited for Morgan to come into his office, he could only hope that he hadn’t managed to destroy the strange friendship that had been built between them based on their shared knowledge of just how close he was to the ledge sometimes.
I should give him more credit, I don’t know how he puts up with me sometimes, and he has more than enough reason to report me to Strauss.
“Come on, Hotch, nobody's gonna replace you,” Morgan said, incredulous at the notion of Hotch getting replaced. “Fight Strauss. I'll go to the mat for you, so will everybody else. You know that.” 
“Morgan, it won't work,” Hotch spoke over him, trying to get him to understand. “Decisions like this have their own momentum. Unless I step down—”
“Step down? What are you talking about?”
A foreign feeling Hotch recognized with some surprise as amusement wriggled its way into his consciousness as he anticipated Morgan’s reaction to his coming announcement, “I'm resigning as unit chief at the end of the week”
“What? No!” Hotch couldn’t stop his mouth from twitching as his feeling of amusement grew slightly stronger at the visceral reaction. “Hotch, look, yeah, ok, sometimes your actions, I may disagree with them, but it's not enough for you to leave this team.”
“I'm not leaving the team, I'm just no longer in charge,” Hotch corrected, continuing before Morgan could get in a word. “You are.”
He watched as Morgan’s jaw dropped in shock, before finally asking, “Me?” Detecting no deception from Hotch who had nodded, he continued. “Look, I had the chance to be unit chief in New York, and I said no. I turned it down because I like this team. Strauss can't just fire you like this.”
“She can reassign me, and we can avoid that if I promote internally.”
Unable to come up with a counterargument, Morgan was silent for a moment. “This is wrong,” he finally said. 
A strange thrill went through Hotch at the confidence Morgan had in him—their relationship, while slightly different now, ultimately had been built on unstated respect and the ease with which both were able to call each other out on their bullshit; it wasn’t built on such blatant declarations of trust and confidence. Hotch opened his hands, shrugging helplessly. “It's the only way to keep the team together.”
Morgan nodded consideringly before carefully eyeing Hotch. “So all of this,” he gestured between them, bringing up the tension that had built up between them in the last case, “this is why you've been pushing me so hard, huh?”
“I haven't been pushing you that hard,” Hotch denied, only to get a disbelieving look from the other man. He let out a faint smile before regarding the other with a serious look again. “Morgan, I need to know right now. Will you do this?”
He couldn’t articulate the relief he felt when Morgan finally agreed and continued to feel for the rest of the night as he introduced Morgan to the other parts of the job. Just like every other positive emotion he had felt over the past few years, however, it was short-lived, as Hotch had freed up time to dedicate to the hunt, even as he often stayed later to help Morgan get adjusted. Within months, they were called into a family annihilator case and Hotch was confronting Karl Arnold, one of the few unsubs that had continued to haunt him even after the case was closed and they were killed or incarcerated.
Of course, Arnold had to get in the last word, and oh, did he get it in. 
The cursed eye of providence, now drawn over a newspaper article about the attack months ago, never failed to create a surge of anger and fear within him, but never had it created such a storm of emotions before now. One torturous night of waiting as the envelope the taunts were sent in went through the lab, and the whole team was in the throes of the hunt, and in the process, fell victim to tunnel vision.
What if they had slowed down and remembered that Foyet worked with computers? Would they have managed to catch him at the apartment unawares? Would they have been better prepared for what Foyet had planned to do?
But there wasn’t anything Hotch could do except try and talk Foyet out of going through with his plans while trying to maintain as level of a head as possible.
“Your mother tried to protect you from your father, but she wasn’t strong enough, and you hated her for that, didn’t you? So, you decided that all women were weak,” Hotch suddenly brought up, hoping to catch him off guard as he vaguely wondered if the team was on the line, listening. 
“Those are your words, not mine,” came the grating, annoyingly blasé reply.
“What were you, nine when you killed them?
“It was a car accident. And, now that I think about it, our childhoods are eerily similar, don’t you think?” 
Caught unawares, Hotch jerked the steering wheel, barely managing to avoid crashing the car as Foyet continued. “But it was only your father who died, whereas your mother remarried.”
How—? He turned cold at the show of Foyet’s obsession, which was clearly much deeper than he or anyone in the team could have predicted.
“No response?” the killer taunted.
“My father swallowed a bullet because he couldn’t live with his self loathing or the cancer,” Hotch finally snapped, quickly directing the subject back towards Foyet. Even with the pit in his stomach growing as it became clearer that he was being toyed with, he couldn’t help but use every negotiation tactic he knew and taught at the Academy, desperately but futilely trying to dissuade the killer. 
“Haven't you gotten what you wanted?” Hotch tried, somehow having regained his composure after the unpleasant bombshell. “You've set yourself apart from anybody we've ever dealt with. You're not just a famous serial killer, you're the Reaper. We're going to study you and your methods for years and years.”
“You know what I've been thinking?” Foyet finally asked after a few moments of silence, his next words sending his heart pounding in fear. “Haley looks really good with dark hair. She’s lost some weight. Must be all the stress you caused her. Where's the little man?” No, don’t you dare— “Oh. There he is. Does he like Captain America because of you?” 
Hotch gripped his phone tightly as he heard the ringing of another phone. “That's your wife. Hold, please—Mrs. Hotchner,” Foyet took on an accent, tone turning jovial. “Open the gate and I'll drive in.”
Open the gate? That son of a—of course.
“Aaron?” the malicious glee was back, cutting right to Hotch’s core. “I really gotta go.”
Almost frozen with fear, he pushed the car faster, heading straight towards the old house and praying to whatever deity he could think of that he could get there in time. He wasn’t sure how long had passed when he got Morgan’s call, which was confirmation that the team had indeed been listening. He didn’t dwell on it and only continued to push the car, disregarding speed limits and almost hysterically glad that it was the middle of the day and the streets were relatively empty. 
When his phone rang, it was with numb, mechanical movements that he answered, fully prepared to beg and bargain for his family’s life if he had to, only to sharply inhale at Haley’s dearly missed voice, which turned shaky with fear when she realized the danger she was in. As Foyet undercut their exchange with his maliciously satisfied taunts, telling Haley all that he could never bring himself to confess about the case, Hotch could only think about how he was just too far away, Haley, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for lying to you about everything, I’ll never forgive myself—
But then Jack was on the phone, and the pure innocence and eagerness with which his son greeted him after months of no contact was enough to send a fresh wave of tears coursing down his face.
“Is George a bad guy?”
“Yes, he is,” Hotch answered, wanting to scream at him to just run away, get as far away from him as you can when an old memory was suddenly brought forth from his subconscious. “Jack, I need you on this case with me. Do you understand?” he tried to keep his voice steady, hoping with his whole being that his son would remember. “I need you to work the case with me.”
“Ok, Daddy.”
“Jack, hug your mom for me,” he requested, voice cracking and desperately trying to contain the sobs that were steadily building. He could only imagine the warmth his son was feeling from his mother now, potentially the last memory he would ever have of her. Hearing his son’s too-inquisitive question about his mother’s mood left him viciously biting down on his bottom lip, trying to maintain some modicum of control over himself.
“Is he gone?” Hotch finally asked, nausea joining the storm of emotions within him at the nickname Foyet had given his son.
“Yes,” Haley confirmed, letting her fear shine through now that Jack wasn’t there to see it. 
Each shaking breath was a stab straight to his core.“You’re so strong, Haley, you’re stronger than I ever was.”
Her response nearly sent him shattering into the pieces she had so carefully helped him put back together back in high school after his stepfather died.
“You’ll hurry, right?”
I can’t lie, I’m so sorry, Haley. I can’t lie to you. Not after everything I’ve already done, “I know you didn’t sign on for this.”
“Neither did you.”
Why does it have to be now that we finally talk about what caused the divorce?
“I’m sorry for everything.”
There was a short pause as Haley inhaled sharply, before leveling out into shaky breaths. “Promise me that you will tell him how we met and how you used to make me laugh.”
No, please— “Haley,” Hotch trailed off, unable to continue and almost paralyzed at the knowledge that these might be her last words because he’s too far away, I’m not going to—
“He needs to know that you weren't always so serious, Aaron. He needs to believe in love, because it is the most important thing, but you need to show him. Promise me,” she ordered him forcefully.
“I promise.”
The sound of three gunshots tore straight into his soul. 
And then he was finding Haley’s body, trying not to let the seams break when renewed rage roared to life within him at the extinguishing of the light that had been inside her and lit up every room she walked in. Minutes later, he was straddling the demon that had haunted him for over a decade, the demon that he finally caught up to but at a terrible cost and then he was punching—
I’m going to kill that bastard son of yours and I’m going to tell him it was all your fault— 
and punching—
You practically killed them yourself—
and punching—
You should have made the deal—
someone yelled his name—
Promise me.
“—dead. He’s dead,” someone was shouting as Hotch tried to lunge forward away from the person pulling him back and towards the man who killed my wife HE KILLED HALEY—
But all the fight that had been inside him suddenly disappeared, and he was left staggering backward, mouth open in a silent, rage-filled scream as someone—it’s Derek—kept a careful grip on his body, holding his shattered pieces together just long enough for him to gather his tattered seams close to his chest and fling himself away towards the stairs. 
