#i think gauze is pretty Neat

[sweet-honey-tears]

Will you go to prom with me?

How they ask you to prom.

Characters: Shinso, Sero x GN!Reader

The poll and people have spoken! Here you guys go, I hope you like it!! And thank you all for your support and request! And as always request are open!

If you want another character done, feel free to ask! 🤍

Shinso

Shinso wouldn’t have a promposal sign, but he also wouldn’t just walk up to you and ask you out flatly. He would really only do that if he wanted to dance with you but you where both in public (not making a huge deal of it- that would be embarrassing)

��Care to dance darling?”

OR you guys were dating for many years or even married. But even in that instance, he comes home with a giant thing of flowers and asks if you wanted to go out to the hero’s Galla, or even chaperon the prom/dance at Eris school.

In late high school, you get ask by though Shinso’s cat( Aizawa cat but pretty much his- everyone in that household has a cat at this point). So Miku(Shinso let Eri name her- And Eri choose the name Hatsune Miku due to the blue hair at the time) comes running toward you, like every time you enter the house. Expect this time a dainty little flower and note are hanging from her bright blue collar.

“Hey there Miko, watch’s got there?” You question, kneeling to the sweet grey cat. Miku rubs against your knees, before all but throwing herself into your palms. She lets out a rather loud chirp as the small flower and notes get in her way.

“Let me get this for ya Miku-“ you whisper to her, scratching the white patch under her chin before grabbing the flower a note.

“Will you go to prom with me, kitty?”

You whisper out yourself, you’re fingers brushing over the laminated paper. The writing is neat, cursive and you tell Shinso spent time on it.

Miku chirps at you, angry at the lack of affection. Your fingers mindlessly comb the underside of her chin. Your heart is swelling, sending vibrations through your chest and causing the area to tighten.

A moment or two passes and you hear someone clear their throat. You peer up, seeing the man himself, his face reddened, and his eyes staring down at you. Shinso’s dressed in baggy sweatpants and a loose tank top. His hands are gauzed up, and his capture weapon is hanging unevenly off his neck. He must have been practicing when you came in, his chest still heavy breaths- but regardless he managed to stay quiet.

“So… what do you say?”

You slowly stand up, much to Miku's dismay. You start to walk before almost sprinting toward him. Hugging him tightly,

“Wait I’m all-“

“Yes” you speak to his shoulder, allowing yourself to be lifted slightly by him, “I would love to go with you, Shin!”

Sero

Sero goes a more creative route, finding someway to incorporate his tape into it. He does ask you straight up sometimes to go dancing with him. The days you’re swaddled in his hoodie, he can’t help it. Sero will engulf you in his arms, squeezing you as he hums lightly into your hair. “Care to dance.” And it’s just the two of you swaying to whatever music he puts on.

For prom tho- different story.

You walk into the training room and your jaw just falls open. Written in tape, something similar to charlottes web, the word “Prom?” is written out. Its sharp, the circles are like a triangles and there are many ‘strings’ of tape attached to each side. To a point that if you stood too close you'd probably get lost in all the stands.

“Oh! I didn't think you be up so early.” there's a light voice behind you. Seros's voice is surprised, but wavers near the end. “I was actually about to take it down-”

“Why?”

You asked, turning around to fully face him. Sero looked slightly tired- dark bags staring to form under his eyes. He wore a loose white shirt, it was one you had bought him. A giant bowl of Ramen being on the back, with the words “Heaven Noodles” circling around it. You had gotten it a size to big by accident- which didn’t stop the hero in practice from wearing. But due to the lardge size, he enjoyed it more so as asleep shirt (when he did ware one). Sero also had flip flops on and black sweatpants that had yellow triangles going up the legs. It was sleep ware- you saw him in it last night when you both went to your separate dorms. How long had he been awake doing this? Did he sleep at all?

“It was too messy, I was redoing it. Or honestly try something different.” Sero sleepily chuckled, his arms stretching on reflex. A nervous habit he seemed to get while in UA.

“Please don't,” you spoke, walking up to him. “And J would love to go with you.” Seeks tired eyes seem to widen a bit at your answer. His smile stretching wide as he reached out for you. Cupping your face.

“Mi Amor- I am the luckiest man alive” he smiles before kissing your forehead.

@call-me-copycat

[rosekasa]

2 + ladynoir <3

yuki yk u change ur url sm i never recognise u shdjs

implied sexual content ahead!

send me a kiss prompt + lovesquare corner

2. Those kisses that leave them craving for more

“Let me know if it’s too tight,” he tells her.

“Okay.” Ladybug wiggles her fingers, poking out of a neat fold of gauze.

Chat Noir takes hold of them so he can finish with her arm.

Her breath catches.

It's weird, feeling like this around him. Since they started being able to hold their transformations for longer, their invincibility had taken a bit of a hit, meaning that falling off a rooftop during patrol wouldn't necessarily kill them, but would definitely leave them with a nasty concrete burn. He'd changed her bandages for her before, and she'd never felt like this. She didn't when he had the day before yesterday, either. It's strange how much can change in twenty-four hours. She wonders if he feels it, too.

Experimentally, she curls her fingers, pressing his nails into her palm.

His hand falters on her bandages. 

She holds her breath.

Yeah. She thought so. 

He swallows, then continues wrapping.

She watches him. He’s leaning forward, pressing his weight on his knees in front of the bed, hair falling into his face. 

She twists her toes into the carpet fibres, stomach thrumming. She’s only wearing pyjama shorts. His jeans brush up against her ankle. 

They could do it again. They have the room booked until they have to leave for the airport, which isn't for another three hours, and they’re pretty much done with all the prep and briefing they’ve needed to do over the past few days for the mission. She's still not sure how long last night lasted, but she thinks they could make do with what they have. 

No. That's a bad idea on all counts. In three hours he'll be on his way to New York, and the last thing she wants is to give either of them any more pieces to put back together. 

His hand slides away from her fingers to cup the back of her arm. Pulling the bandage around one end, he begins a second layer. 

She closes her eyes and sighs.

"What happened?" he says. "Did that hurt?"

"No, I was just…" She bites her lip. "Thinking about… this. Who's gonna change my bandages when you're gone?”

He snorts. "Learn to do it yourself."

"Fuck off."

He smiles up at her through his hair.

She bites down on her lip, so hard she can feel it in her jaw. 

Gently, she brings her leg closer to him, pressing her knee into his shoulder. The cotton of his shirt is soft on her skin.

His smile fades. 

They hold each other’s gaze for a solid three seconds, before he clears his throat, and looks down at her shin. He locates the surgical spirit on the carpet next to him, and unties the old bandages secured around her calf.

Her pulse plays a drumbeat into her skin.

“So, um.” She fiddles with the bedsheets between her fingers. “Are you excited?”

“For a nine-hour plane journey?” he deadpans.

She laughs a little. “The States. The mission. Getting to work on your own for once.”

He finishes unwrapping her leg and discards the gauze in the waste bin next to him. “Oh. Right.” He uncaps the surgical spirit. “I don’t know. It’s definitely going to be a change from Paris.” 

The sharp odour of antiseptic fills the air. He picks up his cloth, tips in some spirit, and, with a hand around her calf, wipes the dried blood off her shin.

Then, slowly, he begins to massage her calf.

Her entire body tenses.

He does it so easily, like it’s just something that they do, one hand on her leg while the other untangles a strip of gauze. And, well, yeah, she supposes it’s something that they did, but it’s different now. The timeline of their partnership has been split into before last night and after last night and she’s not sure what to do with that.

Tenderly, he begins to wrap her leg. His hair is back in his face, and a surge of affection fills her at the sight.

She’s not sure what to do with that, either. Especially now.

She doesn’t want to be a cliché, doesn’t want to let her hormones do all the thinking for her. She understands oxytocin, and dopamine, and endorphins. She understands what they can make you think. Make you feel. She doesn’t want to become a victim to her own biology after just one night.

The dangerous thing is that she really doesn’t believe she will. That she really believes something more than just a rush of impulsiveness from no costumes and a king sized bed and their last full day together had transpired between them.

But the thing is, it could’ve, and no matter how much she tries to tell herself otherwise, that could’ve still lingers in her brain. They’d talked. They’d laughed. They’d spent the rest of the night cuddling, listening to the rain on the windows behind the curtains. After all that, she doesn’t want it to have just been chemical between them. 

Even if it’d hurt more if it wasn’t.

“Ladybug?” he says. 

“Yeah?” she replies.

“What if I just don’t go?”

She looks down at him. “What?”

He doesn’t look back at her, busy with the bandages. “What if I don’t go?” he repeats. “New York has heroes already. They can find the missing Miraculouses on their own, can’t they?”

She can’t tell if he’s kidding. They’ve been preparing for this for months, discussing it for a year, and he’s never once had any reservations about leading the New York mission. Up until now, he’s done nothing but steadfastly agree that having the jewels scattered around the world are a hazard for Hawk Moth to have more to get his hands on. That, after failing to win side-by-side for five years, they should try doing things separately. Maybe then could they put an end to his reign.

“No, they— of course they can’t,” she says. “They’re not trained like you.”

“Well,” he says. “What if I need more training?”

She blinks at him, stunned. “What’s gotten into you?”

He ties off her bandage, his hands lingering on her leg. “I think you know,” he tells her. “And I think it’s gotten into you, too.”

Her face fills with heat.

He avoids her gaze, looking down at the strips of gauze littered around his lap.

They have to leave in three hours. His flight is in five. Her heart feels like it might shatter her ribs and she can’t help but think that they really can’t make do with what they have. Not for this.

“Chat, you’re not—“ She cuts herself off. “You’re not serious about not going, are you?”

“I… I don’t know? Maybe?" He fiddles with some gauze. "I mean, I know I won't get a refund on the ticket, but—"

"Chat."

"Okay," he says. "I know. I know this mission is important. But I just… I hate that we don't know how long it'll take. Will I be gone for a year? Two years? Longer?" He sighs. "I just… I never thought it'd matter before. But after last night I just… I felt something. And I don't want to lose that. Not before we've even had it."

Her heart throbs. 

Maybe it wasn't all just chemical.

She closes her eyes, swallowing the tightness in her throat. "I felt something, too."

"So you get it, right?" he asks. "You get why I don't want to leave?"

She takes in a shaky breath, turning her head to look at the corner of the room. "It's a really important mission, Chat Noir," she says. "We could— we could finally be done with Hawk Moth. Finally."

He deflates. "Yeah. I know."

They’re quiet for a long time, the smell of the surgical spirit still hanging between them. 

She reaches out, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "Do you really want to stay?"

He sucks in a deep breath, then touches her hand. "I do," he says.

Neither of them say anything.

Then, he sighs, and lets go of her.

She takes the hint, and takes her hand off his face.

"We should get some dinner," he says quietly. "I hate plane food."

"Right." She plays with her fingers, not looking at him. Then, she glances at the surgical spirit. "Give that to me. I'll put it away."

He caps it, and hands it over.

His fingers brush hers.

A pulse of electricity hits her stomach. Her eyes flick up to his. He's already looking at her.

Slowly, he gets to his feet. She has to lean back as he straightens, has to let him decide how this goes, so when he cups the back of her neck and leans down, she can't even manoeuvre herself to make him kiss her faster.

It's slow. And hard. Her heartbeat is on her tongue, and God, this really can't be all chemical.

They break away quickly, pressing their foreheads together, breathing hard. His hand slides up to thread through her hair. Hers knots itself into the material of his T-Shirt.

She gnaws at her lip. They could do it again. They could do it again. Oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins, it didn't matter. Chemicals didn't make this any less real.

She swallows hard. "We should… we should get dinner."

He nods, eyes closed.

They separate.

[inkandguns]

My Parashooter Type 56M chest rig arrived today and I’m impressed. The material is high quality and the stitching is well done. No dangly little threads like some wish.com airsoft crap. I’m not sure if they’re made by machine or by hand, but either way it’s a quality piece of kit.

I strapped my SOG Seal pup on the left side of the magazines with a gerber multitool in the little pouch. The molle didn’t exactly match up but it still mounted. The nylon is just slightly bunched up on the back, but not so much that you’d notice.

I ordered an Onward Research S.I.M.P. Pouch for the bottom of it and I’m glad the colors are pretty close. I think the dangler pouch location is a great place for IFAK stuff. Currently I have an H and H compressed gauze, ACE wrap, and 2 inch roll of 3M durapore inside of it. If you know what you’re doing you can work wonders with those three items. Just the other day I used a roll of H and H and a some durapore when one of my employees cut off the tip of his pinky finger. I’ve got a Gen 7 CAT tourniquet wrapped in a grey bandana on the bottom. It’s extremely dusty here and I’ve heard the grains of sand and dust can degrade the nylon faster.

I plan to put a First Spear small GP pouch on the right side of the magazines. I think this would be an ideal spot to put stuff like batteries and a flashlight, or maybe a headlamp and some handcuffs.

The button attachments on the magazine flaps are sturdy and retain well. They can also be tightened up over time if needed. Check out how nice and neat their stitching is. I’m going bullets up for the mags. When I was pulling the magazines out it’s a lot faster for me.

The x harness fits me very well. It’s not pinching my neck and it’s not falling off of my shoulders. If you’re a big huge jacked dude with a fat neck this might not be the best choice for you. I’m 5’7” and about 160 lbs and it works well for my size.

[1moreoffkeyanthem]

For the ask game!

11 - Share one of your favorite whumpy scenes that you have written.

13 - What is the most recent thing you have researched for use in your whumpy writing?

23 - Do you write whump for OCs or just canon characters?

Ayyy rock on these are some good ones!!! Gonna try to make this organized lmao so

11- probably one of my favorites recently is from In Poison Places, day 5 of my Style Week collection, with Knight Stan having to stitch up his beloved Elf King in the Dark Forest. I’ll put it and the other questions below the cut!

“I… I think it’s- can you check?”

Wiping the moisture from his eyes and not caring that he was probably smearing blood on his cheeks, Stan nodded, understanding. He pulled away the king’s coat, untucking his shirt to expose the pale skin beneath, something he’d done many times under different, much more pleasant circumstances.

The hole in his side was gruesome, gushing an alarming amount of blood, but the black veins of venom branching from the wound were retreating, fading. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s working, my love.”

Kyle nodded, the movement drawing a small whimper from him. “Okay. Okay. Now we just- *shsss* -need to worry about blood loss. How deep?”

Stan cringed. “Deep.”

Kyle tried to crane his head up to look, but he wasn’t exactly in the best angle, or condition, to really see it. “I need you to stitch it up, then. You know where the medical kit is.”

“WHAT?!”

“You’ve done sutures before, Stanley-“ Kyle was cut off by an involuntary groan as a fresh wave of agony hit.

“On MYSELF, Kyle! I’ve done emergency sutures on myself, with my dominant hand, ONE TIME!”

The elf’s green eyes hardened and he clenched his jaw. “I trust you, beloved,” he said softly.

With a newfound determination not to let his fear win, Stan rose to gather up their supplies, collecting their packs and weapons, making a point not to let his eyes fall on the monster’s stinking corpse. He pulled out the surgical thread and curved needle that he’d hoped they wouldn’t need but was glad they’d brought along.

“Good thing it’s pre-threaded,” he managed.

“Mhm,” Kyle hummed in agreement. “Fate must be looking out for us in some regard.”

