#i keep thinking about him!!!

[purpleqilinwrites]

the body is a soft animal.

a/n: i have a long-ish fic planned for a cyberpunk 2077 au with nanami on the brain. i just had a specific scene that haunted me and i didn't where to put it in terms of the fic, so i just wrote it (also because i needed a taster of sorts to motivate me into writing the rest of the fic). also, this is the longest piece i've written in a while, so i just want to celebrate a little haha.

fandom: jujutsu kaisen

character: nanami kento

genre: general / fluff (can be read as either platonic or romantic)

info: cyberpunk 2077 au; reader is a ripperdoc; nanami is a merc

warnings: mentions of injury; mentions of killing

synopsis: nanami wasn't sick but still, he found his way to you.

word count: 2.4k

companion fic to "these unfamiliar intimacies".

Nanami Kento

When you remotely unlocked the door to your clinic after hearing Nanami's voice over the intercom, the first thing out of your mouth was "Are you hurt?" He was inclined to say that he wasn't. At least, not physically. He came to see you after a particularly taxing gig that also happened to be physically strenuous, but it wasn't the lingering soreness in his muscles that made him want to see you.

"I'm not," he said after a while.

You had turned away from your workstation in the interval between your simple question and his admittedly late answer, and he could easily guess the next thing you'd ask him.

The question "Are you sick?" was formed in a warped version of your voice, ringing in his ears before the words left your mouth. Your voice didn't register the same way it did when he imagined it in his head, and it made him think that maybe, just maybe he was a little bit sick, after all.

"Physically, no."

You gestured to the examination table beside your workstation, turning your back to him once more to start up the necessary diagnostics equipment for a full-body scan. Nanami acquiesced, quietly crossing the room and adjusting the backrest himself before removing his shoes and then lying down.

The synthetic leather was freshly sanitised, traces of the bergamot-identical antiseptic spray you favoured wafting up into his nostrils. Glancing up at your side profile, he couldn't tell if you had been napping on the examination table before he interrupted it by unexpectedly announcing his presence over the intercom.

When you spun yourself to face him in your swivel chair, he lifted his hand so that you could jack him in for the scan. There was a sound that confirmed the security of the connection, and then there was a different sound that signalled the start of the process. A loading icon began playing in a loop on the little square screen on the largest of the machines, hovering over text that read "SCAN IN PROGRESS". The two monitors on your desk lit up, one with empty progress bars that quickly filled up and the other with a multitude of pop-up messages he didn't bother reading.

"From a medical standpoint, you're entirely healthy. All your cybernetic implants are in good working condition as well," you said, disconnecting him from your equipment. "If you'd like more specific tests run, we'll have to move to the university hospital in Shibuya."

Nanami met your gaze, and he wondered if you had to learn it. If you had to learn to keep your eyes emotionally vacant but intellectually keen. If it ever came in useful when breaking a notably dismal piece of news to someone.

A sigh escaped him before he could reel himself in.

"I came here to talk, actually," he said, sitting up. Your eyes never wavered. Instead, you simply hummed in acknowledgement and drew closer to him on the examination table.

Nanami readjusted the backrest so that he could sit comfortably, though it was more to keep his hands busy. He didn't know what he was doing. What was he trying to accomplish? He did mention wanting to talk. What did he want to talk to you about anyway? His relationship with you was strictly professional. The conversation that could potentially alleviate the pinch in his chest would have to be one between him and a friend he trusted with his life, and he didn't have many of those left.

"Would you like something to drink?" Your voice came from the far side of the room where you had a wall-mounted control panel. He cleared his throat and requested a hot black coffee, to which you nodded before tapping a few buttons on the screen.

You wheeled yourself back to him, crossing the span of the room in one kick, and you informed him that one of your service androids would be bringing his coffee within the next three minutes.

"Thank you," he said, and he felt like he was having his first non-work-related human interaction in decades. Had he spent so much time completing gigs alone that he had socially regressed to a kid who couldn't hold a conversation? Nanami cleared his throat again to banish the thought.