Hotch collapsed to his knees in front of the chest, seeing no indication of any taunting messages and daring to hope that his son was—
And the sight of his son, unharmed and blinking at the sudden change in brightness, nearly sent him into a mess of relieved tears that were also tears of unadulterated grief because I got his mother killed—
He held himself together and lifted his son out of the chest, seeing all the features he got from Haley—her his hair, her his eyes, her his inquisitiveness—and struggling to maintain his weakening control as he told Jack to go to Ms. Jareau, who was waiting with open arms in the doorway to the room that had once been his office. 
Hearing their footsteps fade away and shaking with suppressed sobs, he slowly stood up, injuries that he sustained in the fight finally making themselves known as he made his way across the hall to the room he knew Haley was lying in—
He saw Morgan taking her pulse and for a moment he couldn’t help but hope that she was still—
But Morgan was pulling back and he was gently placing Haley’s right arm back on the ground and he wasn’t yelling for medics and—
“I’m so sorry, Aaron,” Morgan said softly as Hotch knelt down, his trembling becoming more palpable by the moment. 
If he looked past the unseeing eyes and the blood that pooled everywhere and her lying on the floor and—
He could almost convince himself that she was sleeping. For a moment, he was almost afraid to touch her, afraid to disturb her in her sleep, but in the next moment—
He was pulling her cooling body close to his chest and burying his face into the crook of her neck, gut wrenching sobs escaping his lips as a wave of grief shattered the flimsy show of control he had put up for Jack’s sake, his son who just lost his mother because his father was addicted to the chase and I broke my promise, Haley, I’m so sorry—
She’s gone. 
The solemn silence weighed heavily on the team as they waited for Hotch to finish testifying before Strauss and the brass. They had all expressed their outrage when they got the orders to come in for their statements, only two days after their leader nearly lost everything, but there was nothing they could do.
It had been painful to watch the man who had been a protector for so long, since childhood through his teenage years and into adulthood, try to maintain the post, disregarding his own health in favor of being the earliest in the office and last to leave, spending every free moment trying to get rid of the threat to his family. It was worse having to listen over the phone as his control started to slip while he tried so desperately to save his family from a madman. 
With the sight of him savagely beating Foyet’s dead body into the ground, all vestiges of the infamous controlled facade gone, they all hoped for Hotch’s sake that Jack had found safety and were beyond relieved to see him in JJ’s arms. Reality caught up to them, however, when they watched as Morgan had to physically wrestle Hotch away from Haley’s body so she could be transported to the ME’s office.
When they got the full autopsy, they could only be glad that Hotch wasn’t there to find out all that Foyet did to his first love.
And within a year, Hotch’s family had been ruthlessly snatched from his desperate, flailing grip and torn into broken pieces before being shoved back at him, misshapen with pieces missing. 
The faint sound of a door swinging closed had them all straightening up in their seats, turning to look into the bullpen where Hotch was walking up the stairs in front of his office, only to freeze right in front of the door with his hand just in front of the door knob. 
They watched worriedly as he let his outstretched hand fall back to his side and slowly backed up from the door, almost as if he were in a trance and startled when Morgan suddenly jumped up and ran out of the room and through the bullpen towards the man.
Their confusion cleared up when they realized that Hotch wasn’t stopping as he backed up, somehow unaware that the stairs were right behind him and stumbled, only barely catching himself on the railing. For Jack’s sake, they forced themselves to stay seated but watched out of the corner of their eyes as he tried to stand back up, only for his knees to buckle underneath him. 
Before he could hit the ground, Morgan quickly grabbed onto his arms, almost collapsing himself under his dead weight but managing to lower them both onto the ground, holding onto him in a way eerily reminiscent of what he had done when he pulled Hotch off of the barely-recognizable body of George Foyet. 
Hotch was still staring at his office door as if he had seen a ghost, and it was with heartbreak that Morgan realized what it represented to him—it was the source of so much passion and temptation that had gotten the love of his life killed. Looking back at the conference room and seeing the eyes focused on the two men, Morgan carefully pulled Hotch up from the ground and slowly guided him out of the bullpen, knowing that the team had Jack taken care of.
They walked through the winding hallways and into the bathroom that he followed Hotch into the night it all started to go horribly wrong. This time, it was different and yet the exact same, and after Morgan locked the door behind them, he pulled Hotch towards him, mindful of his bruised ribs. 
Surrounded by the four walls that heard so many of their small talks and witnessed their vulnerabilities, it wasn’t long before Hotch’s eyes began to burn as he finally melted into Morgan’s protective hold when the dam finally broke, letting out a wave of pain and anguish that was only made the slightest bit more bearable by the warmth of Morgan’s his friend’s care.
But even that couldn’t make that one sentence disappear.
You practically killed them yourself.
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hazelquartz · 3 years
Text
Rhapsody of a Veela part 4
Summary: Y/n is a half witch half Veela, who is new to Hogwarts, being placed there to master her magic after a troubling incident that resultet in the Ministry believing her to be a danger to the wizarding world. At Hogwarts she quickly catches the eyes of several boys, much to her dismay.
Pairings: Fred Weasley x Reader, Cedric Diggory x Reader, Draco Malfoy x Reader / Yes I know, so many ships but still, this takes place over a few years so I think it`s fair.
Warnings: None, yet. Just super fluff and a bit angst.
Word Count: 1.7k
Part.1 / Part.2 / Part.3 / Part.5 / Part.6 / Part.7 / Part.8 / Part.9 /
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 Part. 4 - Wizochoc
You and Fred headed back to the castle by a different secret passage leading from Hogsmeade village to another statue inside the castle. It got cold on the way there but before you had even said anything Fred had already wrapped his own robe around you. This route back to the castle was longer than the previous one, and so by the time you had gotten to the castle and snuck yourselves back to Gryffindor tower it was already nearly midnight. As you both walked through the portrait hole you felt a wave of sadness come upon you, as you did not want the day to end. Not yet. You wanted to tell him all about why you could not come with him to the Burrow over the Easter holiday, and you knew he was pondering why that was too. He tried to seem cool about it, but it was clear he was wondering if he had done something wrong.
The Gryffindor common room was empty when you walked inside. So as you took of the robe he had wrapped around your shoulders and handed it back to him you smiled,
“I`m not tired yet, are you?”
“Not at all”
You sat down rather close to each other in the couch in front of the fireplace, where the embers were still glowing. For a moment neither of you said anything, until you finally decided that you wanted him to know, at least parts of the story. Even though you were afraid he would not look at you the same way he did anymore. But even then, maybe that was for the best?
“I want to tell you something, but you can`t tell another soul” you began, instinctively grabbing his hand. He looked at you worriedly yet put on a strong face as if readying himself for whatever dark secrets you were about to tell.
“What about George?”
You thought about it for a moment, as you knew for sure that the Weasley twins would never keep any secrets from each other.
“Ah allright then, I suppose it won`t matter if he knows too”
And so, you began, after taking a deep breath or two. Almost uncertain where to start as you got lost in his eyes. You told him about the orphanage, where you had lived your entire life before Hogwarts. It was a terrible place, and something had happened. Something had triggered you and, someone got hurt. Terribly hurt. It had not been long until the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had caught a whiff of it, and so did the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and lastly the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
“Blimey” whispered Fred,
After you had ran away, you were eventually hunted down like some animal by Aurors. All this time you had been under the impression that you had gone completely mad, that was until the interrogations begun and later the trial. It was a long process, that eventually had forced you to accept that everything you thought were just legends and fairytales were in fact real. Then you were saved after Professor Dumbledore convinced the Wizengamot, and brought you to Hogwarts were you were finally treated with dignity.
Fred looked at you like he was struggling to find the right words, for what on earth would be an appropriate reaction to your difficult journey?
“…Y/n.. I don`t know what to say, it`s downright bloody terrible all you`ve been going through alone..”
You nooded with a half-smile, just relieved to have gotten it all out. Fred suddenly shifted where he sat, and pulled you into his arms and just held you there for a moment. You closed your eyes, as you could feel his heart beat hard in his chest pressed up close to yours.
“..I`ve never been alone yknow, i`ve always had George, I don`t know how you could`ve gone thru all this and still be so.. you”
He pulled back and looked you in the eyes, and you smiled wistfully back at him. You were so glad he turned out to be so understanding. You had never had anyone to tell everything to, never had anyone understand you at all. Most people had afterall, all your life found you to be an enigma, and despite being drawn to you also been intimidated by your very presence.
“And here`s the worse part..” you sighed, “The Ministry only allowed me to be here if I was put under a guardianship.. and for some reason Dumbledore insisted Professor Snape was most eligible for the task”
Fred`s eyes widened, and he had to concentrate hard on not letting a laugh escape him, yet a wide grin appeared on his cheeks.
“Bloody hell y/n… and here I thought my family was weird”
You both chuckled, as you continued explaining that this was the very technicality that prevented you from leaving the School Grounds. Even though you wanted to go with him over the Easter Break so badly. But Fred had gotten an idea, and you could tell by the confident look he had on his face that he was downright sure his plans would succeed this time too.
“So you don`t mind any of this at all? That I`m not even full witch?” you said, still almost afraid to look him in the eyes for his reply.
“Why of course not! y/n .. I think you`re absolutely wicked!”
Before you could even say anything he already had you wrapped around his arms again, and his lips met yours in an insatiable yet passionate hurry. However not even a moment later you heard the Portrait hole creak open, and you broke apart as two lanky figures entered the common room. George and Lee, and neither of them seemed any surprised by the two blushing faces sticking out above the couch.