Stan poured some water from his canteen over the wound, washing away enough of the blood to see what he was working with and wincing when Kyle sucked in a pained breath. “I’m sorry, dearest.”

Kyle squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s okay. Just- please do it quickly.”

Trying to still his trembling, Stan hovered close with the needle. “It won’t be neat,” he warned. “This isn’t really a one handed job.”

“I don’t care how pretty it is, my love, as long as I don’t bleed to death before we get the kingdom the help it needs. Just do it.”

Stan ignored the way his shoulder throbbed when he positioned himself to get started. He could worry about his own hurts later. “Okay. Scream if you need to.”

Kyle did, indeed, need to, cursing and shaking, ripping at the dry grass to anchor himself with the first pass the needle made through the tender skin. As for Stan, he blinked away the tears at his beloved in such pain, attempting to steady his own tremors.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, darling, just hold on.”

Kyle hissed and whimpered with each stitch, but stayed mostly still to the end, eyes red from crying and body wracked with intermittent sobs. Stan talked him through it the whole time through sobs of his own, clumsily closing the wound with his left hand and feeling his heart clench more with every passing second.

He fumbled to cut the thread and press a folded cloth to the stitches, grimacing when he realized he’d have to somehow sit Kyle up to secure the gauze.

“I- my lord, I’m sorry, you’re going to have to sit up now.”

“Don’t you “my lord” me!” Kyle snapped, then sighed. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just… this is a lot. I’m frustrated.”

“I know, it’s alright.” Stan supported him as best he could, and they were able to bandage Kyle’s torso between the two of them. The king eased back down, his head in his knight’s lap this time, breathing hard but still wonderfully, miraculously alive.

Stan leaned down to kiss him gently. “You need rest, my dearest.”

“So do you,” Kyle choked out, spent from pain and poison. “You’re hurt too. But this isn’t the place for it.”

It really wasn’t. They needed to move. Dark things, even more sinister than the daylight creatures, came out in the night. This forest was no place for two injured people to survive when the sun went down. Stan turned his face upward, barely able to catch the red sun through the mist and thick canopy of black leaves.

“We have a little time before sunset,” he said, trying to force a buoyancy that he didn’t feel into his tone. “And if I’m right, we’ll be out of the woods in a half hour, maybe more with how slow we’ll need to walk. We’ll rest when we’re safe.”

Kyle hummed and slowly stood, using Stan’s uninjured shoulder for support. “I should’ve brought my staff,” he muttered.

The path lay before them, twisted and shadowed. With any luck, they’d stay out of trouble until they reached the end. The king was pale and visibly unsteady, and Stan was down one arm and not at full strength to fight back whatever they might come across, but they were together. They were always stronger together, and always had been. Nothing, no matter how vile, poisonous, or vicious, really stood a chance between the two of them. Stan wrapped his good arm around Kyle to hold him up and fixed his eyes ahead.

“Lean on me. I’ll keep you steady.”

Dude I loved writing this scene lmao stick of truth style on top

13- I think the most recent thing I actually researched for a fic was symptoms of hypothermia when I wrote Stay Frosty, because it occurred to me that I had NO idea what tf happens when you’re hypothermic but ya know I just enjoy putting the SP boys Through It

23- just canon characters! I’m not big on ocs in general, and when I find a whump muse they’re gonna SUFFER so they can be taken care of lmfao

Thank you so much for asking!!! I love being the Whumpshot Wizard

[declaawed]

this will help with the pain. (kashiwagi @ adachi)

Age definitely had a tendency to slow people down a little bit. And even though Adachi heavily prides himself on his physical prowess; built like an ox, he'd say, he could at least admit to no longer being on the same level as Ichiban and the others like he once was. The police academy did wonders for him, but maybe his DMV years were starting to catch up to him. Between street punks and creeps and all the other fist-happy people that would crowd the streets of Isezaki Ijincho, Adachi would definitely feel the sting in his bones a bit more than he used to.

He lounges lazily in a booth at Survive Bar, arm held palm up on the table, littered with various gauze and disinfectant and cloths as the bartender sits opposite him, glasses perched so elegantly on his face, brow furrowed with how focused he looked on the bloodied gash that tore through Adachi's palm; the result grabbing a knife from an attacker blade-first as a last resort. It hadn't even bothered him until the bartender pointed it out. Adrenaline, perhaps. When the disinfectant gets generously applied to a cloth, Adachi chuckles at the other's warning. "I appreciate what you're doin' here, barkeep. But I assure you, these old hands have been through worse, hehe--- ow ow ow." Whatever suaveness in his voice is immediately hissed through clenched teeth like steam from a kettle.

As his hand gets diligently wrapped in gauze, he can't help but let his dark eyes trail over every inch of the bartender's form: from every salt and pepper strand so cleanly slicked back to plush pink lips to the neat steamed tie he'd been so gracious to let Adachi borrow previously for his antics as the rich Yamada. He hums in thought, and as soon as he catches the other man's eyes again, he can't help but raise a single brow flirtatiously. "You sure your name isn't Takashi? 'Cause depending on how you write the kanji, it can mean hero. I think that's pretty fitting for you right now."

Never one to miss an opportunity to get a word in with that mysterious bartender.

|| @ky0udai

[gardenofhera]

'A ROCK THE SIZE OF MY FIST' BY JENNIFER DOWN

September 11, 2017 | The Lifted Brow

Photo by Alexina McDougall. Supplied with permission.

1.

There are so many things in the world that I love. Dozing in the sun at the beach after swimming, limbs exhausted, salt drying stiff in my hair. Cutting up vegetables into neat, symmetrical pieces. Any food preparation, really, particularly if I’m listening to a good podcast. The way my dog presses his warm flank against my leg. Fragrant flowers: daphne, freesias, gardenias, violets, jasmine. Dramatic flowers: peonies, magnolias, proteas, foxgloves, hydrangeas, pansies. The strange sick swelling in my chest evoked by certain moments in particular songs, even happy ones, as though my body is unable to metabolise so much emotion. Flying into a city at night and seeing the lit gauze of its streets from the air. The scrunch of a stranger’s fingers at my scalp when the hairdresser gives me a perfunctory shampoo head massage. Cycling on a balmy night when the streets are quiet. Taking a bath when I’m a little drunk. Most things when I’m a little drunk, when my body loosens and the world softens at its edges. The quickening I get when I think of an idea for a story, or a solution to a problem of plot, or when a knot of words unravels in a clean sentence unexpectedly. Stretching out my muscles, sitting on the floor with my nose to my knees. The pearly pink light of a winter dusk.

So many happy memories. My grandfather pricking our names into the skin of green tomatoes in his garden so that when they ripened fat and full, the size of my fist, they were tattooed for us. He told me and my sister the fairies did it. Or him seated at the old player piano with its yellowed keys, badly in need of tuning. He’d never had lessons, and could not read music, but he had a wonderful ear, and turned out credible show tunes and ragtime numbers. He had a non-Parkinsonian tremor in his hands, which more or less disappeared when he played; or, at any rate, did not interfere with his playing. I remember the thud of the sustain pedal beneath his foot, the warped, tinny tone of the notes.

I remember the thud of the sustain pedal beneath his foot

The rare bioluminescent algae I once saw at night down in far-east Gippsland, at a friend’s parents’ house, sparkling in the black salt lake water. My friends and I lay on our bellies on the wooden jetty, transfixed by it. Phosphorescence as bright as the constellations in that country sky. Starlight prickled all around us.

Mountain hiking alone, very happy, a thirty-three-degree afternoon; lactic acid burning in my calves, hot air burning in my lungs; body feeling strong and capable.

Dancing with a friend at a Lee Fields show on a hot summer night in Berlin, moving in helpless ecstasy as he sings La-a-a-a-dies, right at the front of the stage, ahead of all the sober Germans; Fields reaching out to shake our hands at the end of his set, the three of us laughing and spangled with sweat.

Last week I cut through the Fitzroy Gardens at nightfall, walking home from work, and saw the jonquils with their tender faces turned to the sky. The Gardens smelled earthy. It was the last week of winter. The air was blue. The streetlights shone in that way that always makes me think of the line in the Sara Teasdale poem – all the lights are dim and pearled – and overhead, the leaves were sibilant. I watched a man throwing a ball for his dog again and again using one of those moulded plastic scoops, and it pleased me in a gentle way because I could see the dog was having a really good time, and it made me think of my own dog, who is not so interested in chasing balls as being as he is in being touched.

But when I’m depressed, all of it ceases to matter

Pretty light, cold air, turned soil, a quiet walk, a stranger’s kelpie: these things mollify me at my normal, baseline level of mental health. They are enough to constitute a pleasant walk home. But when I’m depressed, all of it ceases to matter. The world is still there, but it’s ugly and futile. My brain attaches semantic attributes to the shapes of things so that I recognise them as ‘a dog’ or ‘some jonquils’, but these stir in me no feeling, no mild joy.

In a dissociative episode, I might doubt that I am, in fact, seeing a dog chasing a ball, and become momentarily convinced that rather than crossing through the Gardens, I was obliterated by a car as I crossed Victoria Parade.

This was not, by the way, leading to a metaphor about the old black dog – which I’ve always found an idiotically benign metaphor for a debilitating and endemic illness with a high mortality rate. Sometimes a dog is just a dog.

In Teasdale’s Spring Night she laments a loss:

'Oh, is it not enough to be Here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise, and I Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. O, Beauty are you not enough? Why am I crying after love?’

So many things in the world that I love, so many happy memories. But, as Teasdale wrote, there are times when none of it is enough.

2.

To frame depression as beautiful is to imagine it, falsely, as John Everett Millais’ Ophelia: an alabaster body wreathed in wildflowers, drowning prettily.

3.

Driving in his old Holden Commodore, my dad played his favourite rock and roll tapes and told me stories about the songs. Jimi Hendrix’s ‘The Stars that Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice’ was said to be a code for LSD, the name of which I also recognised from another of dad’s tales about ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’; ‘Tears in Heaven’ was written for Eric Clapton’s son, who’d fallen from a 53rd-floor balcony and died; ‘Wish You Were Here’ was about Syd Barrett, whose breakdown led to his eventual departure from Pink Floyd. My parents always talked to me as though I were an adult, so even at five or six, I had developed a strange collection of stories, many of them tragic, about these fantastically gifted but ill-fated stars. They were friendly ghosts to me, those dead rock stars in swimming pools. Poor Jimi. Poor Karen Carpenter, poor Janis Joplin, poor Buddy Holly. Poor Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, Mama Cass, Marc Bolan, Sid Vicious, Muddy Waters. Many of them hadn’t died from anything related to mental illness at all, but their stories swam together in my head. Car accident, heart attack, heroin. Some drug overdoses were dubiously accidental.

As a child I was mesmerised by Don McLean’s ‘Vincent’, which imagines the life of the gifted but blighted Dutch painter in bittersweet, folky tones. You took your life, as lovers often do, he sings, but I could’ve told you, Vincent / this world was never meant for / one as beautiful as you. The ‘tortured artist’ trope appears again and again in Western art, history and fiction. Woolf and Plath and Eliot and Cobain, and others too many to name. Of course, there have been thousands more institutionalised, medicated, subjected to experimental therapeutic practices, who suffered terribly from mental illness, but who history has forgotten. They were not known for their art, or for anything much, by the general public; they were washerwomen and abattoir workers and railway workers and accountants and schoolteachers and store clerks, and no one documented their lives. Their illness was ugly and shameful instead of something wretchedly exquisite that could be mined for their work. It cost them jobs and houses and marriages and children, and no one remarked, in rose-tinted recollection, on what poisonous genius it all might be ascribed to.

Some research suggests that that high levels of schizotypy...are positively associated with creativity

Some research suggests that that high levels of schizotypy – a cluster of personality traits which are evident, in varying degrees, in us all – are positively associated with creativity. Moreover, self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety have been shown to be positively associated with psychometric ratings of schizotypy. But while a variety of studies have demonstrated a correlation between creativity and psychopathology, this link is not necessarily causative, if, in fact, it exists at all. Much of this research has been criticised for the way it defines and measures both creativity and mental illness. Much of it has been undertaken in the United States and in Europe. And much of it is conflicting: American clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison notes that while individuals with bipolar disorder are overrepresented in creative professions, “[the] lack of association between unipolar depression and creative occupation is seemingly inconsistent with studies that have found an elevated rate of depression in artists, writers and composers.” How can we possibly find the answers when we’re effectively asking questions in one language, and answering in another? How can we know so much, and so little? And what role do situational or environmental factors play in depression?

A 2015 report by Victoria University and Entertainment Assist surveyed a cross-section of almost three thousand people who worked in entertainment industries across Australia, from performers to technicians. It found that Australian entertainment industry workers experienced symptoms of depression at a rate five times higher than in the general population, and attempted suicide more than double as often as members of the general population. They experienced ‘moderate to severe’ symptoms of anxiety at a rate ten times higher than in the general population. But the report concluded that rather than being linked to an inherent susceptibility toward mental illness, these statistics were attributable to a range of factors associated with working in the industry – financial instability and poor wages, irregular work hours and sleep disturbances, and rampant bullying, racism, sexism and sexual assault. The report recommended the development of industry-specific early intervention programs. Anecdotally and through personal experience, I know many of these problems are present in the literary industry, too. And I can posit half-baked theories about my own anxiety, for example, in relation to my writing: most writers I know are hyper-sensitive people, and most good writers are finely attuned to others and to their environments. This sensitivity is often a positive trait in terms of their work; in day-to-day life it can be terrifying, smothering and exhausting.

For centuries, people have made art despite their depression, not because of it

It is indubitably critical that we better support people dealing with mental illness, irrespective of their occupation. But we must, too, dispel the idea that anguish breeds art; that depression is somehow fecund.

The painter Edvard Munch was famously fearful that, cured of his illness, he would no longer be an artist: “[Treatment] would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.” But a century on, we know more about mental illness, though there is undoubtedly much more research to be done. For centuries, people have made art despite their depression, not because of it.

Photo by Justin Wolfers. Supplied with permission.

4.

The sound of depression, for me, is The Drones’ ‘Shark Fin Blues’, or Harmony’s ‘Cacophonous Vibes’, songs which move me enormously, but to which I can only bear to listen when I’m well. Both songs that build slowly, with restrained guitar and drums giving way to frenzied, distorted noise, both songs that feature swelling female backing vocals as the male singer’s voice cracks and shreds with emotion. Both songs whose berserk grief is most keenly felt when they’re played at great volume.

5.

My GP, a fiercely intelligent, emotionally astute physician who has treated me since I was a child, retires. At some point in the months that follow, the efficacy of the anti-depressant I have taken on and off for three years begins to wane, and I decide to consult a new doctor. I find a general practice near my house, and make an early-morning appointment. The doctor is in his early fifties, perhaps, and he’s handsome in a TV doctor way – crinkly eyes and wavy grey hair. The bio on the practice website informs me he is also interested in music. I sit in his cold room with its leadlight window and explain that for some time now, I have been feeling progressively more and more depressed. I am articulate, I am lucid, I am stolid. Perhaps too stolid. Perhaps one should not be able to discuss their despair with relative equanimity.