As much as he hated to admit it, maybe Gojou was right to suggest that he accept a few gigs where he'd be forced to work in a team. Gojou, despite his number of obvious flaws, was occasionally able to offer a piece of sound advice, after all.

The service android swiftly ducked into the room with two mugs and exited at the same speed before Nanami caught himself. He thanked you for the drink again, blowing on the surface of his coffee and then testing the temperature with a sip.

The coffee was just right in temperature and more than excellent in taste, and he gave a low hum of appreciation as his first sip slid down his throat.

He looked at you over the rim of the pristine white mug in his hand. You were watching the spheres of ice move in a current of your own creation, bobbing erratically as you twisted the straw you held between your thumb and index finger this way and that in the amber liquid.

"Whiskey?" he asked, fumbling over the singular word and cursing inwardly at himself for it.

You shook your head, appearing not to notice his perceived blunder as you continued swirling your drink with the straw. "I don't drink alcohol," you said. "It's apple juice."

The conversation halted when you picked up your drink and motioned for him to consume his. Nanami obliged, content to cup both hands around the warm mug in between tiny, leisurely sips of coffee.

There was something quite precious about your manner now that he had the proximity and the silence to observe you. You chose a sweet juice instead of every alternative that was available in your extremely well-stocked clinic. Your drink was served in what must be a personal mug with the caricature of a dog painted on beneath the transparent outer layers of glaze. These little things chiselled away at the stoic image of you he had from his first meeting with you, even if it was nothing but a vague recollection of his anaesthesia-laden mind.

Nanami almost laughed into his last sip. He thought of you the same way almost everyone else thought of him. The irony wasn't lost on him.

"Have you ever killed someone and regretted it?"

His temporary good cheer loosened his lips in a way that even a whole bottle of whiskey could not. One moment had him holding his laughter back out of politeness. In the next moment, some words in a fairly unfortunate sequence left his mouth before he could process them.

It spoke to the capricious state of his emotions that he didn't want to take them back.

You blinked slowly, your face tilted in his direction even if you weren't looking directly at him. He suddenly became intensely attuned to the whisper of your air-conditioning system, the consistent tick-tick-tick of the mechanical clock hanging by the door, the dull hum of the machines as they awaited another order from you.

"No," you said, looking him in the eye and propping your cheek against an upturned palm. "I do everything with purpose."

It shouldn't be of any concern to him. He was well-acquainted with the wretched state of the world he lived in. It'd be supremely difficult to find a person who hasn't killed someone by the time they've reached adulthood. He wasn't surprised by the insinuation in your reply.

It was your choice of words that left him feeling like he had trespassed on what should be a secret.

The touch of your knuckle to his chin alerted him to the fact that he had been gaping at you. Nanami immediately apologised, clenching his jaw when he wasn't speaking to keep from making the same mistake again.

He wanted to put the topic to rest. If you weren't elaborating of your own accord, then it wasn't his right to pry. In spite of this, he was still curious. Who did you kill? On what occasion? Have you killed more than once? On purpose?

You were taking your time with your apple juice, cheek still in your palm and eyes fixed on a spot on the mostly bare walls that was apparently visible only to you. From the other end of the folding coffee table, his traitorous mind superimposed a likeness of you sitting in the same chair adjacent to him.

You were leaning slightly over the same table, facing away from him as you expertly broke open the shotgun in your hands. The empty shells clinked against the surface of the table when you shook them out of the barrels. There was an open box of ammo sitting to your right. Your hand knew exactly where it was when you reached for fresh shells to slide into your weapon. You brought the barrels back up to close the break, and it was the sound of a click too real to be his imagination that snapped Nanami back to you.

'Everything with purpose,' you said. You would've made an excellent merc. Better than him, even.

"Have you killed someone and regretted it, Nanami?" You threw his question back at him. It was very uncharacteristic of you, and it gave him a pleasant tickle. He knew you as someone who diligently avoided small talk, and yet, here you were.