“I told you so didn’t I?” George gleefully said as he bumped his elbow into Lee`s side, who then sighed and reached for a few Galleons in his pocket to hand over to George as he`d lost their bet.
“I put my money on pretty boy Cedric, I did not expect this turn of events” Lee complained, just before ducking out of the way as Fred had flung a pillow from the couch across the room.
“Owl received Dungbrain” George winked, before he dragged Lee along with him to the dormitory and disappeared.
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By the time the weekend was over, Fred had finally convinced you to go speak to Dumbledore and to ask him, rather than Professor Snape for permission to be with the Weasleys at the Burrow over the Easter break. His best argument, was that his father Arthur Weasley who worked at the ministry himself, would be sure you did not get into too much trouble. He decided to follow you to Dumbledore`s office after the mid-day break on Monday, and so you found yourself outside the entrance to the Headmaster`s office.
Outside there was a large and frightful Gargoyle, who leapt aside after Fred had spoken the word “Wizochoc” revealing a slowly ascending circular staircase leading up to the tower. You felt nervous but felt reassured by Fred`s visibly bubbling confidence. He let go of your hand as you had found yourself at the top of the stairs just outside the door, and he gave you a sweet peck on your cheek, that left a warm fuzzy feeling, before he reached out to knock.
“Come in” you heard from inside, and the door magically slid open by itself revealing Dumbledores large circular office filled with all sorts of enchanted curiosities. The last time you were there was when you had arrived at Hogwarts through the floo network connected to the fireplace. Back then your eyes had been tired, and your head exhausted by everything that had happened that day so this was truly the first time you had gotten to take a proper look around the scene. Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, not seeming any surprised at all by your sudden visit.
“And what may I help you with, Mr.Weasley, Miss Y/ln, today?” He asked with a sparkle in his eye as he looked at you both, clearly taking joy in seeing you both together. You opened your mouth to speak, but before you could Fred had already begun.
“Professor Dumbledore, I take it you`ve allready received the letter from my father by owl?” Fred asked, although he could tell Dumbledore already had. You were in awe that Fred had been this much ahead of you with his plan but took it as him only telling his father the bare minimum of what he needed to know.
“Ah yes, I was delighted to receive his owl today” Dumbledore smiled, as if he had received a casual letter from an old friend. He then turned to you,
“I`m quite glad to see you settling down so well with your life here at Hogwarts Miss Y/ln, and from your Professors reports I can see you`ve clearly been thriving in most of your subjects as well. But it is my understanding that you could be in need of some fresh air, away from the school grounds?”
You nodded with a smile,
“Yes Professor, I`m quite thankful to be here… but I`d also love to accept Fred`s kind offer over the holiday..”
Dumbledore nodded understandingly, “Of course, I quite agree that a little journey away from Hogwarts could do you much good. I have spoken to Severus, and because I trust Arthur is more than capable of keeping an eye over you, I don`t see why you can`t go”
You could not help but smile brightly at these highly unexpected news, Fred`s plan had indeed worked out quite well all because of Dumbledores authority and persuasion over your unhelpful Guardian, Snape.
“Thank you so much Professor!” you exclaimed, eyeing Fred who looked just as excited, but alas not surprised by your side.
“Naturally there are some conditions to this exception Miss Y/ln, which I hope you understand. This is all done with secrecy of course, because the ministry would I they could, have you monitored at all times. Because of this, I think it would be wise if you return after a week, by floo network back to Hogwarts”
“Of course Professor” you replied, although Fred seemed a little disappointed you would have to leave a week earlier than he had expected.
Part.5
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I hope you enjoy! feel free to give me a comment if you did, and stay tuned for more!
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lettrespromises · 3 years
Text
╰┄───➤   LettresPromises informs you : you have one notification. ❜ Letter object : ‘Screaming into the abyss’ - Katsuki Bakugou.
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╰──➤ Katsuki Bakugou sent you a letter, would you like to read it? ❜
Letter object : Injured, Bakugou is forced to stay at home under the orders of the medical unit where he will begin being tormented by his own emotions and the guilt of not being able to help you. As the emotions build up within him, he finally explodes, and you’re here to pick up all the shattered pieces and glue them back together. 
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Author’s letter : ❝dear reader, I had to, I’m so sorry but I had to write something about this following the catastrophe of chapter 285. I do hope, however, that you will like this (and I might have gotten lost in descriptions once again so I apologize in advance.) also, bonus point if you’ve read nietzsche or heard about his theory on the abyss (wink, wonk @ the last line of the letter.) sending lots of love your way! sealed with a kiss,  nikki.❞ Genre : Angst, fluff, comfort. Warnings : Cursing. Word count : 2.6K.
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Maybe, the mask deserved to fall. Maybe, the mask was meant to be shattered. Maybe, the mask belonged amongst the ashes. The crimson mask which, to the common eye, echoed to the imagery of a surge of flames which were fueled by passion and perfectionism. These flames were scary, almost untamable in a way, but they were beautiful, tempting— and here laid mankind’s first paradox : feeling the urge to approach and tame a wild entity. But today, the shine reflecting in this suffering inferno has changed. It’s not longer crimson, it barely holds any shade of red. This fire used to burn to intimidate others, now, it burns just enough to survive. It has changed.
And that’s how everything became blurry— the crimson orbs found themselves to be the martyrs of the emotions draining them. Pearls of salt gathered at the corner of his eyes and fell while following the path created by the dry tears which had previously rolled down the flesh of his cheeks. It was like a cascade, and the rhythm of the tears almost seemed mechanic— as soon as a tear hung from his chin, another one started taking form to replace it right away.
Knowing that he couldn’t control his own emotions drove him insane, but he fell in the trap set by his subconscious— the more he was thinking about how to gain the upper hand over his emotions, the more he felt constricted by the invisible knots forming in his throat. Perhaps knowing that there was no other solution left was yet another motive to cry about.
Bakugou’s head hung low, his crimson orbs never leaving the floor as he was doomed to observe his own downfall through the repetitive drops of his tears. He didn’t dare to blink either, judging that it would only make the tears grow bigger until he would not be able to perceive something clearly anymore. His nails were dug into the skin of his palms, imprints of crescents trailed behind as a testimony of his frustration. His mouth was wide open, too, Bakugou was inviting his body to scream its pain, force the illness out of his body, and although he forced himself to voice vividly his agony, no sound came out of his mouth— he was screaming into the abyss.
« God-fucking-damnit, why is it so fucking hard, hah? W-Why can’t I fucking get this out?! » A crescendo shadowed his intonation, but failed to cover the betraying breaks accompanying his voice. The surprising cracks in his voice made him shut silent, and for a second, he wished no sound could leave his parted lips if it meant he was going to show even more vulnerability. But most of all, he wished that you would not come home earlier and perhaps in the nick of time, he would have re-gained the possession of his own emotions. He couldn’t find himself to imagine a scenario where you would burst out of the door and see him naked, in a way— what were you going to say to him? Were you going to call him ‘weak’? Were you going to break up with him? Were you going to be disgusted? If it meant losing you, then Bakugou was willing to be a silent martyr.
He was way past trying to find an answer to the enigma and thus find why his emotions were filling his senses, he knew that said answer was not going to fall straight from above, perhaps there was no answer. But he couldn’t help and reminisce the events which took place a few weeks prior to that— he failed to arrest a villain and, whilst battling them, got severely injured and was forced to stay off of hero duty for a few weeks. Bakugou felt useless, and guilt for not being able to save citizens was exuding from his every pore, sometimes, he wondered if he really deserved the status of hero in these conditions. The sole heroic acts he was allowed to do was send a text to ‘Shitty Hair’ and congratulate him on his work, not that he would ever openly admit that he was willing to do anything and everything to take his spot.
His work was dangerous, he would wake up every morning wondering if today was the last time he was going to kiss you goodbye, and perhaps he started pouring more bits of genuine adoration in his morning pecks since this epiphany struck him. But his work was also addictive, the sensation of feeling adrenaline course through his veins until hitting his brain was a marvel and he just wanted to know what it felt like to save civilians, prevent crimes from happening— he wanted to witness this all over again, as if he had been overwhelmed by a sudden wave of amnesia.
The sound of keys rattling in the lock didn’t even startle him, he stopped crying, and that was enough of a victory to him already. But as soon as you stepped foot in your shared apartment and were welcomed with silence, your guts were quick to tell you that something was off. You ventured in the vicinity with cautious steps, as if you were discovering your apartment all over again under the heavy influence of silence, but you couldn’t see Bakugou anywhere.
« Katsuki? Are you here? » You called, not sincerely expecting an answer. « Oh, fuck off already. » He responded silently, sincerity abandoning his words.
You had tried to look for him in every room, but failed to find him. Sure, there was one last option and the most intimate one, but knowing that Bakugou could possibly be stuck in your bedroom felt like breaking his own intimacy. You had tried to be by his side as much as you could during his time at home, but you were a hero yourself, and perhaps you felt like staying away from him for a bit would diminish the burning sensations of his pain.
You found yourself knocking against the door and immediately forgetting about your own advice on how to give him intimacy, « Katsuki, I know you’re in there. » but you met silence as a response. Pursuing your intentions, you tried opening the door but you realized soon after that it was locked, your brows were furrowed in incomprehension. You allowed yourself to release a breath you ignored you were holding until feeling the invading sensation of several knots forming in your stomach under the feeling of guilt, and thus, you fell on your knees near the door, weakened.