The handsome doctor sighs. The way I like to approach mental health is to treat it holistically, he says. Then something about being reluctant to prescribe medication to every sad person who walks into his office. He asks if I’m familiar with the therapeutic pie. I am not. From his desk drawer he extracts a photocopied, hand-drawn pie chart, which he places on the table between us. Medication, he tells me, is just one part of the therapeutic pie. On the chart, this is marked as ‘DRUGS’, and represents 15 per cent. Another segment the same size is labelled ‘PLACEBO’. The next segment is ‘DOCTORS COUNSELLORS’; 30 per cent. The largest segment, the remaining 40 per cent of the pie, is made up of the following:

1. HEALTH – OUTDOORS

2. WORK – FEELING USEFUL HELPING OTHERS

3. LOVE – CREATIVITY

Supplied by the author.

The good doctor sighs almost imperceptibly. His demeanour changes; he becomes abrupt. He prescribes a different variety of SSRI. The dosage on the new script appears radically different from my current drug. When I query this, he tells me the chemical composition is different. I ask whether I should taper off the current drug. The doctor says no; I should not take it anymore. I should have three days ‘clean’, with no medication, then start the new drug the following day. He barely looks at me as I scuttle from the room, still wearing my winter coat.

SSRI discontinuation syndrome is, in fact, well-documented, a fact I’m aware of from previous medical advice; when withdrawing in the past, I’ve been told to gradually lower my dosage. But my depressed brain is passive; no longer able to argue; no longer trusts its knowledge, so I don’t mention it.

My depressed brain is passive; no longer able to argue; no longer trusts its knowledge

For a week, I walk around in a daze. I am forgetful. I am unable to concentrate long enough to finish typing an email. My fingers neglect to hold objects; my coffee cup slips to the floor. When I blink, my vision shudders. The world seems vertiginous. These are common withdrawal symptoms. Months later, this episode will enrage me. But for now, I start the new medication. I wait for it to take effect. The days are so long.

6.

Depression is different things to different people. For some, it’s sleeping all the time to escape consciousness. For others, it’s being kept awake all night by bleak insomnia. It might involve overeating, or disordered eating, or not eating at all; it might be able to be disguised in front of family or colleagues, or it might be readily apparent; it might manifest in physical symptoms, like fatigue, headaches and muscular pain, or in behavioural symptoms, like withdrawing from loved ones, difficulty performing personal hygiene tasks, and substance abuse. It might be several of these things or none of them. Symptoms might change, or disappear and reappear with different episodes.

I am descended from worriers on both sides of my family tree. My grandparents were of an era and class that rarely treated, if acknowledged, illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder and clinical anxiety. My maternal grandmother was raised by her father and her grandmother after her mother left, or was told to leave – I’ve heard several versions of the story – following what would likely today be diagnosed as postpartum psychosis. My maternal grandfather learned yoga and meditation, in the community hall classes where his florist wife, the same woman abandoned by her mother as a baby, taught flower-arranging techniques on a different weeknight. He used to practice daily, after arriving home from work, to alleviate his anxiety. My mother recalls sneaking into her parents’ bedroom as a child to peek in on him where he sat at the foot of his bed, concentrating on his breath, and tickle his feet.

After the handsome doctor and the therapeutic pie, it takes me two months to conjure the velleity, energy and confidence to seek out another GP. In this time, my depression worsens so that I begin to fantasise about stepping out in front of the trucks that hurtle past on the major arterial I cross walking to work. As it happens, the new physician is thorough, sympathetic and practical. She takes copious notes, then gives me the K10 to fill out. The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale is a simple checklist-style test that asks the patient to self-report the frequency of a range of symptoms associated with clinical depression and/or anxiety. It is not infallible, but it is a quick, simple and cost-effective starting point for assessing the mental health of someone you’ve just met, and how to best proceed with treatment. Based on my score, the doctor decides to increase my dosage, with a view to switching medication if it remains ineffective. She will consider psychologists she believes to be a ‘good fit’ for me, and give me a referral. She will get the ball rolling with a psychiatrist in case I require one at a later date, to avoid waiting lists should things become critical. She draws my blood and tells me I need more iron, more vitamin D, and so on; that these dietary factors won’t cure depression, but have been linked to it. She makes a plan with small steps, achievable by even someone paralysed by depression.

She makes a plan with small steps, achievable by even someone paralysed by depression

It takes many months and yet another change in medication, but slowly, things begin to change, and I begin to feel human once more. It is not lost on me how fortunate I am to have found this doctor. And I’m acutely aware, even as I write this, of the privilege I hold, and the ways in which it enables me to seek medical advice and receive treatment, even when the process is fraught with difficulty. I’m a white, cisgender, able-bodied woman; a tertiary-educated native English speaker with higher-than-average medical literacy.

I’m aware of my brothers and sisters incarcerated in detention centres, who, having already suffered traumas greater than I can imagine, and fled their homes, are subjected to further human rights abuses sanctified by the government whose protection they sought.

I’m aware of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who experience, daily, the ongoing violence of colonialism, and whose health outcomes – already poorer than those of non-indigenous Australians – are at the mercy of a largely white-centric healthcare model.

I’m aware of people of colour and people who experience quotidian discrimination on the basis of their ethnicity or religion. There’s a wealth of medical literature identifying racism as a pathogen of depression and anxiety.

I’m aware of the LGBTQI+ community, who face a variety of barriers in accessing medical care, such as homophobia, transphobia and heterosexism, as well as unique risk factors for psychological distress associated with their sexuality and/or gender identity; indeed, LGBTQI+ people have the highest suicide rates of any population in Australia.

I’m aware of people whose physical disabilities present a challenge in accessing certain services and buildings, and those whose hearing impairments or intellectual disabilities, for example, can render communication difficult.

I’m aware of migrants and non-native English speakers who may experience complex linguistic and cultural barriers to accessing healthcare – and the native English speakers whose literacy skills make it arduous or daunting to navigate the system.

If it’s this hard for someone like me to get the help I need, there are many, many others for whom it’s nigh on impossible

I’m aware of children in out-of-home care, exposed to far greater rates of physical, psychological and sexual abuse than any of us would like to imagine possible – often at the hands of the very figures supposed to protect them.

I’m aware of people who can’t afford the price of getting to a clinic, or the prescription, or the psychologist, or the outpatient care.

Photo by the author.

7.

Once I stood with some friends at the top of a colossal waterfall. We were humbled by its size and splendour, and kept discovering in it new wonder as we examined it from different vantage points. A stranger took a picture of the four of us standing in front of it in our spray jackets. In the photo, the waterfall’s scale is not readily apparent, but our faces are full of joy. Before we turned to go, one friend joked that we each pick up a rock from the ground and hurl it into the water while naming something we wanted to let go of. She cried Manipulative people!��and we all applauded and laughed. The second friend yelled her ex’s name as she flung a sizeable rock into the rushing water. The third hollered Workplace sexism! as her stone sailed toward the falls. I was self-conscious, torn between a pisstake and sincerity. It was the daggy, theatrical kind of faux-symbolic act my friends dream up all the time. Sometimes when we eat dinner as a group, we go around the table and say our favourite thing about the day. We clap for one another’s potluck dishes, or driving stints on long car trips. At last I tossed my rock and yelled Bad mental health! The other three whooped and cheered. It felt like a naff team-building exercise, but it was oddly cathartic. That’s it, said a friend as we walked back to the carpark. You’re cured. We laughed and laughed. This was in 2015, before last year’s episode; at the time, I was perfectly healthy. But I was under no illusion, as I hurled a rock the size of my fist into the white-rushing water, that I was divesting myself of the complex bundle of neurological, genetic, environmental and personality factors that, every so often, causes me to unravel.

To conceive of depression as Ophelia is a delusion borne of privilege

When I read an article in a major daily newspaper suggesting depression is “less a treatable pathology than a spur to spiritual discovery,” I’m struck by the recklessly out-of-touch attitude and dismissiveness of literal decades’ worth of research. How one treats their mental illness is a highly personal decision, but one best informed by medical advice and the patient’s individual needs in relation to their diagnosis. To conceive of depression as Ophelia is a delusion borne of privilege, and only an affluent white woman could describe therapy as the “best fun ever […] Enjoyable, satisfying.” Romanticising it risks discouraging people from seeking the treatment they need, or from continuing their existing treatment. It undermines the severity and the danger of the illness. “Sorrow, at least the knowledge of it, adds depth. And of course beauty […] We know that huge proportions of poets and thinkers suffer depression. Perhaps they're the chosen – prescients, warning us that life is too short, too precious to tie to the treadmill.” What utter codswallop, I think. What irresponsible bullshit.

It must be nice to have the luxury of conceptualising clinical depression as a “melancholy hinterland” instead of a cognitive and emotional wasteland. To divide a circle into segments and pass it across a desk as a remedy for “spiritual malaise”. Must be nice to think of a sweet-faced, chlorotic woman slipping silently below the river’s surface.

[luxrelio]

[blueofthesun]

i think for phalaris they should bring back the instrumental intro track

[wing-ed-thing]

Mob Wife (Kakuzu x Reader, ft. Hidan) Part IV

Synopsis: The Akatsuki are in emergency mode. Kakuzu leads Hidan to the only place he knows for sure is safe to regroup.

Word Count: 

Warnings/Tags: Violence, Blackmail, Language, Fem!Reader, HouseWife!Reader, Moll!Reader, Attempt at Humor, Ceremonial Drinking of Sake, Traditional Wedding

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Finale

Notes: It’s back. Writing Hidan has got me feeling a certain way rn

It rained on your wedding day: weather fitting for, and not minded by, a criminal and a deserter. As you approached the temple, he tried to tell you many times that you were going to be turned away, but as you spoke to the shrine masters, you were greeted warmly and welcomed. You were young with a warm face that offset Kakuzu’s intimidating exterior. Everyone always loved you right away, a way about you that Kakuzu could never begin to consider replicating. With your open heart, you brought a foreign concept into his world: acceptance. The few priests and priestesses at the temple on the border of the Land of Stone looked upon you kindly, a kindness that you and Kakuzu continued to repay years later. The small village of a few hundred that housed that shrine would never see a shinobi attack. Now, only you continue to repay years later.

You could tell that Kakuzu didn’t like being in the temple in the slightest. He had never been one for religion or structure or ceremonies, so you tried not to laugh the first time you saw him in his montsuki haori hakama. You wondered how much grumbling went into getting Kakuzu in such formal attire with a goofy, lopsided grin. Even as he gazed upon your amused, upturned lips, his infamous temper laid unusually dormant. Kakuzu never thought that he would see his own wedding day. Being the kind of man he was, he never thought that he’d have one. He didn’t think that he deserved it, but for once as you stood in front of him in your shiromuku, all of his jaded thoughts seemed to fade. Of course with you, all doors opened.

Kakuzu knelt next to you at the shrine, ever stoic. He put his hair up before the ceremony and secured it neatly behind his head. You remembered it when it was short. As the priest announced your marriage to the gods, you couldn’t help but glance at Kakuzu out of the corner of your eye. He held himself together better than you imagined he would.

“Well, yes. I am an adult,” he would tell you later.

But at that moment, he received the first sakazuki. The priest's vessel tipped over the small cup two times before pouring. Kakuzu brought the dish up to his lips and took three sips: pointless seeing that neither of you had parents, but traditional nonetheless. You were taught to always honor your ancestors, but you doubted that Kakuzu felt the same. You received your cup and the same sake, taking the same three sips and the ceremony went on. The second sakazuki represented your vow to care for each other. You received a slightly larger cup and once again, you each touched the sake to your lips three times. The third represented fortune and fertility.

The Heavens, the Earth, and the People.

You offered Kakuzu a light smile as you moved to the next part of the ceremony, a gesture to assure him that it was almost over. He would have rolled his eyes in any other setting, but Kakuzu didn’t even have to speak for you to know exactly what he meant. You knew that more than anything, he was happy to be with you. Out of all the things that he had done as a shinobi, he could handle a stuffy ceremony.

“I thought you liked stuffy things,” you teased him later, parts of your robes slung over forearms and shoulders for better mobility as you walked through the gardens. Your hand rested in his as you balanced yourself on some raised, rock ledges. His expression could have easily been mistaken for exasperation as he scoffed, but you knew better. He looked happy. “You’re a shinobi. Now that’s stuffy!”

The priest had you stand and you received a flowering branch to offer to the gods. As you held the sprig in your hand, you glanced at Kakuzu. His eyes met your own and you quietly prayed over your offerings before presenting them together, stem first. You bowed together, the rituals vaguely familiar to you as you performed them.

With the blessings of the gods, you had received your rings. Your thumb ran over the skin of Kakuzu’s hand. They had a familiar gruffness to them and held smooth bumps from old scars. His fingernails were short. You slid the band onto his ring finger. The black suited him. He squeezed the fingers of your other hand. The space behind your eyes stung as you held back tears watching as he placed the ring on your hand.

Neither of you had family, so you thanked the shrine priests and priestesses and enjoyed their hospitality. You took a single picture. It was the same frame that you held in your hands now.

Kakuzu walked out a few hours ago, taking Hidan with him. Your kitchen was, for the most part, wrecked. Your doing. Your tears had since dried up and your trembling was beginning to fade. With a shaky breath, you brought yourself to your feet. You placed the picture face-down on the counter and reached for the broom in the corner. Your heart hurt, but the world continued on. And if the world continued on, so should you.

***

You didn’t want to eat, you didn’t feel hungry, but you stood over the sink anyway biting into whatever you could pull from your fridge. You cleaned up the kitchen to the best of your ability. Trash piled up in neat bins outside: splintered wood, broken plates, and any other particles of dust that you managed to sweep up. You could handle it later. At least the rest of the kitchen was spotless. You glanced down at the thick wedding band that sat in your hand. Twirling it between your fingers, you bit into your bell pepper like an apple. That was the kind of night you were having.

A harsh pounding came from the front door and for a split second you wondered if your husband came back. Ex-husband. You didn’t think so. You kept your eyes on the kitchen window but the pounding continued adamantly. A slight shiver went down the back of your neck. The next farm wasn’t for miles. That was definitely not Kakuzu.

You put down your pepper and rolled out your utensil drawer. Your fingers danced across the kunai strapped to the bottom as you silently hoped that your training hadn’t worn off too horribly. The banging ceased as the doorknob began to rattle. The door swung open and you launched your kunai with immense velocity and precision. It was snatched out of the air.

“Fuck! That hurts like a bitch!”

Hidan stood in the entryway with his hand still held up and wrapped around your weapon. Blood dripped onto your floors as the kunai clattered to the ground. He shook out his palm, now sporting a deep gash. All you could do was stand and blink, wondering why he was there and if Kakuzu was with him. Hidan threw his cloak onto the rack. It slid, hardly staying on as he marched over to you. The door didn’t fit into its frame the same as it did before and there was no sign of Kakuzu.

“Can you patch me up, lady?” He looked around your kitchen for somewhere to sit, but found none. He dripped more onto your floors. You quickly guided his wrist over your sink and looked up at him. Beads of water fell down his face. You didn’t even hear the rain outside.

“What happened?” you asked sternly, your voice cracking a bit with worry. Hidan groaned.

“You fucked up my hand, can you at least fix me? I’m traumatized over here.” You sighed, yanking him forward before turning the running water on over his hand. You held it there for a second as if telling him to keep it there before running off to get your medical kit.