"I have," he started, careful to taste his words before he spat them out. "I accepted a gig to dispose of a cyberpsycho. I only found out that he wasn't at fault after the deed was done. I—"

He paused, but he wasn't sure what for. There were plenty of other related things that he was leaving out. You didn't need to know. Or did he not want you to know?

"Did the cyberpsycho hurt anyone before you were contracted to kill him?" you asked. There was that tickle again, running up his chrome spine and settling into spaces between the individual vertebrae. The very same spine that you had painstakingly put together yourself just a few months prior, when he had to be hauled into your clinic in bloodied bits and pieces.

Nanami nodded. "He killed 4 med techs and injured 13 other lab staff. An entire wing of a research facility was ruined," he said, and it instantly transported him to a day earlier when he was on that Militech property far outside city limits once again.

The entire building had been cordoned off a few days before his arrival. Business carried on as usual in the rest of the compound that was unaffected. It was only the ground zero of the cyberpsycho attack that looked like a scene out of those old-fashioned zombie apocalypse movies Yuuji enjoyed watching.

"If you hadn't neutralised him, he would've hurt more people," you said. "There's no reason to feel regret if your purpose was to protect people."

He had been a police detective before he did away with his badge and became a merc. The desire to protect was the lifeblood that kept him going before the change in career, even when the uniform he wore and had admired as a child was what the people committing atrocities against other people were also wearing. It was the same desire to protect that moved him to remain in a line of work where his hands would always be sullied by death.

How did you know? Maybe he was a children's picture book to your knowing eyes, open and simple to read.

When Nanami looked up from his hands, he intended to thank you. For listening to him, and for letting him feel heard. The pinch in his chest remained, but it had lost its nails after sitting by you for a little while.

When he met your eyes for the first time in what must've been at least half an hour, there was an unknown but very much welcome tenderness in them that he hadn't seen from you before. 'Tender' would've been one of the last words he used to describe you, before this conversation. He'd hazard a guess that you preferred being identified on the other end of the spectrum: 'efficient', 'immovable'. The same words other people used to describe him, too.

At this moment, you were tender, and he was breathing it in, basking in it. It was strange to feel soft, especially when the bulk of his body was an arrangement of predominantly metal parts engineered into the remains of his flesh.

The urge to thank you for putting him back together bloomed in him from all the half-formed thoughts in his mind. He wasn't so brazen as to believe that a lesser ripperdoc would've been able to manage what you have. There was a reason Gojou entrusted him to you in his time of emergency.

"You're good at this," Nanami said, instead. To tell you what was in his heart seemed to breach the boundary line of professional etiquette between a merc and his ripperdoc. Maybe there would be a time in the future when he could run his mouth in your presence, a little treat for him that hopefully amused you too. Maybe it would happen soon.

There was a quirk that nipped at the corners of your lips. He counted it as a smile, mirroring you in equal proportion.

"That's the first I've heard of it," you said, lifting your cheek from your palm and straightening your posture. The veneer of a stoic ripperdoc quickly took over the half-smile you graced him with.

"I'll be back when I need a listening ear," he said, presenting you with an offering – of goodwill? Friendship? – and surprising himself with the magnitude of hope he was attaching to it.

You blinked. He watched you visibly inhale, and you looked unsure of how to respond. There was a slight wrinkle in your brow as you mulled his declaration over. "Do come back," you said. "Don't wait until you've been bisected again to come see me."

Nanami chuckled at the unexpected joke, though comedy might not have been your intention. Your half-smile was missing from your face, but the amicable glint in your eyes told him everything he needed to know.

[brucie-baby]

the fact that alfred was the one to put up jason's memorial is so important to me

[batbabydamian]

*you opening the love letter* what does your damijon look like, pls pls pls pls pls pls pls, i know it would be so cute, i just know it 🙏🙏🙏

here you go! thank you for the ask, this was a lot of fun to do! they're working on a case together ^^

[chloesimaginationthings]

I know Vanessa regret saying this in the FNAF movie,,

[buggachat]

something so fucked up about Chat Noir’s whole deal is that he is in a lot of ways Adrien playing a character. Like Adrien picked up his miraculous and was told he’d be a superhero so he was like “ok, time to act like a superhero!” and he lets himself have fun w it and play up the role and let loose and kind of just allow himself to be silly and goofy and have fun and for once in his life not care about performing Perfection™.