« Katsuki, love, do you want to talk about it? » You inquired, the sound of your voice coming out as a hushed confession.
« Talk about what? » He barked but it was innocent.
« Don’t tell me you locked yourself in our bedroom because you actually like it. »
« I do whatever I fucking want, that’s none of your goddamn business. » This is why he should have stayed silent, to avoid the crack to distort his voice.
« Katsuki, open the door before I destroy it with my bare hands. »
You were met once more with silence, but this time it hurt more, probably because Bakugou chose not to respond deliberately. Still, you waited for a few seconds, never leaving your position nor moving by an inch— after all, you still had the hope that he silent because he was on his way to come open the door. But, oh well, what a disillusion!
« Come out of the bedroom whenever you want, I’m out. » your actions accompanied your words and you got up, dusting yourself off in the process.
And while your hands swatted away the bits of dust clinging onto the fabric of your pants, the deafening sound of your bedroom door swinging wide open caught you off by surprise. You were met with the dim fire dancing in his crimson orbs before acknowledging the invading sensation of his limbs encompassing your waist in a (literally) breathtaking hold. You were rendered stiff, not only because of the rapidity of this action, but also because this was not a characteristic of Bakugou. His head was nestled in the crook of your neck, not that he had the courage to willingly show his face marked by the torment of his emotions anyway, and his fingertips almost turnt white under the pressure applied on your lower back.  
« Don’t go anywhere, stay here. » hot breaths crashed against your skin. « I’m not going anywhere, I’m here, I won’t go away. » you responded equally as intimate, your fingertips brushed the roots of his hair in circular motions. « Now, » you let your hands travel down his face until cupping his cheeks and making him bore his eyes into yours, « do you still refuse to talk to me? »
He blinked once, to make sure he had heard correctly, and then a second time, to prevent the tears from finding the familiar path drawn on his cheeks. He couldn’t stand looking at you, or rather, he couldn’t stand the fact you were looking at him in all his shameful glory, bare with all his emotions written all over his face. But from your perspective, never once did he look as beautiful as now— the reddish tone of his eyes married the scarlet color of his iris, the color of his cheeks matched the color of his eyes, too. But most of all, he was beautiful because he let his emotions speak for him.
He was hesitant, unsure of how his body was bound to react, unsure of how you were going to react as the haunting thoughts of you finding him weak were still clouding his mind. And yet, he couldn’t gather enough strength to look elsewhere but in your eyes, as if a calming bliss were attracting his orbs like magnets would do. He took one breath, it was solemn, but necessary for both the sake of his tirade but also for the sake of unifying his thoughts upon exposing them to daylight.
« I fucking feel like shit ‘cause I haven’t done anything since I’m injured. You, Shitty Hair, Dunce Face, everyone is busting their ass off to fight shitty villains left and right and I gotta’ stay at home doing nothing. I can’t do shit to help you. For fuck’s sake, I can’t even cook to help you out after your day on patrol— I’m fucking useless, you hear me? I’m fucking useless while you’re risking your life out there every day. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Sit here and not do shit? Sit here until I have a fucking confirmation that you’re safe and sound? I fucking hate this, I fucking hate feeling like a burden to you, I fucking hate feeling useless! » The more he talked, the more venom he spat, the more his voice was breaking under the tight grip of his emotions.
It was your turn to reply, but your brain couldn’t seem to form a comprehensive sentence. Sure, there were words and whatnot, but none clicked to create a real sentence. Your mouth was set agape in anticipation, and you laid your gaze upon him and his features— how he dug his pearly whites into his lower lip to refrain himself to give in to the temptations of his emotions and cry, how his eyes screamed for an answer on your end because he couldn’t stand silence as an answer, how he tried to catch his breath and ease his heart.
Your palms were still covering his cheeks. But if this action came from a place of willing to get his attention, now you just felt as if you were cradling the finest piece of china which threatened to shatter at any given moment. You knew how horrible of a situation this must have been for him, so you allowed to grant him his deserved intimacy, your palms orientated his cranium in the crook of your neck, just enough to give him sentimental privacy. And although you claimed that you were doing this for him, you were also doing this to prevent yourself from breaking into tears. Your hearts beat in unison, so did your emotions.
« I don’t even know where to begin », you begin as your digits ran through his hair to soothe him, « I feel so guilty for not doing something about this before », upon saying this, Bakugou pinched your hip in disagreement to which you let out a hushed yelp in response, « Bakugou Katsuki, I know your pride will tell you not to believe me but listen to me for one second, will you? It’s plain and simple, you’ve always been the person I look up to the most. When we were at U.A, I wanted to be like you and every time I was asked who was my inspiration, I would always say that it was Mount Lady or All Might but the only person I could think about was you. You did injure yourself, it sucks but you did it while fighting off a villain and you allowed a family to escape the zone safe and sound. You’re injured because you saved people, not because you tripped down the stairs. » You finished, allowing your lungs to absorb some much needed oxygen while Bakugou slightly tightened his hold as he already missed your voice.
« If you’re not proud of yourself, you know I’ll always be. And, please, you’re not a burden— if anything, I’m glad to know you’re safe here but I also know that soon enough you’ll be able to cook me something because you hate it when I cook for you. », you continued and obligated him to face you one last time, « whenever you’re in doubt, think of how much I love you, and how great of a hero you are. » you concluded your sentence by reducing the space between your lips and crashing yours against his in a unison of sentiments.
Both protagonist shut their lids close to allow the sensations granted by the kiss to roam their body and mind while they were both persuaded of seeing stars. Sure, you had kissed Bakugou more times than you could remember in the past, but here, you could easily discern the tones of care, gratitude and genuine adoration gracing your lips. And once oxygen failed your lungs and had to break the kiss against your will, you noticed that the crimson inferno was more vivid than earlier— Bakugou thanked your passion for fueling his fire and bringing it back from its ashes, like the fire of a Phoenix.
« ‘Love you, too. » Bakugou whispered against your lips.
« I’m sorry, care to say it again? » you responded, a playful smirked plastered on your facial features.
« Hah? Didn’t you fucking hear what I said? » He stared at you in disbelief, already second-guessing his choices in declarations, « I’ll say this once, so listen well, dumbass : I love you. Got that, now? ‘Cause I’m not saying it again. »
But you heard everything, of course you did, you always do. You hear his odd nicknames, you hear his cursing, you hear his screams, you hear his secret declarations of love and you hear him when he’s screaming into the abyss.
« I love you too, Katsuki, so much. » The abyss stared back at him, and offered him a smile.
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chaseatinydream · 3 years
Text
pirate king (82) || atz
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The sea is blue.
You stand along the beach where the land meets the sea, warm water lapping over your feet as you look out over the horizon. The beach is completely empty except for you and the sound of waves crashing against the shore.
You don’t know how long you spend standing there, but you watch as the sun slowly sinks behind the horizon, the sea enveloping and swallowing it whole. You watch as the sky fades from blue to to black, stars rippling over the surface of the water like jewels spread over the waters. You don’t move a muscle, time hung in the balance, until there’s the sound of approaching footsteps behind you.
“You’re here.”
Your voice is a disembodied whisper, raspy and lilting like the push and pull of the tide.
“You’ve not called for me for millennia.”  He sounds melancholy, and you turn to look at him. His bright green eyes stare back at you, luminescent in the darkness of the beach. “Yet now, you have... why?”
“Why do we not have names?”
His eyes widen slightly at your words, but he quickly schools his face back into a neutral expression. “We do not need them, since there is nothing like us in this world.”
“Humans are all so strange, different from each other, and yet they have names. They call for each other with them.” You murmur quietly, bending down to touch a hand to the waves. The water comes up to meet you, drawn to you, swirling and rushing out once more. Your heartbeat. “They are so insignificant, their lifespans so short, they end so easily and yet...”
He remains silent.
“And yet... today, one of them asked for my name. I was merely repeating the cycle of karma, saving his life when I had taken away others, and when he awoke... He asked for my name. He wanted to call for me.”
The man pauses for a moment. “A land child could stand in your presence?” He speaks quietly, and you nod. That fact had been equally surprising to you as well, but you had no explanation for it.
“I gave him my blessings.”
At that, time seems to stop. The man takes you by the hand, clutching tightly. “You, who have never looked at the humans from the dawn of man until now, blessed a human?”
You don’t relent.
“I promised to tell him a name he could speak.” You say, resolute. “I cannot let him die before then.”
In the back of your mind, a boy with a smiling face and a bleeding eye surfaces. He’d grabbed your hand, and promised that he would find you again even if it took the rest of his life. You had given him a rope with three knots that had been left ashore with him, blessing it with your power, your side of the promise that would tie your souls together for eternity.
The man sighs and releases your hand. “Humans are beautiful and fleeting, but they have immortal souls that we do not.” He raises a hand to cup your cheek with his palm. “We are as infinite as the sand along the beaches, as alive as the waters of the seas. We are the laws of nature, and the survival instinct that all of life has ingrained into their souls. We are as eternal as the heart of the mountains, and yet... when this earth fades away, so will we. That is why we do not have a soul, because we form no bonds with the things of this world.”
You waver for a moment, but resolve yourself. “I will find a way. There are laws holding the fabric of this world together more ancient than humankind itself.”
The man gives you a sad smile, his hand falling back down to his side. “There have been legends written in the human world.” He murmurs quietly. “Of mermaids who have given up their immortal lives for legs to live among the humans. Many of their stories ended in tragedy, even for the humans they loved.”