“Hidan, you have to tell me if there is an emergency,” you said as you heaved the box onto the counter from your spare room. You cleaned his palm with soap and disinfectant before applying pressure. While you didn’t have to worry about blood loss with Hidan, you also didn’t want him passing out on your kitchen floor either. That would make one more thing to clean up. “Hidan—” You pulled the gauze extra tight. He didn’t seem to be listening to you. —“Is there an emergency?”

“No, lady, it was just cold as fuck and Kakuzu’s got a stick up his ass that’s worse than usual. But you already know what that’s like.” The atmosphere stood still at the mention of Kakuzu’s name.

You knew that you shouldn’t worry about him. As far as you were concerned, he had just divorced you a few hours ago, and even if he hadn’t, you were certain that he could take care of himself. You apparently didn’t do a great job at masking your worry.

He usually didn’t care about the effect of his words, but as you frowned to yourself, Hidan couldn’t help but consider how sad you looked. He pursed his lips, never one for comforting others. For a split second, he wondered whether or not he should have brought up his partner at all. Two fingers gently bumped the bottom of your chin and you looked up at Hidan.

“Don’t look so down. It doesn’t look good on you.” He hesitated. “He’ll come back.”

You dropped his wrapped hand, not noticing that you’ve been drawing loops around his knuckles with your finger.

“I don’t know. He’s usually pretty certain about things and I can’t dwell on that.” You shook your head, turning the water back on to wash your own hands. “You have to go. I know that you have things to do and my— and Kakuzu won’t like that you’re here.” He pouted as you moved around him. You had blood to clean up.

“But it’s raining…” he pouted, expression falling in your peripheral. “And he’s miserable right now which means I’m miserable. C’mon let me stay, I’m miserable.”

“Hidan.” You turned to him and leaned on the doorway from your kitchen to your small living area. “Your partner doesn’t live here anymore.” You flicked on the entryway light, your bucket in hand. Hidan followed behind you, now taking your spot in the doorframe.

“But that doesn’t mean that I have to leave. You know he’s being stupid, but that doesn’t mean that I need to suffer out in the rain because Kakuzu’s a crotchety, old bastard.” You sighed, resting on the handle of your mop. You shook your head.

“I’m sure by the time you get to town the two of you can find somewhere to stay.”

A silence overtook the house again, full of raging, but unspoken thoughts. You squeezed out the yarns and tended to the floors. It, at the very least, gave you something to do. Hidan’s blood already dried part way and you scrubbed harder, but not before it was snatched out of your grip. Hidan shoved you over to take your place. The backs of your knees hit the armrest of the modest couch that you almost toppled down onto. He took to scrubbing.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“Sorry?” Hidan peered at you with his bright violet irises.

“I’m trying to be nice and ask you about your problems, so you better start chatting before I lose interest.” The mop splashed back into the bucket. “Who else do you get to talk to?” You pursed your lips. You knew that he was biding his time to wait out the rain, but his words weren’t wrong. The hurt still felt fresh and perhaps you were feeling a bit desperate to get it out of your system.

“I’m not sure what happened. I asked, but, well, you know how my… how Kakuzu is.” And you found yourself retelling the entirety of what happened: the argument, the ring, Kakuzu’s misplaced comments about children. You left out the part about the wrecked kitchen. “And then he said something about ‘now letting this happen’ which had to be the last straw for me.”

“Did you want brats?” Hidan had since stopped his cleaning. Surprisingly, he listened intently to your rambling as he propped himself against the wall. You swung your feet back and forth over the side of the couch.

“I never really thought about it before and Kakuzu and I never talked about it, so I don’t know why he brought it up.”

“Because he’s a dumbass who thinks too much. I never know what’s going on in that fucked up head of his. If I had a home to come to like this with a cute little thing in an apron—” Hidan scoffed. —“Fuck the Akatsuki. I wouldn’t be hiding you out here because of some band of losers in capes.” That made you laugh.

“You’re in the Akatsuki,” you giggled and Hidan raised a slender eyebrow.

“So? I’m the best one out of all those guys.”

“The best out of some band of losers?” The corners of Hidan’s lips turned upwards into a brief smile as he rolled his pretty irises.

“Listen, I got my devilish charms going for me which is better than Ragdoll. He looks like a fucking pin cushion.” Your hand came over your mouth as you laughed. Hidan looked down at where you sat, pride swelling in his chest at the prospect of cheering you up. But your face quickly morphed into something sentimental.

“Aw, but he’s a cute pin cushion…” Your bottom lip curled into a pout, but at least you didn’t look quite as sad as before. Hidan leaned a bit forward.

“He’s a little over a hundred-eight centimeters tall and has a big-ass nose.” You let out an amused breath. “I’d hardly consider that ‘cute’.”

“But it’s a cute nose. It’s slender and has that cute little bump in the middle.” Your voice grew quieter. Another silence, the third of Hidan’s visit.

It all felt too confusing for you. Maybe Kakuzu was never that interested in you in the first place. You shook your head then and there, much to Hidan’s confusion. Despite Kakuzu’s attitude towards most everything, you knew that he cared deeply about you. Perhaps he had grown bored. Despite ninja work not being of interest to you, you knew that many found the profession very exciting. You ran many profitable operations in the surrounding area, but more money could be made elsewhere, you knew that much. Your lifespan was nothing compared to Kakuzu’s nearly a century of living. He had done everything in life that he had wanted to do and all you had little to show for your existence.

You kept replaying his words about the time that you had. That you had enough time to do more. But if you really thought about it, you were content living the way you had been. You were happy and for a split second you considered whether or not Kakuzu actually saw himself as worthy of you. You shook your head for the second time. No, if anything, you considered it the other way around. You’d imagine that you would come off as boring and childlike to an immortal.

“That’s a lot of thinking.” Hidan had taken to wandering around the room. You hadn’t noticed. “Fuck thinking. You deserve better than taking care of some place in the middle of nowhere and running numbers on boring-ass shit.” You smiled again to yourself, something else that you didn’t notice.

“I actually like it here,” you mumbled. Hidan yawned.

“Can I stay now?” You deliberated to yourself before grabbing the bucket and the mop away from him. He didn’t do a great job, but you found yourself relatively uncaring at the moment.

“Yes, you can stay,” you sighed. Hidan was already halfway down the hall by the time you finished your sentence.

“Good because I was going to crash here anyway.”

@brokennerdalert @unsatisfiedanddisappointed @krispypotato @meme-queen-1999​

Notes: Reader and Kakuzu had a Shinto wedding if anyone’s interested. 

Thank you to all who liked, reblogged, followed and otherwise supported. Your support means so much and is greatly appreciated.

[sirthisisa-wendys]

Dear wendy, im sorry for being a whore but 👁👄👁 … I kinda want a smut where reader is a milf a mom of geto’s friend… a lot sexual tension would be great 😳

YES AND — my mind instantly said “hey this is how that will play out” and LOW KEY I’ve been waiting for this moment because I, too, am I whore.

Milk and Cookies: Geto Suguru x Fem!Reader

WC: 1.9k

Tw: NSFW (Lactation kink, unprotected sex)

The chimes and tinkles of the doorbell make you look up from the dirty dishes in the sink, and you pad over to the wooden door, peeking through the peephole.

Your son's friend, Geto Suguru, stands in the entryway, holding a bag as he pushes his hair back over his shoulder, and you instantly open the door for him. God, if he was as old as you, you'd have him snatched up and pinned to a bed. "Hello, Suguru! Just so you know, Kai won't be back for another hour or so. He and his grandfather were caught in traffic on the way back from fishing," you tell the man, and he smiles at you brightly. Your legs want to go weak, but you keep your composure and smile back at the twenty-two-year-old.

"No worries, Mrs. L/n. I'll just wait here until they get back. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," you reassure him and walk past the door to let him in. "The baby is with his grandma, so make yourself comfortable in the living room. Let me know if you want anything to eat." Geto nods at you, then opens the bag he brought.

"I brought some cookies that my mother made for you. She said after having a baby, these really help with your... uh... hormones, I think." You examine the offering when he passes it to you, and take one out of the little box. The oats and dark chocolate pieces melt in your mouth, and you hum in delight.

"These are delicious, Suguru. Tell your mother I said thank you. Did you help her make these?" The grown man shuffles about for a second, then admits his involvement. "You're incredibly sweet," you mention, and a blush creeps up his neck. "You both did a very good job." He looks up at you, dumbfounded, then smirks.

"Wasn't too hard to follow directions. Plus, I love baking. Would love to help you bake sometimes if you'll let me."

"Just let me know when and what you want to bake," you reassure him and he nods, taking a seat on the couch.

When you finish the cookie, you turn back to the dishes and begin to wash them as the TV flicks on in the living room. You're lost in thought about the kindness of Suguru and his mother when you feel the sharp stabbing sensation of a knife poke you in your hand.

"Ah!" When you bring your hand out of the water, you see that the knife sliced the palm of your hand a little, red blood forming along the cut.

"Mrs. L/n, I'll help." Suguru appears out of nowhere and reaches above the microwave to grab the first aid kit from a cabinet. While he does that, you run the palm under water, hissing as it stings but then drying it on a paper towel. Suguru takes a bandaid and places it over your cut hand, then wraps gauze over it. "You should be more careful," he chastises, and you hum in response. "Would hate to see a pretty hand like yours get infected. I'll finish the dishes for you; just sit on the couch and relax." You begin to protest, but Suguru silences you with a five to your lips, pulls you toward the living room, and sits you on a recliner before he leaves to go finish the dishes.

The TV is tuned to HGTV, and you watch Chip and Joanna renovate homes while the man finishes, glancing over at him every so often to see if he's having any trouble. But he looks as studious as ever, hair dangling over his shoulder as he finishes his task. Well, your task, actually.

When Suguru's done, he joins you in the living room, sitting in the closest seat to your recliner. "Tell me about your weekend," he begins, his black eyes staring at your face. You eye your velour tracksuit with disdain, noting that you hadn't even had a chance to get out since the baby was born a month ago and the father had been absent for much longer than that.

"Oh, just cleaning and making the house neat. You?"

"That's all you've done? What about getting a babysitter to watch Kaneda while you go out and have some fun?"

"Um..." How could you explain to the man that you don't have any friends to go out with? "Well, that would be nice."

"I'll ask my friend Shoko if she'll come by. She loves kids." He pulls out his phone and begins to type out a message, then focuses back on you when he's done. "Any news from Mr. L/n?"

"No," you answer quickly. "He's sent his monthly allowance for me and Kai, but that's it."

"Has he seen Kaneda at all?"

"No." Geto lapses into silence, eyes looking down at the carpet.

"I normally don't speak on matters that don't concern me, but fuck him," he mutters, and you look up in shock. "If I had a wife like you, I'd take you out, show you off, make you happy, and keep you satisfied. I'd never--" Suguru clenches his jaw when you touch his hand, a small smile on your face.

"You're too kind. Things between Mr. L/n and I have been rough, but I'm sure he'll come around soon."

Suguru shakes his head, then shifts out of your grip. "I would treat you better," he murmurs, then looks over at you. You swear the flutter in your chest isn't from any feelings and just because of his pity. But when he gets up and cradles your face like a lover would, you break. Tears fall from your eyes rapidly, and he brushes them away with the pads of his thumbs, cooing at you like you're a child.

"You deserve better. Say it."

"I..." But do you? You heard rumors about Kai's mom and how she was abandoned in the same way. Was this your fate, too?

"Say it. Maybe then you'll believe it."

"I deserve... better."

"Good girl." The fluttering feeling returns and your lips part as you inhale sharply. "Now, will you let me give you something better?" You nod immediately, feeling something pool between your legs. When you realize it's heat, you're shocked, but Suguru leans in to kiss you, smoothing the shock away.

"Suguru," you murmur. "We shouldn't--"

"How long has it been since your husband touched you?" You fumble for the time, knowing it hadn't been for over eight months.

"Um... that's--"

"A long time, hmm?" Suguru's eyes roam over your figure. "Then let me satisfy you, just once. If you don't like it, we can stop and I'll never touch you again, I promise."

"Suguru, I--"

"What harm will it do? If you like it, I'll make sure I come by often enough to have you seeing stars once a week. We'll never speak of it again if you don't want to do it anymore."

The deal is a good one, you think. "Well, maybe just this once."

"That's all I need." He unzips your jacket and frees your swollen breasts, rubbing them tenderly and kissing each one with a peck. "First things first, you need some relief from all of this build-up." When he latches his mouth onto your right nipple, you moan loud enough to overshadow the sound of the TV, and you feel milk flowing from your breasts rapidly. Suguru hums, drinking from you greedily, a small river of milk flowing from the corner of his mouth. You feel a tingling sensation, then exhale deeply, closing your eyes as he massages the other breast slowly.

"Oh, that feels good," you whisper and he unlatches from your right breast to your left one, fitting himself onto the nipple perfectly. You hiss in pain for a few seconds until his tongue swirls over the nipple easily. A sudden realization that this is wrong washes over you, but Suguru is tightly latched onto the bud, suckling eagerly. "Suguru..." you whisper, and he opens his eyes, but doesn't stop. "Suguru, this is wrong. You're my stepson's best friend and I--"

"This isn't about him. This is about you," he mutters, swallowing the last bit of milk before he removes his shirt. "Besides, you taste so delicious. I'm sure the rest of you tastes even better." As he removes your track pants, you bite your lip, wanting this so desperately. He spreads your legs and dips a finger into you, stroking your insides gently. "Oh, you're ready."

"Please fuck me," you whisper. "Just do it." Suguru removes his pants and palms himself, his cock rock-hard and standing at attention. The red tip is already dripping with pre-cum, ready for you to take in. He pants a little, lifting you off the recliner and moving you to the couch, where he lays you on the comfortable fabric before parting your legs again.

He runs the tip up and down your slit before sliding into you, his tip caressing long-neglected parts of you. "Su," you whine, and he kisses your cheek.

"Tell me if it hurts, baby." You clutch onto him as he pushes into you again, digging your nails into his back and moaning. "You're so damn tight."

"Feels so good..." You feel the sensation of being stretched to the brim, and wonder where in the hell Sugurus been all of your life. When he picks up his speed, he clutches onto your asscheeks and shifts you up so your knees are touching your chest. As he holds them against your breasts, they begin to leak and stain the fabric beneath them. You gasp and pant wantonly, hoping the sounds out spur him to go faster, go deeper; maybe if you allowed him to--

"Turn over for me." You obey, and he slides two fingers between your pussy lips, bending down to whisper in your ear. "Gonna make you cum in a minute. God, I've waited for this pussy for so long," he moans. "Such a good girl; waiting for months to get fucked. So patient." You whimper, and he removed his fingers, replacing them with his cock head. He slides into you again, and you exclaim, bucking your hips up to meet his. "Such a beautiful pussy, too," he grunts, smacking your ass with a heavy hand.

Then Suguru begins pounding into you wildly, rocking you back and forth on the couch without restraint. You hiss before you feel the familiar build-up of an orgasm, and call Geto's name out before you begin to shake, losing all sense of time and place.

"That's it, baby. Cum for me," Suguru breathes. "You're doing amazing."