But. But none of the other characters KNOW THAT. So everyone just sees Chat Noir and is like “look at this guy’s ego. He’s so full of himself. Surely it’d be fair to knock him down a few pegs” without being aware of how few pegs he actually HAS. He’s like the “insecure character who overcompensates in ego” trope except he’s really not doing it unironically, he’s just having a fun LARP pretending to have self worth in his off-hours but nobody else is on the same page about it being a game and he refuses to tell them. He just dramatically pouts about it and lets them laugh and pretends like he’s not internalizing it and it is almost 3 am and my brain forced me to write this instead of sleeping I’m gonna take a melatonin

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

while we wait.

may i offer you all a pubby?? lil bby barns?

[demaparbat-hp]

She will (and he'll let her)

[pineapple-frenzy]

Book 2 au: sparring sessions and short hair katara

They like to have sparring sessions in order to keep their bending skills sharp. They allow themselves to go all out and not hold back at all cause they know if anyone got hurt, Katara could just heal them

But anyways, wouldn't it be kinda funny if Zuko accidentally burned Katara's hair tho? Aofkqldkkajfjd

The "I think we can save the hairloops" line is from @linnoya-writes thank you for that!! :>>

[vaxxman]

"Do you miss the time when you used to do no harm?"

Old habits.

Merc behaviour is based on a nice little comment @up-in-flames-writing left on one of my comics :)

Rambling and more silly drawings below.

Loosely based on the Solemn Vow's public blurb:

Art lovers will cherish the bust of Hippocrates, commemorating a time when the Medic still thought doing no harm was a good idea.

I am absolutely convinced that Medic carries dextrose drops with him. German pharmacies throw these after you when you buy anything at all. I went to check if this one specific brand I know of had been around since the 60s and 70s and yes, it was.

Small acts of kindness I can see Medic doing is giving everyone one of these if they are tired. I'm talking about Engineer mostly.

Or they snack on them when solving practical problems together, like during the teleporter bread tumor incident.

[anna-scribbles]

emma dupain cheng on the brain😽🎀

more:

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Enki S Ending: God Blocking Gambit

[potassiumprincess]

i think marinette is worse at resting when she's sick but adrien is worse at sitting things out if he's injured. i have no explanation, these are just the vibes

[soldrawss]

Part 2 finally! Part 3 to come soonish,,,

You can find part 1 here!

[zephyrchama]

Does anybody in the Obey Me! cast know that MC's phone is special and can basically see other people's text chains at random? Would anyone ever pick up on this?

Imagine hanging out with Beelzebub when Belphegor starts messaging him. Your phone, wholly unrelated to their chat in any way, starts dinging every single time Belphegor sends a message. It buzzes at the exact same time as Beelzebub's phone. Maybe he'll laugh it off as coincidence at first, but in time of course he'll get suspicious.

Imagine chilling with Leviathan when your phone starts blowing up with notifications because Mammon and Satan are having an argument. Leviathan becomes envious. You must be so popular, you must have so many people vying for your attention. He starts getting upset.

You try to tell him the messages aren't important (they're not even for you!), but you can't exactly admit that your phone is constantly spying on the conversations between him and his brothers. How you watched him teach Diavolo how to play Mononoke Land in real time.

Does this system only work with people you know? With the people currently registered as contacts in your D.D.D.? Do you ever see the random thirst messages people DM Asmodeus? Do you ever see Mephistopheles message private matters to his family? How often are surprises ruined due to this? How difficult is it to watch Simeon repeatedly message Solomon with questions he clearly intended to text Lucifer? Can you keep your mouth shut when two people are privately discussing juicy gossip that's too good to ignore?