“I’m nothing like the humans.” You speak, voice darkening. “They cannot be compared to us in the least, Eorthe.”
His smile is sad.
“That might turn out to be your downfall, Saer.”
He melts away, his final breath lingering in the wind that caresses your hair and cheek. You continue standing at the beach in silence, and the tide rises, higher, higher and higher.
You look down at the rippling surface of the sea, and a pair of frighteningly blue eyes stare back - they are not of this world.
“I will not allow myself to end like this.”
A pair of watery hands rise up from the depths and the water turns black as the night. You try to pull yourself out of its grasp, thrashing and fighting with all of your might, but its hold on you does not yield.
You’re dragged down, down... deep underneath the waves.
It’s completely dark. You can’t see a thing.
You’re suffocating.
“Humans are fleeting.”
“They have no value.”
“They come and go.”
“They are nothing compared to what you are.”
“Humans can never accept something like you.”
You struggle to breathe. No, you’re human. You’ve always been human in their eyes.
“You are Choi Chin Hae, you are and have always been since the day I gave you that name.”
Monster.
You could never be a human.
No-
You awake with a gasp, cold sweat pouring down the back of your neck. You’re cold, too cold, and all your limbs feel weak, as if you can’t stop trembling. What had happened, all you remember is watching that crew mate that you’d been working so hard to save get shot, and then the almost unnatural, all consuming fury-
The sheets are soaked through with your sweat, even though every part of your body feels oddly cold and clammy. You’re in your bed on board the Treasure, and clambering to your knees, you press your face against the pothole to see where exactly you are.
It’s night outside, and the seas are too reminiscent of your dreams to feel comfortable. You can still see those blue eyes staring back at you with all of their terrifying intent, and immediately start to shiver again.
San, where’s your master?
The infirmary is empty except for you. Trembling, you try to ease yourself out of bed on trembling legs - and almost crash to your knees when pain lances up them like a white hot branding iron. Gritting your teeth, you force yourself to your feet and continue to walk forward, ascending the stairs to the main deck one at the time.
The lanterns burn quietly on the empty deck, everyone else must be housed in below. From what you can see around you, you’re in an empty bay circled by miles and miles of mountains. How did you escape? Where are the Royal Navy?
Stumbling forward again, you turn to the captain’s cabin, where the light is still lit. Slowly, you make your way towards it, trying your best not to fall over from the sheer pain you’re feeling. Quiet voices drift out on the cool night air as you approach.
“... so how long can we hold out?” It’s Yeosang’s quiet voice.
“A couple of weeks or so, if we ration everything out carefully.” Seonghwa replies. “But food goes bad, and well... unprecedented things may occur.”
“The Royal Navy is waiting just outside the bay for us.” Yunho says, voice tight. “An entire armada of them... they’ll lose their advantage if they come into such shallow waters and risk beaching with their massive ships, but we can’t stay here forever. We’re at an impasse.”
“I know that, Yunho.” It’s Hongjoong. He sounds exhausted, weary and your heart pinches. “Enough about this for now. San, how is Chin Hae?”
“She’s still unconscious when I last left her.” San’s voice is subdued, grim. “A few times while treating her... her heart stopped.”
Your heart drops into your stomach at his words. What?
“But she didn’t die, right?” Wooyoung asks urgently, panic edging into his voice. San lets out a sigh, one that you’ve never heard from him before. “No. But she should have. Her heart stopped for several turns of the water clock, Wooyoung, several. It shouldn’t be humanely possible at all.”
“None of us know what’s happening, not even Chin Hae herself.” Jongho wonders aloud. His words are tense. “From the way she looked at that enemy captain, it was like she wanted to destroy him completely.”
“You should have taken the shot, Wooyoung.” Mingi says sharply, and you hear the dragging of the chair across the floor.
“He was holding her! I couldn’t risk misfiring!” Wooyoung’s protest cracks at the end. “Besides, it all turned out fine in the end, didn’t it? She’s just... crazy strong. It worked out in our benefit, that’s all.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.
“She almost tried to kill you at first too, Wooyoung.” Jongho’s voice is raised, and you stop dead in your tracks. You did what now? “At that moment, her eyes... they didn’t look human.”
You stumble at his words, as if punched in the gut.
You could never be human.
The sound of you falling to your knees outside seems to have alerted them, because there’s a sudden scraping of chairs and the door flies open. “Who is it-” Wooyoung’s eyes meet yours, and his face instantly turns white. “C-Chin Hae, are you alright-”
“I want to be alone for a little while.” Your words come out curt, more composed that you thought you could ever achieve in a situation like this. You push his hand away, and haul yourself to your feet, shaking.
“Chin Hae-” San’s voice sounds like it’s filled with tears. “Chin Hae, you shouldn’t be standing in this state. I’ll-”
“Leave me alone!” You finally cry out, clutching yourself close to your body. San’s outstretched hand freezes, and you turn away from them, unwilling to let them see your own tears. “Before I really hurt one of you... before I do something I regret... please.”
Turning around, you run as far as your feet will allow, anywhere, just away from them. White noise rings in your ears and you can’t hear their cries, agony strikes at your feet like hot irons but you can’t feel them against the wooden deck of the ship. You’re shaking like a leaf, arms wrapped around yourself to hold yourself together.
You find yourself huddled against the bow of the ship, at the forecastle deck what seems like a few hours later, sitting on the bulwarks, both your feet dangling over the waters. It’s a precarious position, but you feel better like this when you can’t see the ship, only the sea before you, stretching out as far as your eye can see.
You look down at your remaining hand, closing it around thin air.
Human or monster? Clay or flesh? Alive... or something else?
The Royal Navy has almost gotten their hands on you. And you can feel danger lurking in the air, in the direction of the sea. There’s nowhere left to run.
A storm on the horizon.
You don’t want to die. You can’t allow yourself to die after you’ve come this far. If you die...
“You can’t die...” A sweet, haunting voice floats along the night’s air, light as sea foam, coiling around your neck and sinking deep into your very bones. Starting in surprise, you look frantically from side to side, but see no one. “There’s no need to search for me. I am you.”
With a soft cry of terror, you glance down beneath you into the waves, and there you see her, stunningly blue eyes as bewitching as a siren’s voice. You recognise her now, she bears striking resemblance to the mural you’d seen at the sea witch’s lair. Her voice is soft, enchanting, but her eyes are terrifying dark, bottomless depths that seem to drag you down, down, beneath the surface...
“I am not you.” You hiss, wrapping your arms around yourself again. Your reflection only smiles, that sickeningly terrifying smile that seems to chill you to the very bone. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“If you were a human, I would have erased you in a heartbeat for your insolence.” Her voice is gentle. “But I will not hurt you. Hurting you would be hurting me, after all. That is why I cannot let you fade from this world.”
“You can stop me from dying?” Your attention instantly perks up. “How? Tell me.”
“We cannot die.” Her voice turns dark. “But should that filthy man get his hands on you... he will rob the heart of the sea from you. And you and I will both cease to exist.”
You freeze, completely still. She’s talking about the commander of the Royal Navy, Hongjoong’s father? “What’s the heart of the sea? Why does he want it?”
Her blue eyes shine eerily in the light of the half moon. “You are the heart of the sea, the very thing that the oceans is made of. The very life that thrives and teems in its depths... the push and pull of the tide is your own heartbeat.”
You stare down at yourself in shock, hand to your chest. “The heartbeat of the seas...?” You can’t comprehend what she’s saying. You’re an animated clay golem turned human, not whatever she’s calling you. “I’m getting off track. How do I not die?”
“The death of your body is inevitable.” Her words still you in your tracks. “That is why you must return to the seas right now... before that man captures you and it is too late.”
“What? No!” You cry out in disbelief, shocked. “I’m staying with this crew even if I die! They’re my family!”
Her gaze is merciless.
“Humans? As your family?” Her laugh is cold. “You will never be one of them... haven’t you learned?”
Jongho’s words come back to you, a painful knife in your heart. You had almost tried to kill Wooyoung. Who knew if you would do that again in the future, and succeed?
“Humans are nothing more than fleeting existences upon this earth, before their souls leave forever.” You can’t seem to stop trembling at her words. “There is no point risking so much when their days are so numbered. They will not be able to win against the foe that awaits them.”
Your voice comes out more as a snarl. “I would die to protect them.”
“Ooooh, how sweet.” Her voice is mocking. “Do you know what it means for you to die?”
Your one good hand tightens around the bulwarks. She has to be lying, she’s just trying to manipulate you, it can’t be true.
“You have no soul, so if the heart of the sea were to be robbed from you, you would cease to exist. All traces of your existence would be wiped from this earth like a blank slate. None of your so called family would be able to remember you, much less your existence nor sacrifice.”
She has to be lying, she’s lying, she’s lying-
And yet you can feel it in you that she isn’t. You know that she cannot lie. You don’t know how you know.
That scares you.
“You’re running out of time, love.” Her voice is so soothing, yet so chilling. “The last vestiges of the promise you made with that human captain is holding that husk of a body together. Destroy it and return to the seas before you’re captured. It is the only way.”
“Shut up.” Your breaths are coming out in panicked gasps now, your heart thundering in your chest. “Don’t talk nonsense. I promised him that I would stay alive. There’s no way I’m going to break it willingly.”
You can’t breathe.