"Oh my god," you gasp, cunt clenching around his dick. "I can't--" Another orgasm builds on top of the one you already experienced, and you grip onto the fabric tightly, shaking as you cum again. "S-Suguru, I--"

"Fuck," he whispers in your ear. "Gonna cum too. Where do you want it?"

"Wherever," you pant, and he instantly lets himself go inside of you, groaning loudly.

"God, Mrs. L/n, that was amazing," he whispers, chest heaving up and down. "What'd you think?" When he realizes that he has to remove your hands from the fabric, he chuckles. "You liked it." You nod, feeling his cum leaking out of you. "Let me clean you up, sweetheart." You expect him to go to the bathroom and search for a washcloth, but he pulls your hips up and back, so your knees are on the carpet.

It's only then that he begins to lick you clean, slurping up his cum and your juices. When he's done licking you clean, he pats your ass and you turn over, eyeing the man cautiously.

"I'll come over next week if you want me to. I'll make sure you're satisfied for the rest of your life."

[lenle-g]

Oh absolutely! <3333

Scott, making his way up to their Father's desk ready to slide his completed mission report into the holo-records, has no idea that his astronaut brother is even home until he discovers a pale, John-shaped lump sprawled limply in the middle of their circle of sofas.

“What the…?” Scott’s breath catches, his eyes blow wide. His heart does a funny, sharp twisting thing in the middle of his chest that it's probably really not supposed to, and there's a beat or two of pure, unacceptable shock in which Scott's world just tunnels in on the presence of what is clearly blood smeared across John's lax, waxy face.

Big brother's chest attempts a hitched, stunted thing that can only be called breathing in the barest sense before Scott is sprinting across their living space and bellowing into the Comm watch at his wrist for help.

“virGIL?!?” Scott trips down the step and into the circle and, in an action his patella will regret later, crashes hard to his knees at his unconscious brother's side, yelling his head off for the most experienced medic in the family as he does so. “VIRGIL! GET IN HERE, NOW!"

The ‘on my way’ is instantaneous - Scott’s tone had clearly sparked a need for speed. No time to do anything but pull up the GPS location and run because there's a messy line of blood leaking from the astronaut’s nose, similar splotches of red pooling in his ears and an awful jagged slash scabbing across his forehead. John's breathing is light and shallow, his skin tone verging on grey and, perhaps most worryingly, he hasn’t responded at all to all the shouting Scott’s been doing and that’s just strikingly wrong. John's always first awake, first to respond - the young man has to be up and about in an instant if any of Thunderbird Five's alarms sound and so he’s trained to spring awake and into action at the slightest thing. They have to be careful not to walk past his room at night, for goodness sake, in case the sound of feet in the corridor wakes him.

This is not right.

Scott takes a sharp breath, the air like glass and his heart racing with terror as he reaches a fearful hand toward his sibling.

"John?" He tries, his fingers bumping against a hard chest. He lays his palm flat over his brother's heart and gives him a shake. "Hey Johnny, come on, wake up." John’s head lolls limply with the motion, and Scott feels a little sick at it, but gets no other obvious results.

"Ok.” He says aloud to himself, trying to think past the rising gorge of panic in his throat. He feels like a deer in headlights in a way he never would on a rescue. "Think Scott!" He slaps a palm against his own forehead, starting to get angry with himself now. "Patient non-responsive. What do you do?" Try and wake them up seems like the obvious answer, though that's failing so far.

Should he roll him into the recovery position, or should he not move him at all? Should he pinch his nose shut or might he choke? Should he...

"Come on John." Scott taps his brother's cheek softly, then a little harder, getting desperate to stir some kind of response now. Scott has to make a conscious effort to avoid getting blood on his fingers from the sheer amount of it that’s smeared across his brother’s face, still leaking sluggishly from John’s nose and spotted on the cushion that's supporting his head from where it's dripped from his ears. There's blood on the astronaut’s fingertips like he'd been trying to stem the flow before he'd passed out.

Hell. That’s not a sign of anything good.

A hundred horrifying scenarios come to mind. There’s so much that can go wrong living in space, and it can go wrong so quickly that you don’t even know you’re in danger until you’re dead. John could be dying right now in front of him and Scott doesn’t know what to...

"Scott! What's going…?" Virgil, skidding into the room with slippery socks against polished wood, trails off as he goes through a similar process of discovery shock to Scott’s, his eyes wide as saucers. “Jesus.” He says before he can stop himself. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know.” Scott can barely breathe around the anxiety. His whole mouth tastes like it's crammed full of fizzy static terror. He scoots around the back of the sofa, leaning over it to give Virgil, who's had the sense to grab a medkit from the wall, more room to work. “I just found him like this.” Scott explains, “How can I help?” He's kept his palm against his brother’s chest the whole time - the feeling of John's heart fluttering beneath his fingertips is the only thing keeping him from freaking out right now. 

Virgil’s knelt at John’s side, his fingers pressed to the pulse at his brother’s wrist. There's a deep, worried furrow between his thick eyebrow.

"Oxygen?" Scott suggests, loitering nervously, but Virgil shakes his head.

"Wait till the bleed stops. His BMP is a little fast. Help me roll him on his side so he's less likely to choke." Scott, complying, nearly kicks himself for not doing that earlier. It's hard to ignore how limp and silent their brother is as they do so - there's something incredibly unsettling about just how floppy he is - like a dead thing washed up on the beach.

Virgil distracts Scott by handing him a pair of latex gloves, snapping a pair on over his own fingers to match. He guides his brother's hand to pinch John's nose hard around the cartilage, clearly hoping it'll stem the bleed. Scott grimaces like he's just been asked to chop the man's leg off, but, to his credit, he holds on tight.

"What's brought this on then, hmm John?" Virgil asks, busy wrapping a pressure cuff around a limp forearm. "Some kind of sudden onset space-related injury?" He muses, inflating the cuff, honey brown eyes glued to the numbers, "Something must have gone wrong with re-entry.” 

He guesses, “A change in pressure in his head from being back on the planet could have ruptured something." 

And John's just been up here bleeding, alone, for who knows how long.

“Ah, his blood pressure is sky high.” Virgil reports the result grimly, noting them and his other readings down holographically at his wrist. "Barotrauma makes sense." It also means that this isn’t going to be a quick fix, John could be out of action for weeks. But what’s happened has happened and all they can do now is treat the symptoms. 

“Right. Let’s get him patched up. Astronauts typically lose ten to fourteen percent of their blood volume while up in space,” Virgil explains, ripping open a packet of steri-stips with his teeth and fumbling to peel one from its backing with his big fingers. “It usually takes a day or two home to regain it, so keep holding his nose while I patch up this cut. John can’t afford to lose much extra right now.”

Virgil pinches the gash together and works on sticking a neat, clean line of steri strips along it to try and keep it from bleeding.

"He's had long enough to get changed out of his spacesuit." Scott points out, he's been thinking about this while he watches his brother work. "But he didn’t flag anything up with us. It must have happened pretty suddenly." Only that doesn't quite add up because the angry red scrape at his temple that Virgil’s precautionarily sticking back together suggests some kind of earlier accident that they should have known about. “The way he’s hit his head looks like he collapsed, but there’s nothing hard to hit it on here.” There's anxious sweat, sticky around Scott's collar at the puzzle of it all. “Why wouldn’t he have called us?” His fingers ball into tight fists, his nails digging hard into his palms. Both rows of perfect teeth press hard against each other, grinding on his rising anger.

"I don't kn…" Virgil starts, but then stops, abruptly. Scott nearly drowns in a wave of terror that John's just died or something, but then he notices the same flutter of ginger lashes that his brother clearly has.

John’s coming round.

"John?" Scott prompts carefully, leaning further over the back of the sofa in a way that has Virgil worried that he's going to end up on top of them. "Hey, can you hear me, bro?" There's a pinched, pained scrunch appearing on their sibling’s forehead, tugging at the new plastic stitches. Slowly, the fluttering turns into blinking, but it takes a minute or two for hazy blue-green eyes to work out what focus is.

“John.” The relief in Virgil’s voice is almost palpable. “Do you know where you are? Do you remember what happened?”

It seems a bit early for interrogation. John is blinking glassily at Virgil, his breathing a little hitched. He’s clearly just as confused to be there as the rest of them are. Scott lets up on pinching his nose and both hovering brothers are relieved to find the bleeding seems to have stopped.

“H-Happened?” John eventually asks, blearily. He’s... not sure. All John knows for sure is that he hurts very badly, all over. His head is pounding and the world seems distant and fuzzy like he’s viewing it through a veil of gauze. His brother’s voice sounds muffled and warped, like he’s listening from underwater. "I... I don’t know…" John's mouth shapes the words, though they taste coppery and strange and the vowels sound wet. One of his brother’s presses the hard plastic of an oxygen mask over his mouth and throbbing nose and that doesn't much help his comprehensibility either.

"It’s ok, I should have expected you’d be confused." Virgil smoothes a calming hand the size of a dinner plate gently over his brother's hair, the fine ginger strands slippery between his fingers. "Give it a minute or two, ok? It looks like you hit your head.”

While he waits, Virgil finds a sterile wipe and begins ever so gently cleaning rusty red from John’s skin. A horrific amount of colour leeches out into the fabric as he does so, the stain spreading through the wet fibres and creeping up toward his fingers. John sinks into silence again - staring blankly to the side, blinking lots like he's dizzy even though he’s lying down.

Last thing John really remembers clearly he’d been in the Space Elevator, making his way down from Thunderbird Five. It’d been a rougher ride than usual, but nothing that had screamed imminent danger. Though… if he thinks harder about it, he realises his head had started feeling floaty around halfway down, and there’d been that warning bleep on the 02 readings that he couldn’t explain. He remembers a brief, strange spill of red pressure readings onto his holoscreens, a warning error message, or several, but he would swear they hadn’t felt significant at the time. He’d just felt… floaty and distant. Which should have been a warning sign all of its own.

From the way his head is pounding now, John realises that the craft must have been depressuring around him without him even noticing. It’s a lucky thing that the Elevator is so fast from orbit to Earth. A cold, horrible realisation slithers up John’s spine that, had it been any slower at it, he probably would have died.

"I… the readings were wrong." John manages, though as he does so Virgil notices flecks of blood on his lips and teeth from where it's trickled down the back of his throat. “I think the Elevator was venting atmosphere and I didn’t…” He blinks again, slow and sluggish. “It felt off, but not… I didn’t think anything of it.” He adds. “I… My head hurts.” He squeezes both eyes shut again, his face noticeably growing paler.

“Hang in there J, I’ll give you something for the pain and to lower that BP in a sec,” Virgil promises, his voice considerately much quieter. He lays a palm against his brother’s forehead to feel the heat of it, and is relieved to find it warm but dry. No fever. “We’ll get Brains to check the Elevator over before anyone goes near it again,” Virgil promises, from somewhere above him. “Do you remember hitting your head?”

“I think… uh, I think I fell down the stairs.” The astronaut decides promptly without even opening his eyes, surprising neither of them. “I remember being at the top after getting changed in my room... but I’ve got no memory of anything after that…” 

Scott’s got an awful mental image of his brother dragging himself semi-consciously to the sofa before he passed out and feels sick about it.

“Jesus John...” Big brother echoes Virgil’s sentiment from earlier, then trails off, not knowing what else to say. Virgil clearly sees right through him, recognising Scott’s indecision and wallowing fear as something that really won’t help John right now, and shifts into his all-business-get-things-done-mode.

“Right.” The bigger man says, clear cut, “I want to get a brain scan to check everything’s all right in there.” He imagines there’ll be some cerebral swelling and he’ll have to go through all the cognitive and hearing tests, but John seems much more lucid now than he’d anticipated and that’s a good sign. “And we’re having a talk about your platelet count when you're conscious enough to process it." Virgil promises, narrowing his eyes at John, who, to his credit, at least has the decency to look sheepish about it. “If you’re feeling ill from re-entry… more ill than usual,” He corrects himself, “You need to let us know.” There’s a sigh and then Virgil’s voice goes a lot softer. “You shouldn’t feel like the world has to end before you stop working, John. You shouldn’t be working like this at all. If you’re going to live up in space for such long stints you need to…”

“Take the proper precautions. I know, I know.” John rubs a weak hand over his throbbing eyes. He clearly thinks now isn’t the time for a lecture either. “NASA trained, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” Virgil isn’t letting this one go. “Sometimes you need to remember it too.” He adds, pointedly. “Right, let's get you to bed for now. I'll have to do some scans and a blood test and monitor your pulse and breathing, but I don't see any reason that can't happen in your own room - clean sheets, blackout blinds, the works." He knows the signs that John’s got a space-induced headache from a mile off, and this must be a particular cracker of one, no pun intended. “I'll have to get some saline and glucose in you to bring your levels up to something acceptable." He adds, apologetically, because that means an IV, which John hates, but really it can't be helped. “We'll have to sit with him in shifts.” His focus shifts to Scott. “If he throws up, check for blood and let me know.”

“I’m not gonna throw up.” John tells him, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “Let’s go...” He shifts his bodyweight, his head wobbly and weak and, with both his brother’s diving to provide support, he makes to sit up. The world shutters abruptly into black and white static but, somehow, John remains sitting, waiting for it to pass.

“Hey Virg…” After a few moments, a weak hand curls its long fingers around his wrist, and Virgil finds his bloodied brother looking guiltily up at him. “I… Sorry about this.” There’re flecks of paint at his brother’s cuffs like he’d been interrupted while painting. He turns to his older brother and makes a note of the fear still there. “Scott, I… thankyou.” John breathes, in a rare, awkward moment of vulnerability. “I don’t…” He can’t actually imagine what might have happened if they’d not been there - if he’d been alone like he usually is.

“I’m just glad you’re ok.” Scott presses a warm hand to the back of his brother’s neck, “You sure scared me there, little bro, I thought...” He trails off, leaving Virgil to hum something agreeable in his place as he scoops a thick arm around John’s back.

“Right.” Virgil says again, focusing himself and his brother’s firmly away from the what-ifs, “Time to get you to bed.”

[consumeconstantly]

Lady Cross (first aid)

Summary: Somehow, Marinette always ends up biting off more than she can chew. It started off with a kid and a nasty gash on their knee. The sudden escalation to treating the new head of Gotham’s underworld? It can only be explained by the fact that she’s catnip for trouble. 

_____________________________________________

Marinette supposed she should have expected something like this to happen eventually.

Really, she patches up a few street kids and offers a meal and some resources and suddenly she's made a name for herself in the slums of Gotham. It’s not like she’s doing anything revolutionary. Well, okay, maybe she does cheat a little bit and uses her healing powers on a few of the tougher cases that really should have been out of her realm of expertise, but she’s living near the slums of Gotham for a reason. That reason being Marinette is just a little broke and can’t really afford to send everyone she comes across to the hospital, and the people who are injured certainly can’t. It’s not like she can leave them to die. That would be heartless.

When she stopped treating scrapes and cuts for kids on the streets as she came across them and instead found her apartment balcony frequented by families who needed her help, she couldn’t just say no. And so, more and more serious wounds started coming in. Kids brought their parents and friends. The parents and friends brought... well, if the police stopped by her apartment any time soon, she’s fairly certain they’d have a field day.

But again, it’s not like she’s going to turn these people into the police when they’ve come to her for help and have a small army of people who swear up and down that they’re good people and only doing what they have to do in order to get by.

Morality comes in such a variety of shades, who was she to judge? Ladybug and Marinette have both certainly had their fair share of mistakes that they’d gladly go back in time to rectify, and her hands weren’t clean of blood either. Sure, the Miraculous Cure may have brought people back, but their deaths were still on her. And Hawkmoth? Yeah, he’s alive now, but she hammered him into the pavement after dropping him from the top of the Eiffel tower, and she’s not going to pretend that she didn’t take a bit of morbid joy in that moment.

But back to the matter at hand. Which was, the notorious Red Hood—responsible for a coup amongst Gotham’s drug dealers and responsible for taking down a man whose morality truly vanished with the wind, Black Mask himself— was currently bleeding out on her second floor balcony, smoking a cigarette and lounging against the rail like he owned the place. 

“Lady Cross,” he inclined his head.

“Red Hood,” Marinette returned his greeting.

God, she really didn’t want to get involved with Red Hood. She wasn’t opposed to helping out street thugs and criminals, but Red Hood was a different league. He seemed to be a fairly decent guy, ensuring that kids weren’t dealt drugs and tried to keep them out of the circuit as much as possible. He took down plenty of worse criminals while he was at it. In fact, Marinette would go so far to say the Red Hood as one the good guys.

But the issue was, once she started treating people of a certain level, she’d be open game. And that didn’t seem very enticing to her. Not at all. Everyone knew that Red Hood had beef with the Bat Family for some reason or other, and also made enemies with almost every single rogue in Gotham, and a good number of enemies outside of it as well. Basically, Red Hood was a universal enemy of both the vigilantes and rogues. Someone she shouldn’t get involved with while she was trying to investigate the darkness surrounding Gotham whole running her online boutique and going to college at Gotham University.

Unfortunately, Tom and Sabine and her own stint as Ladybug taught her that she could never ignore someone in need. Marinette sighed and slid the mesh open, leading Red Hood to her living room. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Real nice place you got here,” he said.

With the mask covering the whole of his face, Marinette had no facial expressions to figure out whether he was poking fun at her current living situation or not. His voice sounded genuine, but vocal emotions were easy to fake.

The apartment she was living in was not on the nice side of town. There were three bullet holes in the wall between her living room and bedroom that she just didn’t have time to patch up, some pretty nasty looking stains on the ceiling near her kitchen, and a huge, spray painted red cross on one of her walls, which was where her street name derived from. Her floor and coffee table were also in states of disarray; she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to clean up after working on two commissions and the last guest whose wounds were heavy enough to warrant several rolls of gauze, which was now half stuffed into a garbage can sitting next to rolls of fabric. Perhaps not the neatest or most sanitary situation, but she didn’t have time to clean up before every single one of her unexpected guests came in.

Look, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have time to fix things up real nice and neat. She’d only been living in the apartment for a month and a half, and most times, she barely spent any time in it other than to sleep, cram last minute projects for her design course, or to help heal people. Her living situation wasn’t the biggest of worries.

“Sit,” Marinette gestured to the one of the few pieces of furniture that she specifically bought for the apartment. She didn’t mind the stained, half broken, and extremely creaky couch the last owners left behind for the first week, but after she started bringing back her first… visitors, it seemed important that the couch was comfortable, sturdy, and most crucially, cleanable.

Rummaging through a cabinet, she pulled out a tattered briefcase she thrifted a while back to keep all of her medical supplies in. Not the prettiest of things, but she tried not to keep expensive looking items in her apartment because she wasn’t a fan of getting mugged. The medicine she kept was already expensive enough, she didn’t need to attract everyone’s attention by owning one of those metal containers used in hospitals. Even though most of the people who dropped by her apartment were thankful to be treated, she had a few instances where people tried to steal things from her.

“What’s the damage, doc?” Red Hood’s voice came through rather tinny through his helmet. 

Marinette grimaced. The helmet must have awful air circulation. It looked like some sort of metal, and wet and metal never smelled good together. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Thought you were supposed to be some mystic healer who came from the far east.”

She paused and looked at the man, trying to judge whether he was racist as well as rude. “That’s rather insulting.” 

Red Hood shrugged. Marinette applauded the man for showing no outward sign of pain at that, even though there was a bullet embedded in his shoulder, and shrugging had to bite. “That’s what the word on the street is, though you sound French to me. Thought I’d come and check out who’s healing Gotham’s criminals. What’re you planning?”

“Sorry to foil your plans, but I’m not planning anything other than getting my college degree and not pissing off the people I live near.” She paused, flipping the lock on the briefcase upwards. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use me as your go to healer from now on. You’re going to bring trouble my way.”

“Trouble? Me? Perish the thought.” His hand rested comfortably on the holister of his gun, ready to shoot if the girl pulled out a weapon from the briefcase. “We’ll talk about repeat appearances after I see how you do today.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Any wounds other than the obvious?”

“Just need the bullet out, and some stitches on the gash.” His shoulder and his abdomen, respectively. The gash looked nastier than the bullet; no shrapnel, but the cut on his stomach was jagged and wide. Not a normal, sharp blade. Probably needed a good cleaning.

She grabbed the tweezers, a sterilized needle, and medical thread. “That’s fine. Now are you going to undress, or am I going to have to cut your… costume… up?”

“Getting me naked already? We haven’t even had our first date yet.”

“Very funny, little Red Riding Hood. Now hop to it. I have class at 9 tomorrow and projects to finish tonight.” Somehow, trouble always seemed to find her when she least wanted it to. Not that she wanted to have trouble find her at all, but luck was a two way street, and for all that being Ladybug granted her good luck, she attracted criminals like catnip. 

“And here my informants had me thinking you were a regular Florence Nightingale.”

Marinette snorted. “They wish. I’ve got to ask who told you, because everybody should know the rules. You know, the ones where they don’t speak of my existence to their higher ups?”

“I’m not a rat,” Red Hood said, taking the top part of his outfit off. “And it’s not like you would have gone unnoticed anyways. You might be treating small timers now, but people catch on to healers pretty easy.”

“Because some gauze and sewing skills make me such a prime target.”

“No, your magic does.”

Shit. Marinette never told anyone she was using magic, and she rarely used it unless it was a dire situation. If she could patch them up using regular skills, she did. 

“Yeah right, if I had magic healing powers, do you think I’d be shoving my fingers into your shoulder to get a bullet out?”

“Not a very good liar, Lady Cross. You have this deer-caught-in-the-headlights look about you.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I’m also the deer that tramples through your windshield and takes a dump on the driver’s seat.” She maneuvered the tweezers a little rougher, hoping to make Red Hood hiss in pain. He just chuckled, amused. His high pain tolerance was getting rather annoying. She had half a mind to pour hydrogen peroxide over the wound just to see if that would make him show he was in pain, but thought better of it. Even though she didn’t like the man, she also didn’t want to piss him off. Or worse, have him come back and make her fix him up again. 

Threading the needle, she made quick, small stitches on his shoulder, sewing the bullet hole up, then put some petroleum jelly to speed up the healing process and reduce scarring. At least the wound was in a position that didn’t require a lot of gauze. She needed to go out and buy some more soon. She barely had enough to wrap around Red Hood’s waist.

“So, the magic,” Red Hood started. “Is it a conditional thing? Can you not use it all the time?”

“Again, I don’t have magic.” Marinette did have to use some antibacterial on the knife wound. He would need to take good care of that one to make sure it didn’t get infected. 

“So a meta, then. What are you doing in Gotham? Everybody knows Batman hates metas.”

“Not a meta, either, sorry to disappoint.” She tied off the gauze, then stood to wash her hands. “Make sure to clean the stomach wound well. Hope you have your tetanus shot, otherwise you should look into getting one.”

“Surprisingly, I’m inclined to believe you on the not-a-meta thing. Back to the first thing, then. Magic. Why don’t you show me the old razzle dazzle? Do you have to say one of those weird spells like the godmother in Cinderella? Bibbity bobbity boo?”

“You’re hilarious,” Marinette dead panned. 

“How’s this for magic? Bibbity bobbity boo, kindly leave. Shoo.” She followed his suggestion, made a show of jazz hands as well. “Pity I don’t use magic otherwise you’d be gone now. Anyways, it’s time for you to make your exit. It would be great if you didn't visit me again. Ever. Thanks.”

She ushered him out onto her patio, then slammed the sliding door. He saluted her before dropping off the side of the building. She could imagine the man under the helmet smirking.

Marinette ran a hand through her loose hair. “He’s going to come back, isn’t he.”

@jasonette-july-2k20

[not-withoutyou]

Bucky’s eyes snapped open, choking on air— a hand hit a cushion.

“Sergeant Barnes?” A soft voice, gentle in a way that felt out of place accompanied with the panic lodged behind his sternum.

Observe.

A cot under him. A swimming head and buzzing white light —a laboratory. Hydra? No. Wakanda. Not a laboratory. A recovery room. Safe. He had been sleeping— not sleeping— unconscious, put under by means other than his own. Because there hadn’t been dreams. There hadn’t been anything.

No exit. No windows, blocked door. Shuri stood in the entry way, careful, nervous hands clasped in front of her. Not a threat. Friendly. Guards behind her —not friendly. (Understandable.)

Assess.

Why was he out? A mission failure. He’d failed, he’d failed. Another attempt at removing the triggers had caused an outburst. Bucky closed his eyes. He’d thought Steve was here. (Steve his friend. Steve his favorite person to see.) But he’d imagined it. Or Steve had left, hadn’t wanted to see him. Bucky understood. Or worse —maybe Steve was hurt, maybe Bucky had hurt him.

Bucky tried to sit up, to throw the blanket off his body — until he noticed that it wasn’t a blanket draped over him at all. It was a jacket. A light leather one that smelled like cologne he recognized from a dream.

“Captain Rogers was called away,” Shuri explained, pulling Bucky’s focus to the present again. “He wanted to wait for you to wake, but the business was urgent.”

Bucky nodded blearily. Captain Rogers —Steve— had been there, after all. The details were fuzzy, but yes, this was Steve’s jacket — it smelt like him. He must’ve forgotten it. Bucky clutched a handful of it like he was afraid it would evaporate.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Shuri tried again, noticing his attention starting to drift, but she didn’t sound angry. (Bucky would have deserved the anger.) The guards took a step closer to her simultaneously.

Bucky let the jacket fall back into his lap. “Did I hurt anyone?” His voice was hoarse. He’d been screaming, before. He remembered. The softness in Shuri’s expression made it almost seem like she cared. For being so young, she carried herself with so much compassion… like a little sister. Did Bucky have a sister? A name with an R. The thought only half-registered before it was gone.

“A few scratches. Just yourself.”

And Bucky felt a bandage near his collarbone, reached up and touched the gauze with his hand to solidify its existence. The damage would undoubtedly have been worse if he’d had a left arm.

“When you are ready, I have another theory I would like to test before the day is out.”

More procedures to try to get his sanity to stick, to un-scramble his thoughts. God, Bucky was tired. He was so tired, his head ached and he didn’t know how much more of this he could handle. “Okay. Can I just have 5 minutes?” His voice cracked.

“Take your time.” Shuri gave him a soft smile before she turned to leave.

Once again alone, Bucky brought the jacket to his nose and closed his eyes. Old leather and fresh, clean rain. Something woodsy and strong like cedar, like a past life. He pulled it close to his chest and thought to himself, over and over, that Steve would be back. He had to come back to get his jacket. And, perhaps, because he had promised. Bucky couldn’t remember why, but he knew that meant something.

After raining steadily for a few days, the thunder storm had started to break up. Cracks in the heavy, dark clouds almost looked like a creation myth over the vast fields and the purple-gray mountains in the distance. The Genesis of all things. Bucky was allowed outside with supervision. He needed a reprieve from the past two dour weeks. When Steve’s plane landed, he found Bucky sitting by the water, pulling blades of grass up by the roots. Bucky hadn’t meant to start plucking them —his hands did on their own volition. (Destruction was a pattern he needed to break.)

When Steve approached him, it was carefully, keeping his hands where Bucky could see them. (Not a threat. Safe. Safe.) He remembered Steve. He remembered that he missed him. That it was good to see him. Sometimes Steve showed up wearing tactical gear, dirty and beat up. Today, though, he was in khaki trousers and a white button down. His hair was neat and styled. (Some rogue part of Bucky’s brain thought he looked pretty.)

Bucky stood up, slow, awkward and off-balance.

“Hi, Buck. You remember me?” Steve asked. The usual greeting. (Sometimes Bucky didn’t remember, didn’t say anything at all.)

“You’re Steve.” Bucky wanted Steve to smile at him instead of looking so sad. (Steve always looked so sad. Worry lines were starting to crease his forehead.)

“Do you know where you are?”

“I’m in Wakanda trying to get better. I useta hurt people. I don’t do that anymore.”

Steve exhaled a breath he’d been holding. “I’m sorry I had to leave so quickly,” he said. “But — they needed me in DC.”

When Steve didn’t get any other response, he continued. “You’ve — you’ve been pardoned, Buck. You’re forgiven.” His hand reached out halfway between them, but he dropped it, shoving it back in his pocket.

Bucky opened his mouth, but didn’t utter a sound. He couldn’t meet Steve’s eyes.

“Do you remember what I always tell you?” Steve asked.

Bucky’s voice was thick with emotion when he found it again. “You say it wasn’t my fault.” He couldn’t meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve smiled. “That’s right. And the powers that be seem to agree with me.”

The best outcome he could have hoped for, so why did it feel so hollow? Bucky shook his head. Steve must have gone to argue on his behalf— but he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it. A tiny nagging hope persisted out of spite — maybe Steve was right; maybe Bucky still had some gold in his tired heart. He couldn’t think, now, about what he’d done —his fucking bones would cave in. Shoving it all back, he’d deal with later.

Clearing his throat, Bucky reached down beside him to retrieve the bundle of material that had been carefully folded at his feet. “You forgot your jacket.” He held it out in front of him like a peace offering.

Steve blinked a few times in soft bemusement, but took the abrupt shift of topic in stride. Keeping his hands in his pockets, Steve made no move to take the jacket. “Oh! No, I— I left it for you.” There was something in the way he said it that made Bucky feel like there was more; like he’d left something out. (Bucky shrugged off the feeling — it wasn’t new. He always felt like he was missing something.)

“It’s yours.” Bucky didn’t know why, but he was adamant that Steve would get cold without it.

Something cracked in Steve’s expression. A lightning-quick flash of something in his eyes, shattered and crystalline.

“Keep it. We’ll share. It can be both of ours.”

Bucky didn’t know why shared custody of a piece of clothing made him feel like crying.

. . .