“These foolish human emotions... you’ll be freed from them the moment you return to the sea. It does not feel, it does not ache, it does not desire.” The words are like a lullaby lulling you into a deep sleep. “I will save us, if you are so unwilling.”
All of sudden, you feel a weight in your remaining hand, and when you look down, you’re horrified to see a long, silver dagger in your hand. When you try to let go, your fingers are unwilling to obey, only gripping it tighter.
A voice, like a siren’s song, fills your ears, wiping everything from your mind. The last thing you hear is a single instruction.
Kill the human captain, and return to whence you came.
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writer-dreams · 4 years
Text
Colors (Draco Malfoy X Reader)
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I'll be honest, I've had this one fully written since last week. I've just been very nervous to post it because the ending is so bad 😅. I haven't been sure how to fix it and I've re-written it several times. This fic is definitely rushed but hey, it's a one-shot (and I wanted to try writing something short and sweet for once). This is still part of the Cliche Month Challenge by @wreckofawriter (sorry this was so late). I've finally gained enough courage to post it and I hope you enjoy this messy fic.
Prompt: An AU where you can only see the shades of your soulmate's eyes until you first touch.
House: You choose
Blood Status: You choose
Warnings: Possible swearing
Note: Again, very messy. Not sure I like this one too much. The reader in this story is female / uses female pronouns.
Word Count: 1,694 words
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3rd Person POV
Y/n opened her eyes to see the world was still the same shade of steel grey. She longed to know what the world truly looked like, to see actual colors other than this grey. When she was younger, she was ecstatic to learn that someone out there was destined to be with her. She used to fantasize about meeting her soulmate, seeing in color and her falling in love. She imagined what her soulmate would look like, what their personality was like, their likes and dislikes.
Now, as she grew older, she began to develop fears. What if they didn't like her? Even if the universe had put them together, there was still a chance they could reject her. What if she didn't like them? She never considered herself to be a picky person, especially when it came to love, but that didn't mean that they couldn't have a horrible personality. All of her friends have already met with their soulmates, and it did seem like they matched each other perfectly. They always talked about how beautiful the world was and how they couldn't wait until she could see the colors too.
She snapped out of her thoughts. Taking a deep breath, she walked off to the courtyard, hoping a good book could distract her from the whole soulmate situation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Y/n wasn't sure how much time had passed when she finally finished her book. A few hours, at least. She looked around the courtyard, seeing that she was the only one there. She sighed, deciding to go back inside. Y/n looked at the sky, dreaming about the day she could finally see the blue sky her friends talked about. She wondered how beautiful the night sky looked when it was in full color, how pretty a sunset could be. Yet, all she could see was grey. She was almost at the point where she would begin to resent the color. Still, she remained patient, still trying to hold on to the small shred of hope that she would someday meet the one.
On her way in, she bumped into someone rather harshly. The two fell back, Y/n closing her eyes and rubbing her head gently from where it hit the ground. When she opened her eyes, her mind was blown as suddenly, she could see the world in color. Amazed, Y/n slowly took in her surroundings, admiring the green grass and the blue sky. She looked at the bark of the trees, the castle, the white fluffy clouds. Her eyes began to fill with tears as she slowly let it all sink in. She could see, she could finally see! It was all so much more beautiful than she could have ever imagined.
The boy in front of her got up with a groan. In her dazed state, Y/n had almost forgotten about him. She looked back at him to see platinum blonde hair and grey eyes looking back at her. Her face immediately became shocked as she recognized that familiar face, those eyebrows, those thin lips, those sharp cheekbones. Draco Malfoy.
Said boy looked back at her with the same shocked eyes. He glanced quickly around him, an astonished expression on his face. His grey eyes landed back on her, almost in disbelief.
"You're my—" They both whispered.
Y/n couldn't do this. Even when he didn't know they were soulmates, Draco Malfoy was a bigoted twat. How could the universe possibly pair her up with him? Y/n shook her head, before she got up and quickly retreated to her dormitory. She could hear Draco calling after her but she ignored him and simply kept running.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When she arrived, most of her friends were already there, talking amongst each other on their beds. At the sound of the door opening, they all turned their heads and greeted her. Y/n still couldn't believe that she could see in color because of Draco Malfoy. Now, she could see the color or her friend's hairs and their eyes. She turned to a mirror and examined her reflection, playing with her (h/c) hair. She could see that she had (e/c) eyes, which was so surprising, considering that she had only seen a grey version of herself for years.
"Hey, Y/n! I just want you to know that you're beautiful and you better not be saying bad things about yourself to that mirror!" (F/n) said.
"I'm not....I just...."
"You'll find your soulmate eventually, Y/n. Then you can finally see how pretty you are." Another friend reassured.
Y/n smiled back at her, not sure if she should tell her friends that she met them and that it was the worst possible matchup ever. She decided against it, telling herself that the universe had made a mistake. There was no way that Malfoy was her soulmate, she refused to believe it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Almost a week had passed after that incident and Y/n was still avoiding Draco. She could see him trying to reach out to her but she would quickly lose him in the crowded hallways. Everyday, every hour, she was playing a game of avoidance cat and mouse. She had gotten pretty good at it too, swiftly navigating her way through all the students.
Today was just another one of those days. There she was again, quickly walking through the crowds, afraid that she would see Malfoy and have to talk to him. Luckily for her, she managed to make it to class without running into him. She settled into her seat next to her friends, who were quietly gossiping to each other.
"Malfoy's been pretty quiet lately. Hasn't been taunting Potter or anything. He's not even picking on any first years."
"Maybe Dumbledore's finally had enough of his behaviour. Or maybe his father threatened to ground him or something."
Y/n stayed silent, listening in to their conversation. Great, even if she could physically escape Malfoy, he was still there in conversation. It really seemed like the universe was insistent that it was right with this pairing.
"Could you guys stop talking about Malfoy? He's old news anyway. Who cares if he's not bullying anyone for once? Maybe he's actually become a decent person." Y/n snapped.
Her friends looked at each other. "What's gotten you so riled up? You care about him or something?"
"Nothing. I just don't wanna hear about him. Let's just focus on the class, okay?"
Her friends nodded slowly, looking at her suspiciously before they changed the topic of their conversation. Why did she defend him? Everyone, including her, knew that he was a prat and that wasn't changing. Y/n sighed quietly, feeling frustrated. Another thing she had kept to herself was a feeling of longing for the blonde male. He appeared in her dreams like a prince offering to sweep her off her feet. She'd feel drawn to him when she saw him in the hallways, even when she forced herself to stay away from him. Y/n was afraid as to what it could mean, she couldn't accept the truth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After classes ended, she continued through her usual route back to her dormitory. Unfortunately for her, Draco Malfoy was waiting for her right at the entrance. She quickly turned to try and make a getaway but he grabbed her arm.
"Wait. L/n, can we please talk?"
"What's there to talk about?" Y/n asked coldly, even when her heart fluttered at his touch.
"Just, come with me." Draco began pulling her away as Y/n rolled her eyes and allowed him to drag her.
He took her to an empty hallway, where he finally let her go. Y/n looked at him expectantly, putting her hands on her hips. She knew this was coming, there was no avoiding it, especially when the universe constantly pushed them together. The universe can rot in hell.
"So...we both know that we're.....soulmates. Why do you avoid it?" He sounded hurt, and Y/n's heart ached at the thought of that.
"Because, you're Draco Malfoy. You bully Potter and practically everyone else in this school. All you care about is blood status, the Slytherin house, and impressing your arsehole daddy. You're a spoiled brat who acts like you're entitled to everything, and I refuse to be one of those things just because I'm your 'soulmate'." Y/n growled at him.
He seemed to take everything she said into consideration, which was extremely out of character for him. "I can change, Y/n. I can change for you. In fact, I already have. Haven't you noticed how silent I've been? It's been the talk of the school this entire week." He said, desperately. Y/n wondered why he was so persistent, why did he continuously chase her, even when she actively ran away?
"You feel it too, don't you? A pull to me, like a bond?" Draco asked, watching her carefully. Y/n didn't answer but her silence gave her away. "I feel it too. I see you in my dreams and Merlin, I feel my heart race when I see you. I know you think this is a mistake, but the universe doesn't make mistakes. I love you, Y/n. Just give me a chance to prove it." Draco took her hand softly.
Y/n felt it. Some sort of invisible bond tying her to him. The universe had her in its clutches and it would not let her go. She felt her heart tighten and she sighed. What could it hurt to try? Clearly, the universe wasn't giving up on this and maybe there was a good reason for that. She remembered that feeling of longing for the Slytherin boy and bit her lip.
Damn it all.
She took Draco's face and smashed her lips against his. It felt like everything clicked into place as he held her face and kissed back. His lips fit perfectly against hers and she could feel the world around them stop. It was as if the universe was satisfied with its work and was allowing them to enjoy their moment. She pulled away and opened her eyes, the colors around her seemingly more vibrant than before. Draco looked at her with the widest smile on his face.
"I'll take that as a yes?" He chuckled.
"Don't make me regret it, soulmate." Y/n smiled back.
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Permanent Taglist (if your name is crossed out, I couldn't tag you for some reason):
@my-name-is-jazzy-x
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Thank you so much for reading! This was pretty hard to write (I guess I'm not that good at soulmate AU's yet 😅). I hope it wasn't too horrible to read. Yes, I am still working on requests while I'm writing these things (I promise). Thank you again for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Until next time.