Visit me on Ao3

[feralnumberfive]

The Rewatch Academy: Episode 3 of Season 1

“Extra Ordinary”

I am in no way a good analyst so my little analysis and speculations probably sound a bit goofy or pretty wild and probably mean nothing at all. Everything I put into this post about each episode is purely what I noticed or thought, whether it's funny or serious. I will be making jokes, so please just leave it at that (in no way am I trying to make fun of an actor and or character!) I am also in no way saying I noticed this stuff first. This is just what I noticed while rewatching these episodes

☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ 

1x01 | 1x02 | 1x03 | 1x04 |

☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂ ☂

☂ First off I’d like to say that this is one of my favorite episodes of this season. It’s just soooo good

☂ The second comic book in the window features the Televator from the actual comics, so that has to be canon in the show! Also at the time that that second comic came out, Five had already left since we don’t see him on the cover

☂ It’d be cool if they actually printed Vanya’s book for fans to read

☂ Well Diego isn’t wrong when he called Hazel and Cha Cha animals because of their masks

☂ Honestly I feel Vanya’s struggle with chair placement. I’ve fortunately had the luck of playing in all three clarinet chair placements, but 1st chair is challenging. I personally found each placement very fun to play, especially 3rd, and I hope Vanya does too! (why am I talking like she’s real)

☂ Hazel talks about people living ordinary lives, but didn’t he live like that too at one point? How does The Commission recruit people? If they get ordinary people, do they wipe their memories of their previous lives?

☂ “Let’s see’em get out from behind their desks, get their hands dirty for once.” Well Hazel, Five does indeed do this even though he only had a desk job for a day. Still, he got to experience both worlds

☂ My mind is blanking on this, but how did Five get that cut on his arm? Was it from a bullet wound at Gimbel’s? 

☂ Five must have a high pain tolerance to stitch his own wound but his bandaid probably wouldn’t stick due to the wet blood he slapped it over. Five sweetie you need a cotton pad and gauze for that one

☂ Wait, you’re telling me that The Umbrella Academy boys’ top uniform consists of a tank top, a white dress shirt, a tie, a sweater vest, and then the blazer? Someone asked Reginald what he wanted for the uniforms and he just said “Yes.”

☂ Five: *puts hands in pockets only to immediately take them out*

☂ Aidan almost sounds like he has an accent when he says “I'm done funding your drug habit.” 

☂ Five’s so soft talking to his wife

☂ No Leonard, your bread and butter is being a creep

☂ Also, he thinks wood carving is embarrassing? If someone came up to me and showed me something they carved out of wood I would be so jealous cause it’s such a neat form of art

☂ Leonard saying that he carved wood, and in that case wooden figures, when he was a kid is a slight foreshadow of all of his tampering with his Umbrella Academy figures. He can make wooden figures but he’s also destroyed a handful of the Hargreeves figures 

☂ “Never really did like The Beatles.” Well sir you’ve made me dislike you even more

☂ Vanya asking Allison if her siblings wanted her at the family meeting bugs me a bit. I absolutely get that she was literally left out of anything and everything that had to do with her siblings when she was younger, but Allison just asked her to come back home for a family meeting. Allison wouldn't have walked around looking for Vanya only to tell her that they were having a family meeting and that she wasn’t actually invited. Allison is including her in on a family meeting but Vanya is just in a bit of disbelief that she’s being included

☂ Ah yes, the only PTSD flashback for Five we see in the show! He looks so scared when he snaps out of it. I believe it was somehow triggered by the kids (I could be wrong) but do you think Five sometimes panics when he looks at himself in the mirror now since his body is the same age it was when he got stuck? Also it’s very subtle but when Luther opens the door, Five slightly jerks/flinches back. I wish we would see more of this in the show since it’s one of his major traumas

☂ “Does it matter? It’s Klaus.” Ouch! Well Five I hope you know that your siblings are somewhat thinking the same thing since they believe that you’ve lost your mind and are practically an old man crying “Apocalypse!” 

☂ Five does an ever so slight huff and smirk when Luther tells him that the meeting at the Academy is important. He finds it a little funny but so frustrating in his mind that Luther doesn’t know what’s truly important

☂ Also I love that Aidan has to turn to the side so that he can keep it together after Klaus talks about his chocolate pudding waxing. Either that or he’s portraying Five as being frustrated and in disbelief. Also this is the first time I’ve noticed that he says “Ay, ay ay...” 

☂ “We’re all you have. And you know it.” Oh Luther, you’re failing to see that that’s why he’s acting like this right now. He’s all frantic and crazed about trying to stop the apocalypse so that he can protect and save all that he has

☂ Five certainly is mad at Luther during his mini lecture. He’s clenching his jaw tightly and when he first speaks he hisses out the words through gritted teeth. He even called Luther by his number. He’s very impatient at this point and doesn’t care for Luther’s act of attempting to be a leader

☂ This is their first, and certainly not last, time watching Klaus go by in front of them doing something he shouldn’t be doing

☂ “You haven’t been home in a long time, Vanya.” Sir you were also just on the moon for four years. Yeah Vanya was away for a long time but Grace easily could have changed too during the four years you were gone

☂ How sweet, even though Five hasn’t really been home they want to include him in on the family vote :]

☂ I’ve noticed that in S1 that David really mumbles his lines. A lot

☂ I wish we got more flashbacks of the younger Umbrellas

☂ Diego my beloved mama’s boy ♥️

☂ It’s confusing as to which country TUA takes place in, but it’s really not supposed to be a specific one. It’s portrayed as being in North America, but you can see behind Cha Cha when she gets out of the car at the Academy the flag of the RAF, which Canada would have at a monument since it’s a Commonwealth country. At the same time though Delores came from Gimbels, which was a department store chain across the U.S

☂ The light above Five’s portrait is slightly crooked, which probably means no one has really been paying attention to it

☂ It makes me nervous that Klaus wipes bubbles onto his face. It looks like he got some in his eyes

☂ Ugh I love the whole scene of Hazel and Cha Cha walking around the Academy with “We’re Through” playing

☂ Diego: *has knives but instead chooses to punch and hit Hazel to try to make him let go of Allison”

☂ A rope-a-dope is a boxing tactic of pretending to be trapped against the ropes, goading an opponent to throw tiring ineffective punches. Diego sweetie Hazel wasn’t even trying to get you off of him all he was doing was choking Allison. The only person who got tired was probably you

☂ What’s the point in Diego yelling “Luther, go!” if he’s already going 💀

☂ Luther was there immediately when Hazel attacked Vanya. That means that Luther heard Vanya and was going to go get her to safety

☂ I will never stop signing my praise for the entirety of the “Sinnerman” fight scene(s). It gives me chills every single time. Easily one of the best scenes in all of the show

☂ Klaus must really have his music blasting if he can’t hear the gun shots right next to him

☂ I’ve always wondered if Allison actually registered in her mind that “The boy” is Five when Cha Cha says that’s who they’re looking for. Either she does realize that’s Five, is simply just angry that those two are looking for a boy, or registers in her mind that it’s Five through his superhero codename even though Cha Cha’s not referring to him in that way

☂ Diego is full on just standing in the background watching Allison get beat up by Cha Cha 🕴

☂ I love Diego’s little hand flap when he gets hit in the hand fighting Cha Cha

☂ Okay so I make everything about Five, but the whole Cha Cha fight scene with Allison and then Diego kind of scares me. Cha Cha and Hazel are both amazing assassins (they’re both probably right below Five) and neither Allison nor Diego could stop her by themselves. Could you imagine Five fighting one of his siblings? Especially with his spatial jumps? We already got a glimpse of his true combat skills when he fights Lila in S2. What a scary little old man

☂ “Vanya, get out of here!” Again, wanting to make sure that Vanya is safe and gets away. He even tried to go look for her

☂ Something I don’t really get about the Hazel and Luther fight is why doesn’t Luther just overpower him? Luther has super strength and on top of that he has giant muscles due to the gorilla DNA. Shouldn’t he be able to beat Hazel to a pulp? Maybe we have to consider that Hazel might have been altered by The Commission to be stronger and more durable, but they haven’t mentioned that in the show

☂ “Ah, you gotta cut down on that fast food, soldier.” What are you talking about Diego he literally just got off the moon two days ago aflksjfdk

☂ So Luther was too injured to jump out of the way of the chandelier but was able to push it up off of himself? 🤔

☂ I personally think that Luther’s body design adaptation for the show is really cool and that they gave him the perfect amount of bulk without making him look ridiculous

☂ This has been pointed out before, but cross-stitch foreshadowing, baby 

☂ Again, Diego my beloved mama’s boy ♥️

☂ Well at least Diego thought about Vanya dying before thinking about his siblings dying because of her. The latter is ironic!

☂ The clock above Luther’s mirror reads approximately 1:30 am. Hazel and Cha Cha didn’t want to wait until morning

☂ I wonder how different it would be if Five was present at the Academy when Hazel and Cha Cha attacked. He probably would have surrendered himself to them, but it's fun to entertain the idea that he would go apeshit if he knew that they were harming his family in order to find him

☂☂☂☂☂☂☂

Feel free to comment or reblog with things you have noticed too!

[the-unknown-storyteller]

a matter of trust

(week #1, prompt 2: hugging)

Summary: On one of his many trips back and forth between the Arctic Commune and what is left of L'Manberg, Ranboo meets a special someone in the Nether. He doesn't know how special they are just yet, but their feathery friend is hurt and so Ranboo wants help.

__

Ranboo is on one of his many trips back and forth between the Arctic Commune and what is left of L’Manberg - every single time, every single time he forgets something, this is his seventh trip already - when he hears some noise from just over that pile of nether rubble. Noises are not all that unusual in the nether, with the faint whining of ghasts in the distance and the groaning of zombie piglins nearby. But this one is different. Ranboo can make out panic and pain. Whatever or whoever is making that noise, it sounds so, so small and vulnerable. So he goes to investigate, keeping his body low and close to the hot nether floor. He doesn’t want to spook whatever it is that was crying out in pain and hurting. 

He keeps his sword sheathed but within reach and the clanking of his armor to a minimum, although there isn’t much to do about the quiet hum the enchantments are giving off. There it is again! Accompanied by some shuffling and the unmistakable grunt of a zombie piglin. It is just on the other side of this small hill. Ranboo holds his breath, as he peaked around the corner. 

It is a baby piglin, zombified with half of its face rotten off, but that’s not what its distressed calls are made over. Ranboo looks further down and sees it hold something soft and fluffy in its arms. It is a chicken of all things and it is clearly hurt. One of its wings is bent the wrong way and he can see a faint tint of red to a few of its feathers. Something must have hit it or at least brushed past it. Most likely a fire charge from a ghast, going by the singed tips of its tail feathers. The baby piglin is cooing at it, crying out whenever it twitches in pain.

Ranboo watches for a few moments more, deciding on what to do. He really wants to help them, but there is no way this piglin was letting him get close to it. It might think he was trying to attack it, and either attack first or run. He looks down at his shimmering armor and at the sword sheathed at his side, and comes to a conclusion that Niki would hit him on the back of his head for. 

“Hey, buddyyy. How’s it going? I see that you have a pretty neat friend there.” His steps are slow and steady, as Ranboo approaches the distressed couple. He keeps his hands up to show that they are empty for now and that he doesn’t pose a threat to them.

“I was just walking along that path over there when I heard you. It sounded like you were in pain, but I think that it’s actually your friend, who’s in pain. Do you mind if I come closer?” He wasn’t quite sure if the piglin understood at all what he was saying, but Techno once told him that the language of piglins is largely based on intonation and volume. So he talks in a voice that is low and calm, speaking slowly and pronouncing his words clearly. He ducks his head and hunches his back a bit to appear smaller, his tail stays low to the ground, swaying gently from side to side. 

The zombie piglin fixes its one eye on him, following his every movement. Ranboo feels encouraged to continue when he doesn’t see a negative reaction to his approach. 

“See, I don’t have any weapons. No armour, nothing. You two are completely safe. I am just here to help” He takes another few cautious steps closer, a small bottle of regeneration and healing in his right hand now. “See, I even have this to help your friend. In my bag are some bandages and sticks that we can use to splint their wing. What do you think?” 

The piglin tilts its head to the side, curious but not suspicious of him, so Ranboo takes that as a positive and sits down in front of the pair. He lays down the potion bottles in front of the pair, along with the bandages and a few sticks. He then reaches for the chicken, but doesn’t actually take it. Instead he stops a few inches short in front of it and watches for the piglin’s reaction. When its grip tightens on its feathery friend, Ranboo’s hands retreat immediately.

“No, no, don’t worry. I won’t take it away from you. I just want to treat its wounds, so that it isn’t in pain anymore. Okay? I won’t take it from you.” He offers his open palms, waiting for the piglin to decide. His expression is open and friendly, as is the intonation of his words. 

It hesitates for a moment, before entrusting this stranger with its friend. It makes Ranboo wonder if it actually understood him, as he takes the precious cargo with careful hands.

His movements are confident and quick, as he works on resetting and splinting the wing. 

“You know, I was actually wondering. How did you… meet your little friend? I don’t usually see many chickens around here.”  He pulls away the singed ends of its feathers and cleans the blood from a small gash along its body. “But you two seem good friends! That’s good, that’s good.” 

The zombie piglin watches with anxious yet trusting eyes, as Ranboo wrap its friend in strips of fabric, pinning its wing to its body. “You know, I’ve just been calling you ‘baby piglin’ in my head. But I know that you guys have actual names, so what is yours? Mine is Ranboo.” 

He ties off the gauze and points at himself during his introduction. The baby piglin tilts its head and responds with a string of hums and grunts that barely mean anything to the ender hybrid. Techno once tried to teach him some piglin, but he could barely tell the difference between a happy grunt and an angry snort, so those lessons didn’t go very far. 

“Sorry, I’m not really… good at this. I heard an mmm sound? I think Techno once told me that it’s one of the few sounds that I can translate one to one.” The piglin repeats the string of sounds, adding a harsh kk sound in the middle. Maybe this was a different pronunciation?

“Sorry, I’d rather not try to repeat your name. I once tried to say Techno’s and he laughed at me for accidentally swearing at his ancestors. I don’t know if that means that Techno’s piglin name is very close to a swear or if I’m just really bad at piglin.”

Ranboo strokes the chicken’s head a bit and it gives a happy cluck in return. Finished with its treatment, Ranboo disposes it safely back in the arms of the piglin, who gives off a probably happy huff. 

“Anyway, I heard an M, a K and something like a cut-off A at the end? Hmmm, hmm.” The piglin repeats those sounds and then repeats what is probably its name. This time he can hear an I. “This is probably not right, but your name kind of sounds like ‘Michael’? Would you mind if I called you that?” 

It looks up at Ranboo - its ears were twitching when he had said “Michael” - and gives the other an approving nod. Apparently good enough for an enderman hybrid. 

“Alright, Michael. Your friend should be okay from here on out.” Ranboo gives it… him a happy smile. “I walk through here pretty often, so don’t be afraid to call out to me, you got that?” Michael nods enthusiastically and hugs his feathery friend loosely, minding its hurt wing. 

“That’s awesome. I’ll see you around.” Ranboo almost trips when his legs appear to be not functioning. He looks down and sees Michael with his arms wrapped around his legs. 

“Oh, you could have told me you wanted a goodbye hug. Come here.” The half-enderman opens his arms in invitation and catches a warm bundle of baby piglin and chicken feathers in his embrace. He encloses them safely within his arms, swearing to visit them often and whenever he can.

[lucas-koh]

Stitches - Bryce Lahela x MC XIV

Open Heart; only somewhat canon compliant.