-Jade
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russieraholic · 3 years
Text
I wrote a (very) short Yiga Husbands story, because I really need to get back into the mood of writing on my own time again. Be warned, it’s pretty angsty and unpolished, but I thought it was still good enough to post.
Copyright © @russieraholic. Do not Re-post. (By the way, Reblogging is different than Reposting! Reblogs are appreciated!) I should also mention that if anyone wants to make artwork, continuations, or spinoffs of this story you’re welcome to! Just tag and credit me in your work (because well, that’s not only the right thing to do, but I want to see it too!) (Though I heavily doubt this will become viral.)
Writing theft is art theft!
Sheer, frigid winds were commonplace in the desolate, snowy Tabantha Tundra. Really it was more of a large valley, but that is precisely why the wind tunneling was so fierce and brutal. The snow was at least three feet deep and made traversing the landscape hell, if hell could freeze over.
For Sooga, that seemed to be the case. An endless frigid hell. Despite being wrapped snugly in several coats, and numerous scarves covering all but his one good eye, the air still gnawed at him with the cold teeth of a thousand winter wolves. He should not be here. He did not want to be here. But... Sooga had searched all of Hyrule for his beloved, and nothing, no place at all, had come to bear fruit. This was the last place he needed to scour.
Sooga had started the arduous journey in the southeast, working in a snaking pattern to cover practically every square inch of grass, dirt, gravel, sand and snow in the land. It had taken him weeks to do so- and he started as soon as he heard the news that Master Kohga had disappeared without a trace, in action. Usually Sooga never failed to accompany his beloved master in combat. It was a rare exception that he needed to stay back at the hideout, but tensions were high that day and he needed to hold down the fort.
How funny that the one day that the two were apart, was the day that Kohga vanished. It strongly led Sooga to believe that whatever happened, was planned by an outside force. Like an opportunistic predator, it had lied in wait for the perfect moment to strike. Sooga had a few suspects in mind, but most of them had plenty of evidence supporting that it was not them.
Astor, however, had been proving to be quite malevolent ever since he decided that the Yiga Clan was not worth his ‘precious time and energy’, so to speak. He had been taking soldiers down left and right, and had even broken into the hideout to steal goods more than once. It only made sense that the next step would be to harm the leader. In addition, strongly supporting this theory, he had disappeared in the same timeframe that Kohga had. It all fit together too perfectly.
Sooga got his head out of the clouds, steeling himself and continuing to scan the landscape, his eye catching anything that was not the flat white snow, or the frozen-over trees we had familiarized himself with. It was like identifying an out-of-place bump on a blank white canvas; difficult, but not impossible. Accompanying him was a Blademaster, and a handful of footsoldiers that doubled as medics, who were equally as cold as Sooga himself. They were doing their best to help with the search, but spent most of the time huddled closely together to conserve heat.
The man grumbled, slightly annoyed that his men were not taking the matter as seriously as they should have been. “Yiga Clan. I am fully aware that the circumstances are relentless. But the importance of finding our Master vastly outweighs any temporary discomfort that we experience. Stay vigilant. I did not select you few without reason. We must press on.”
After what felt like hours of searching, and likely was, in fact, almost an entire day, the group was just about to give up. However, at the very edge of the tundra, just before the land came to an abrupt stop and dropped off into a spine-chillingly deep trench, lay a lump of snow, that just barely caught the corner of Sooga’s eye. It was out of place, especially since it had just snowed and the tundra was for the most part, very flat. It looked a bit too large to be a wolf or fox, but too small to be a bear.
Strangely, Sooga felt an unrelenting force pressing him to investigate more. As he drew closer, inexplicably his heart started to sink. With every laborious step he took, it continued to plummet until it felt like a fifty-pound weight had replaced it. Yet he trudged on, needing to find out what lay beneath the snow layer.
He started to brush away the snow layer carefully, not wanting to scare whatever was under it, if it was a living thing. But what he started to uncover explained why he felt so drawn towards the location- and very quickly, the soft brushing of the snow away turned into frantic digging. Sooga’s soldiers finally caught up to him, and saw how frantic he was acting.
“HELP ME, DAMN YOU! DON’T JUST STAND THERE!” He barked.
Immediately the soldiers moved to help him and very quickly understood why Sooga snapped at them. It was a disgusting, grotesque sight to see. But they did it- they found Kohga. Which was their ultimate goal. Sooga had never cried before, but this was the end of that record. Salty tears were freezing to his cheek as they fell.
Poor Kohga was nothing short of absolutely mangled. The snow just around him was as red as the completely torn-up suit he wore. His left leg was sliced clean off, which was in fact so clean that it looked like someone had taken their time with a scalpel to slice every vein and artery with precision. His rib cage looked crushed, and there was a band tied tightly around his right wrist that had clearly cut off his circulation. His right hand was in an advanced state of necrosis.
The medics immediately checked for a pulse and any signs of life, as Sooga held the man in his arms. “It’s okay... I-It’s okay... you’re going to be okay... the pain is over now... I’m here....” he cried, unsure of who he truly was reassuring. Kohga, or himself.
A footsoldier looked to Sooga. “He’s alive but we’ve gotta get him back quick. I dunno what we’ll be able to do for him, if anything, but we’ll try...”
Sooga looked down, a searing pain in his heart. “Do it, then. There is no time to lose.”
The soldiers took hold of Kohga and in a puff of smoke and talismans, disappeared with him, back to the hideout where the medical team may or may not be able to stabilize him. It was a matter of luck, really, at this point. Sooga stayed behind, however. He stared at the bloodstained snow, trembling now not because he was cold, but because he was absolutely devastated. Regret, grief, and self-blame all started to plague his mind, like a dark storm cloud creeping over the land.
This was his fault. There were no two ways about it. He deserved a thousand times as much pain as Kohga was going through. That was just a fact, at this point. Common sense and self-preservation was the only thing keeping him from going to Astor and asking to be stabbed through the chest ten times by a rusty blade.
“Kohga...” was the only word that could escape Sooga’s lips.
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biot08 · 3 years
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ABERRANT
FFXIV fanfic behind the cut
ABERRANT
“These readings cannot POSSIBLY be correct” groused Papanan kir Nununan, the perpetual frown on his face deepening as he looked at a display.
Nearby, a Miqo’te woman stepped out of one of the aetherflux chambers. The chamber was designed to be able to measure the aether qualities of a person. How much they had, how much they could manipulate and how fast. It was experimental. Almost everything in the lab was, either being recently developed Garlean technology, or unearthed and re-activated Allagan equipment.
The Miqo’te woman herself arguably fell into that latter category.
And all of it, the entire Garlean laboratory, Papanan would often insist, had been developed as a test of his personal patience and how far the military bureaucracy could fuck with him, personally.
“I thought there was nothing wrong with this thing,” said Papanan. The large green oval display became the latest recipient of his wrath as he gripped it tightly with both of his hands and shook it, as though that would change anything. It wobbled.
“We did not find anything wrong with it. Not quite the same thing. Perhaps it needs calibration?” said Liana kir Vaux, who was sitting nearby nursing a cup of tea in both hands. The two scientists, while both working for the Garlean empire, were very different people. Liana was a wildwood Elezen, tall, with pale skin and gray hair. The older of the two, crows feet accentuated her eyes. Papanan was a Lalafell of dunesfolk persuasion. His skin was a dusty light brown, his hair darker than that by several shades. He was younger, but not young. Both wore the lab coat and pants demanded of their job. As did the Miqo’te woman, for that matter.
“Perhaps our idiot provisioners need calibration,” Papanan retorted. “It has never had a day of instruction in any aetherlogical arts since it was decanted, and yet! Yet! The machine would have me believe that perhaps it is quite the puissant mage.”
Liana sighed, setting her tea down. The Miqo’te woman had since made her way to quietly sit down nearby, staring at Papanan with those large, almost-black glassy eyes of hers. The woman’s face was, as usual, expressionless.
“I wish you would not call her an it,” said Liana.
“I wish you would stop treating it like a pet,” retorted Papanan.
“I am not the one who keeps giving her my cinnamon sweet rolls after lunch,” said Liana.
“We are not feeding it nearly enough. It’s not -natural- and it does not eat like it should be! It’s a machine, Liana. They need fuel, and we cannot jolly well choke it with ceruleam, now, can we?”
Liana looked to the Miqo’te, who stopped staring at Papanan long enough to glance at Liana.
“I do appreciate it, kir Nununan,” the Miqo’te woman said. Her voice was quiet, but steady. Strong. Clear. Liana wished she could teach her to sing.
After a pause, the Miqo’te woman, still staring at Papanan, pulled her teeth back in a rictus grin, seemingly only remembering to squint her eyes a little bit after the face. Papanan threw his hands up and recoiled in mock terror.
“Thal’s balls, Liana! I wish you had never tried to teach her how to smile!”
Liana sighed and looked over at the Miqo’te woman. The woman continued to stare as her face shifted back to its usual expressionless state. Expressionless, Liana thought to herself. But not quite completely. Liana knew many people found the staring unsettling. She herself had, for the first few weeks. But as the moons had stretched into seasons, Liana had learned to find it endearing. A weird sort of constant in the hustle and bustle of the lab. And if she looked carefully, there was still expression there. The slow movement of an ear rotating to hear something better. The twitch of a tail. The specific way the Miqo’te woman stared at any specific moment.
And she knew that the Miqo’te woman was always listening carefully. She learned fast, languages seemingly coming to her instantly, but most tasks she could reach competence in with very little in the way of instruction. She had learned. She had learned which of the scientists to avoid and which ones to stay near. She had learned how to fit in, smoothly shifting from a failed experiment that they were trying to figure out what to do with to a valuable lab assistant and occasional willing test dummy.
Like today, with them trying to get the aetherflux chamber working. The Miqo’te woman was one of the few who did not seem to have some problem or another climbing into it for a few hours.
“Well, whatever. We need replacement parts. Assistant! Help me take this thing apart,” Papanan directed the last at the Miqo’te woman, who nodded, once, before quickly getting up and walking smoothly over to the chamber.
Liana sipped her tea as the two got to work. Liana may have been the experienced aetherologist, but Papanan was the experienced engineer, and repairing the aetherflux chamber was more his area. She watched them for a while, and then made her way over to the display and the output that had so drawn Papanan’s ire, and looked at the data.
Liana considered it with a frown. The values were high, but not astronomical. A failed component could have shown a few things. A blank for no data, or a value that was at the maximum the display could show, or a value that was at the minimum of the same. But all of the values were within reasonable ranges. Just high.
A badly calibrated part could explain it.
But… what if the values were correct?
Liana sipped her tea quietly, looked over at the Miqo’te woman, and considered.
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proudlylost · 3 years
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My 6+1 favorite SPN fics: AU
After the SPN finale I kinda got sucked back into the fandom. The excessive amount of fanfiction reading ensued (I re-read all of my SPN fic favorites and then some) and I realised I have actually read quite a lot of them. So I thought I could share them, to highlight all the talented authors there is and also to gather all of my favorites into the one place. This post contain my favorite AU fics, the SPN universe edition of this fic rec can be found here.
Ninety One Whiskey by komodobits
“In the spring of 1944, the 104th Medical Battalion of the United States Army is disbanded, and its men reassigned to various infantry companies in preparation for their invasion of occupied France. For First Lieutenant Novak, this is less than helpful, as he has so far met his platoon’s designated medic a grand total of twice, and has both times found Sergeant Winchester to be the optimum combination of reckless, arrogant, and downright insufferable so as to make cohesive platoon function near impossible. When the time comes to move out, however, Castiel has to reconcile himself to the fact that men are going to go down and trust that Dean Winchester may well be the only person who can put them back together again. WW2 ETO infantry AU. “ 
READ! THIS! Well, there is some really disturbing war related and time period related stuff, but if you can stomach that, read it! Along with the Angel’s Wild, this is my favorite fanfiction. This fic is heart wrenching and so, so good.The characterization is on point. Historical accuracy is on point. Slow burn is on point. Everything is just perfect. However, as I said, this fic is heavy stuff. There is some serious angst (I cried. I almost never cry when reading) and trauma. But there is glimmers of hope, even if sometimes it feels hopeless. Expected recovery time: at least two weeks. Word Count:  401,183. Explicit
Angel’s wild by LimonadeGaby and riseofthefallenone
“But that’s the whole reason he’s here, isn’t it? He’s not out here hunting Humans. He’s not even hunting deer, or bears, or anything else that featured in Bambi. He’s out here, freezing his nuts off every night, because he’s hunting Angels.
Sometimes Dean wishes that Angels were like how they’re described in the Bible. How people from time too old for him to care much about thought Angels were messengers and warriors of God, protectors of Humans. He knows that how they’re really described in the Bible is actually pretty terrifying, but at least they were told by God that they’re supposed to love Humans, right?
That’s a thousand times better than what Angels really turned out to be.”
This was first longer fic that I read from Supernatural fandom and I fell in love. So this is “the fic that got me into the fandom” but I have read it multiple times since and it is still very, very good. I love everything about this fic. It is very original and the lore is amazing. I love how Dean and Cas are both quite young (in Cas’s case, relatively speaking) and how their love develops (slow burn! <3) I love how Cas is described and I love how he communicates (unintentionally) with flowers. You can also read this without having any knowledge of supernatural series (like I did) which is always impressive for a fic. Wor count:  389, 271. Explicit
For All You Young Hockey Players Out There, Pay Attention by thursdaysfallenangel
“Dean Winchester knows two things about hockey, two things his dad made sure he knew. One, hockey is a guy’s sport, and two, hockey is family. Hockey meant Sam and Bobby and Benny and Victor and Gabriel and hell, his entire team. So when Victor gets traded, Russian-star-turned-new-teammate Castiel Krushnic becomes a threat. As much as Dean hates him for that, the longer he sticks around, the more he begins to threaten that first rule too. Dean’s been taught his whole life that those who play hockey should not be captivated by deep accented voices and the way a guy handles his stick, so how the hell is he supposed to justify what he’s starting to think about Cas? All Dean wanted at the beginning of the season was to win, and now all he wants to do is figure out how he feels about Cas and how to deal with it without ruining his career and tearing his family apart. “
Ah, three of my absolute favourite things smashed into the same fic: sports, slow burn and enemies to lovers. This fic has lots of cameos from supernatural characters, because hockey teams require lots of players. So it is easy to spot your favorite character in this fic. This fic is probably one of may favorites, because of the sport environment (Outside the fandom, I have been super into sports. Like so much I have several national championships medals from my sport. Anyway, not a point here): also the sexual tension between Dean and Cas is so good, especially when they are pumped with the adrenaline. You don’t really need to understand sports to enjoy this fic, though. Word count:  143,592. Explicit
Formula Won by cardinalwrites
“Of all the places Castiel Novak thought he would take in his career, an internship as a Formula One Paddock Correspondent (or journalist, for short) was most definitely not one of them for a few reasons. One: He had no clue what the hell Formula One was. Two: He knew nothing about sports in general. And Three: He should not fall in love with the people he’s supposed to be asking hard-hitting questions to, least of all the head driver of one of the oldest and most well-renowned teams in the sport’s history.
This is a love story told around the world through the eyes of the person that knows the least about where he has found himself in. Come follow a 20-race season finding love in the lost, learning the truth, and figuring out what the hell Formula One is along the way.”
Another sports fic with a slow burn. This is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, because there is quite a lot information about formula one, and the reading experience is more enjoyable if already know about formulas/do your research. Don’t let it stop you though, because this fic is very good. The friendship between Dean and Cas is very natural, and later the romance as well. The plot is very engaging and the drama inside the formula one organization is so good. This fic is also not so “heavy” as the other ones in my list (of course, there are problems along the way, but even the fic’s tags say there will be fluff). The rating is T, which is kinda surprising, because I did not notice it until I already had read the whole fic. Word count: 123,777. Teen
Have Love, Will Travel by squeemonster
Castiel Novak is a reclusive writer with a childhood so tragic it's left him terrified to leave his home—until his overbearing brother, Gabriel, drags him out for a night on the town full of booze and strip clubs, and he encounters Dean Winchester, a mesmerizing and mysterious stripper with secrets of his own. Both men find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other, and soon Dean's private dances for Castiel become much more, as both men confess their troubles and find solace in each other's company. But neither can seem to find the courage to take their relationship further than the intimacy of the club's VIP Room—and just when Dean's own brother gives him the excuse he needs to finally admit his feelings, Dean discovers something that brings it all crumbling down. Will they find a way past their demons and their trust issues, and back to each other?
This is one of the fandom classics and quite rightfully so. Both Dean and Cas have issues, in other words: what’s new? The sexual chemistry between them was so good and well written, but there is also angst and mental health issues (mostly Cas). Sam is quite young in this fic, but manages to be very much a little brother. I honestly loved this fic when I was a bit younger, but I think it is still very good and deserves its place in this list. Word count  94,054. Explicit
Pick It All Up by thepinupchemist
Army veteran Castiel Novak is a wreck after his tour in Afghanistan, brought home to his brother's apartment in Lawrence, Kansas with scars both mental and physical. He copes poorly, and during one night of bad decision making, meets somebody just as much of a disaster as he is -- a prostitute named Dean Winchester. And suddenly, two damaged men might not be as irreparable as they believed.
Ah, it seems that I’m incapable of picking nice, fluffy, happy fanfics. This certainly is not one of them. There is full warnings in the tags, because there is some triggering stuff: PTSD, mentions of past abuse, alcoholism etc. But, this is also very healing story in its own way (It has happy ending. I guess I can spoil that because it reads in the tags) . I avoided this fic for a long time, because the prostitute!Dean tag scared me away, but this was so worth of reading (as I said, happy ending)! Gabriel is super supportive and sweet brother and Dean and Cas are dysfunctional but they work so well despite all the trauma they have endured. Word count:  126,611. Explicit
Bonus: Twist and Shout by gabriel and standbyme
What begins as a transforming love between Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak in the summer of 1965 quickly derails into something far more tumultuous when Dean is drafted in the Vietnam War. Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea.
Well, I don’t think this fic needs any introductions. This is the fic, the most popular in SPN fandom and one of the most popular ones in the whole ao3. I thought that I could read this, because I don’t generally have many triggers, despite all the warnings. I was a wreck during reading. And I have managed to read it once and I can’t make myself read it again. But it is good and amazingly written. This fic plucks every emotion out of you and does anything it pleases with them. You have been warned. Word count:  97,556. Explicit
(When I wrote this fic rec I also realised I have a serious problem with long fics. Like, most of my favorites are at least 100,000 words. At this point I think I don’t even consider a fic to be slow burn, unless it takes several days to complete the fic. Oops)
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