Parts 1-13 linked in bio

Song: When My Love Won’t Stick To You - Whitaker

Rating: M, swearing, sexual language, references of violence

Word Count: 3286

Taglist: @lahellacute @lahamseiroshoe @anotherbeingsworld @fuseboxmusebox @choicesficwriterscreations @bubblelaureno @bratzlahela @eleanorbloom @bryceslahela @thegreentwin @kelseaaa @kingkassam || please let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from this list

A/N: just to say Stitches will not be updating next Friday, since it’s Christmas Day I will not be majorly online. I’ll be posting again Jan 1st 2021💛

Chapter Fourteen: Everything Goes But The Memories Made

“What?” She barely whispered, her head spinning. Bryce had just revealed to her that he remembered her from their college days when they’d shared a kiss once, drunk.

He looked nervous, afraid to continue, but he did.

“Truth be told, I always had a soft spot for you. You know when you just feel warm around someone, even if you barely know them? That’s how you made me feel. When I’d see you studying at the library with snacks and coffee splayed all around you, or when I’d see you at the hospital for lectures, it was always just a mental ‘hey, I know you’ and suddenly everything would feel okay. Seeing someone you recognise is really grounding, you know? Especially when there’s a distance and you don’t really know them. And I liked the competition of it all, that you were so smart and always number 1 but didn’t even know it was me at number 2, because you were so confident in your own abilities you didn’t need to look back. I wanted to be your friend, but you didn’t seem to have the time, so I let you be. And then you kissed me at that frat party and I thought, god, this is amazing. I didn’t think into it too much - college and all - but I have thought about it a lot since. And then when you crashed into me on our first day at Edenbrook, at first I didn’t know who you were. You look different, you know. It’s been like, seven years, after all, it wasn’t until I saw your name tag that it hit me. Why you’d felt so familiar. But I wanted to wait until you recognised me too, if you even did. And then when you did, I got nervous, and tried to ignore it.”

Holy shit. He… he really remembered me. Not even just from the kiss, either, he remembered me before that.

Suki stammered a little before the words came out, “…Bryce… I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just say?”

“Honestly? I was embarrassed that you didn’t recognise me to begin with. More so, I was embarrassed that I’d known you and recognised you and always thought about you every now and then and you hadn’t,” he said. “I guess it felt sort of… creepy?”

“Wow…” was all she could stifle out. She was at a loss for much more.

Bryce had remembered her, for all this time. Things felt like they were looking up, the way he’d opened up to her and finally told her the truth. Unfortunately, the altercation with Fred and Ben wouldn’t stop nagging at the back of Suki’s brain.

“…sorry,” Bryce exhaled, rubbing his hand across his neck bashfully.

“No, I- don’t worry. I get it. It was just a kiss I’m sure you had loads, but it’s weird.”

“This is why- I didn’t want you to think I was weird.”

“No! Not you! I’m really glad I’m not forgettable,” she laughed lightly, “it’s weird that… oh god it’s going to sound ridiculous.”

“It can’t sound more ridiculous than what I just said. I won’t laugh,” he said, then twisted the corner of his mouth up into a grin, “maybe.”

She sighed, burying her head in her hands before coming out with it. “I guess it just feel like we keep being pulled together, like, i don’t know,” she felt her cheeks become seriously hot, “fate.”

Bryce had lied, because he burst out laughing, which then devolved into a coughing fit and had Suki patting him on the back. Maybe a little harder than she was meant to.

“Ow!”

“You said you wouldn’t laugh!” Except she was laughing, too.

“I know, I know. You just looked funny. Honestly? I do see what you mean. All signs pointing to us ended up here,” he gestured between them, sat facing each-other in his bed.

Maybe this cosmic power she’d been cursing for all the early embarrassing encounters wasn’t so bad after all.

—-

Bryce and Suki talked for hours about college, and their stories, and people they knew in common. They laughed about how Suki didn’t even know Bryce sat near her in most lectures, and only knew him by his reputation.

A little later, after raking through Bryce’s Stanford yearbook and finding Suki in there, Bryce pulled out his high school yearbook.

“This is my senior photo. Just before graduation.”

Bryce was smiling up from the page, his golden tinged hair darker and shoulder length, and silver piercings shone from his ear, eyebrow, nostril, and lip. When Suki had known him he’d been piercing free.

“Oh my god! Why the hell did you stop looking like this for college? You know, I might’ve actually spoken to you if you’d looked like this.”

“Eh. I wanted to be taken more seriously. Why?”

“Don’t make me say it you dick.”

He nudged closer, smug all over his face. “What?”

“Because it looks good on you.”

“So I don’t look good like this?” He motioned down his body, which might’ve been sexy if he was in better shape. Well, as in his cold. His physique was perfect…

Suki gave him an affectionately knowing smile, “of course you do. I like the way you look very much,” she nodded. Then when Bryce’s face lit up she added: “but you’re not going to catch me saying that again anytime soon, okay? Your ego is big enough.”

Bryce moved to get up from the bed, “look, I’m just going to the piercing shop I won’t be long-“

Suki pulled him back down to the bed with a laugh, “Bryce! Although I wouldn’t oppose I’m not sure you’d be allowed in surgeries looking like metal face.”

“It would make things interesting though…”

“What?”

“A lip ring. Maybe a tongue ring. Imagine the kissing, or me going down on you…”

“Bryce.”

“What! Don’t tell me you wouldn’t consider it.”

“You are not getting any action while you’re sick.”

He leaned closer to her in the bed, “I got you to kiss me.”

She sighed and pulled the back of her hand up to check his temperature. Before she got there however, he took it from her.

“What’s this?” He brushed a finger lightly across her fingers, by the edge of the bandaging.

Ah, crap. This guy really does make me lose my mind. I’d forget my name if I spent too long around him.

“Work casualty,” she tried to laugh nonchalantly and pull her hand back to his forehead to seem normal. But he brought it back down to inspect it. His brow furrowed as he tried to decide what was under the gauze, and then he used one of his hands to grab Suki’s other one. He turned this one so that the palm was facing up and the scars from the month before were visible; standing paler than her skin tone right in the centre.

He held each hand in his own like they were feathers, opposite directions up.

“Does it hurt?” He asked, moving his thumb as if about to graze over the scars, asking permission.

“No, go ahead.”

He followed the neat shape of the puckered skin with the pad of his thumb, as gentle as he had been when he’d stitched it. Suki’s hand felt cold under his touch, the sensation on her scar able to feel each fingerprint dragging over.

He dropped her scarred hand somewhat to the mattress, but still held it in his own, shifting their hands slightly so that it was more of a classic hand-hold.

Suki tried not to focus on the bolt of electricity coursing from that spot. She’d wanted to hold his hand for so long, and here he was holding it like it was no big deal. His thumb ran up and down her skin in a soothing motion.

He turned his attention to the other, biting his lip as he looked.

“Whatever caused this, it’s gonna have to answer some questions.”

“It was just, uh, slammed it in the double doors. Those are heavy,” she cleared her throat, hating every fibre of herself for lying.

“Stupid door.” He brought his face down to the bandaged hand and placed a featherlight kiss to the top of her knuckles, “I’m a surgeon, I have magic kisses.”

“Oh dear,” she laughed, a little breathless and trying to seem light and uncaring, “did you take some medicine this morning? I think it’s kicking in.”

He chuckled, almost back to his usual Bryce chuckle, “but,” he cleared his throat, clearly gearing up to make a cheeky comment by the smirk on his face, “if I had a tongue piercing, my kisses really would be magic.”

“Oh my god,” Suki couldn’t help but laugh at him.

As they laughed together on Bryce’s bed, hands tangled together and bodies close, Suki truly felt happy. Like things really could work out for her. For them. And Suki was having an amazing time just being with Bryce.

The only problem was the albatross hanging around her neck.

—-

The next thing Suki knew, she was waking up in Bryce’s bed. He was sat beside her, scrolling through his phone.

She blinked her eyes a few times to make sure she was seeing things right, and moved to sit up.

“I… fell asleep?” She asked groggily, causing Bryce to turn to face her. He smiled when he saw her.

“Yeah. I figured I should just let you, you seemed pretty tired.”

She realised she must’ve fallen asleep when Bryce had been searching for some Stanford pictures, because that was the last thing she remembered.

She sighed, “you should’ve woken me.”

“Nah, you were working all night.”

And getting into it with your colleagues…

She sighed again and bit her lip, figuratively and physically.

“You really should’ve woken me,” she whispered, unable to handle Bryce treating her like this knowing she’d stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.

He smiled back at her, she could see in his face that he knew something was up.

“You’re fine. It’s what friends do.”

“Bryce.” She felt like she was sighing his name a lot these days, and not in the way either of them liked the most.

He twisted his face up into a grin and Suki noticed his eyes were much brighter now, “Suki.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was terrible at hiding her guilt. She had to get out of there, because if Bryce was the one trying to alleviate it she’d feel even worse. She started to shift in the bed, but Bryce reached an arm out over her waist.

She just sort of lay there shocked as he shifted over closer to her, putting his torso over hers.

“At least let me try and kiss away some of those frown lines. If I remember correctly, it’s one of our benefits,” he smirked, hell-bent on making her feel better and in turn making her feel even worse. She couldn’t kiss him and feel like it was okay, because even that, even what was happening at that moment, felt like overstepping and taking it too far and Suki knew that it was on her. She was the one who caught feelings, who started blurring the lines and the rules and taking liberties where possible. She was the one unable to tell Bryce the truth. About her feelings or about her meddling.

But she also knew they were on borrowed time, and this might be the last chance she had to kiss him.

So she put as much as she could into it as she pulled his face to hers, hands on his cheeks and feeling the soft skin with a little bit of stubble beginning to come through, committing it to memory. Her lips pressed to his slowly but definitely, making sure each inch of herself was tied to him. With the kiss her head was filled with every other kiss they’d shared: at college, in the supply closet, at the housewarming party, and the many since. He wasn’t trying to force more like he had earlier, he seemed to be savouring it as much as she was, his lips sweet and slightly chapped but so familiar and Suki felt at home.

Kissing him was that to her.

She felt her face scrunch up as she kissed him, praying to god this wasn’t the last time. His familiar citrus scent washed over her and she never wanted to stop kissing him.

Reluctantly, but knowing she had to, Suki pulled her mouth from Bryce’s. Her eyes were glued shut and her forehead lulled against his, feeling his hair tickle her skin and his hot breaths wash over her face.

“Woah…” he exhaled, speechless to say much more.

Bryce’s kindness and the fact that she liked him so ridiculously much just meant that Suki’s guilt kept growing and growing. She just knew this couldn’t last.

—-

A couple of days passed by and Suki had been bogged down with work again, and hadn’t been able to see Bryce since that day. He’d texted a couple of times and seemed to be on rising spirits, so she was pleased about that.

It was just, every time she thought about Bryce, she couldn’t help but think about what she’d done.

Or about how the clock was ticking down until he found out.

And it was.

Bryce was back to work that day, he’d told her, and she was filled with anxiety the entire time.

Suki was on her way home later that day, just about to enter her apartment building when a voice stopped her in her tracks.

“We need to talk.” It was dark and low and every part of her went cold. She turned to face him, that face of her dreams stern and distant and everything she never wanted to see.

“Okay. There’s people home. We can go to the river.”

Bryce just nodded and started in the other direction.

Suki nervously followed behind him, afraid to catch up for she didn’t know what to say. Building in her chest were nerves and dread and like a hairline crack in her heart which she knew would expand soon enough.

She thought about the last time she saw him, the kiss they shared. How happy they’d been.

They came to the river as the sun was just setting, sparkling over the water like constellations. Bryce’s soft caramel skin was golden in the sunlight, the light reflecting in his eyes and Suki’s heart was put through a wringer just looking at him. Was this it? The last time she’d ever get to see him like this?

Suki searched her brain for ways to start, how to apologise, but Bryce beat her to it.

“Why, Suki?” It wasn’t anger, it was at a loss.

“Why what?” Bad move, Suki. He knows. There’s no point still lying to him.

“Why did you meddle in my business?”

“Because they had no right to do what they did.”

“You’ve made it worse! Now they’re never going to leave me alone! I don’t care about being liked I care about doing my fucking job! It was fine—it was over!” Bryce’s voice was now angry. Suki wasn’t sure which hurt worse. Or maybe they exacerbated each-other, like a hammer and a nail. The nail was the disappointment, and the anger just kept bruising it further into her chest.

“I- are you really pissed at me for standing up for you?” If she just let him know her intentions, maybe she could fix this.

“I’m pissed at you for going and stirring shit up! You crossed a line!”

“It wasn’t just me, Jackie was there too and I don’t see you yelling at her.”

“Well I’m not sleeping with Jackie!”

“What?” She spat.

“You-” his face scrunched up and she felt her heart scrunch with it, “you kissed me. Twice! Knowing you’d gone behind my back and disrupted things.”

“What did you mean you’re ‘not sleeping with Jackie’? Why does that mean we’re held to different standards?” She asked, her voice raised, ignoring his words because the truth hurt too much to say.

“And you didn’t tell me! You spent the entire day with me where you could’ve mentioned it and you didn’t even bother! I thought we were-” He ignored her too, but his voice halted like he couldn’t say what came next.

She couldn’t tell if his voice was breaking from the cold or the anger – but it was heartbreaking.

“No, I didn’t, because I had no clue how you’d react. And look! You’re so… mad,” as she said the last words her voice shook and it came out like a whisper. In fact, her hands started shaking too. Her eyes were beginning to blur from stinging tears welling at the bottom. She’d upset him – the last thing she ever wanted to do.

“You’re damn right I’m mad!” He yelled, and Suki flinched at the noise. “Your hand – you told me you shut it in a fucking car door! I saw his face Suki. You seriously hit him? For some stupid petty rumours?”

“Yes, I hit him,” she could really feel the tears coming as she spoke firm and loud, “he could’ve fucked everything up for you.” And it was cloying with her words, when it came to Bryce, it seemed the anger couldn’t come without pain, too.

“He’s not the only one who fucked things up for me. I mean, you violated my trust,” he shook his head, his hair blowing in the light breeze, “I trusted you,” he said this quieter, and Suki got the impression he wouldn’t have been able to yell it. It was hurt.

“And I ruined that.” I ruined everything. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve never cared for someone like this.

“Yeah. You went behind my back on something I told you in confidence, and then lied to me about it. I feel so fucking—” he shook his head, at a loss for words. But he looked embarrassed.

“That wasn’t—I—just wanted to them to know how bad they fucked up! I was so mad that they did that to you.”

“It was months ago! It’s over, old news! And it was my problem to solve.”

“Well you matter to me! Okay?” It came out like a sneeze she couldn’t hold back and her heart was beating more rapidly as soon as she said it. Shit.

Bryce’s expression then was completely unreadable. Suki had no idea what was going on in his head. He just looked at her like that for a few moments, her statement hanging in the air like cigarette smoke. And then Bryce finally came out with something.

“We’re sleeping together Suki – what did you think you were doing?”

And her head was running like a machine; all cogs and whirring and sparks and clanging. The emphasis he’d put on that one word, and she knew where this was headed. Every bad dream, every nauseous predictive thought she’d had lately was laid out in front of her and coming true.

She didn’t want to ask her next question. But she had to. She had to. She knew it wouldn’t come out with any semblance of strength, but at this point, it didn’t really matter.

“So I am just a body to you?” she whispered it with a heaviness which hung in the air. They both knew this moment was going to change everything. There was no going back from here.

Bryce stared at her steely-eyed and jaw clenched so hard it looked like it might pop. She wasn’t prepared for his next word. She never would be.

“Yes.”