#if you’re only problem with a character is their skin color you have some demons to deal with I’m sorry

[pasteilian]

I think some fans and fandoms have the worst time letting go of the idea that something they love has to tell the same story, point for point, over and over again with no variation of creativity. And if it doesn't stay within this path, it's automatically considered bad.

It's especially weird with TMNT because this franchise has never stuck to the same old, same old in every iteration. It's always something new and unique to that story, while still having story beats that you can recognize from the other versions. So fans being upset that the turtles don't stay the same is wild to me. They've never stayed the same, and that's what makes TMNT so fun.

[lunarsands]

Empires SMP S1 Fanfic: The Future Foretold Ch 3

Characters: MythicalSausage, PearlescentMoon, Pixlriffs, Jimmy Solidarity, LDShadowlady, Smallishbeans, Shubble, Joey Graceffa, fWhip, GeminiTay, Scott Major, Xornoth, Katherine Elizabeth, and three special guests

Relationships: platonic MythicalSausage/PearlescentMoon, implied MythicalSausage/Scott Major

Tags: Empires SMP S1 with allusions to Afterlife SMP, and allusions to Empires SMP S2, Canon Divergent, scosage adjacent

WARNINGS: Angst, Major Character Death, (it’s the end of S1 what do you expect?), Everybody Dies, but also, Everybody Lives

Summary: During his multiple attempts to save Pearl, Sausage ends up in the reality he and Scott created for The Wither of Mythland and The Angel of Aeor. He realizes that perhaps with their help he might be able to achieve his goal.

Sequel to The Past Unmasked, Phantom Solitude, and Glimpses of Fate

(Also available on Ao3!)

[Chapter One] [Chapter Two]

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Chapter Three

The bigger problem was not Xornoth themself, but the magic circle they had placed around Scott. This was magic granted by Exor, and was the type that could only be broken by a spell’s completion – if Xornoth intended to seal Scott inside a crystal – or with the spellcaster’s death. Hence, Sausage’s stomach wrenched as he had to watch Scott plunge the Rune Blade into his own chest.

Then it was time to spring into action before that magic took hold. They had it planned out to the microsecond. Xornoth dropped, clutching their chest. The magic circle flickered. The Wither darted in and was already reaching into Scott while thanking him, pulling out a blue lace agate in the shape of a snowflake.

Scott had a relieved smile on his bloodied lips – aware enough to realize that if the ancient sword’s effect failed, his soul was in good hands – as he slumped forward, still impaled by the Blade; they would address that after dealing with his brother. The Angel guarded against any last gasp type of moves from Xornoth, but the demon only watched, using the last of their strength to hold their head up long enough to tilt toward Sausage. “My… Champion… You’re so weak-hearted… But I sense… You still crave power. You’re… desperate for it, aren’t you? So desperate…” They tried to laugh but coughed out murky blood instead.

The Angel hooked his foot under Xornoth and used it to turn them onto their back to give The Wither access to their chest, not wanting anyone to touch the demon more than necessary. As The Wither reached in, The Angel tensed; but it was not Xornoth that concerned him now. “Be wary. That presence I sensed is suddenly stronger.”

“Presence?” Sausage asked. Fine time for them to have left him out of some important conversation. “What are you…” He spun around, abruptly feeling something, too. It was like the faint tug at his power that he experienced every time he made a jump. Nothing was behind him, so he turned back just as The Wither was, due to the bond with Scott, pulling a piece of obsidian veined with bright red out of Xornoth.

And then a new figure materialized beside The Wither—

And The Angel cried out in dismay—

And the figure snatched up the piece of obsidian—

And Sausage could only stare as the crimson-eyed version of himself kicked The Wither hard enough to send it tumbling straight into The Angel, knocking them beyond the line of where the circle had been and preventing both of them from stopping him as he took a solid bite of Xornoth’s soul relic. The obsidian cracked then gave way, and the resulting soul energy mist was absorbed into the warlock’s mouth and hands. He chuckled with that ever-present demonic resonance to his voice. “I learned that one from you, creature.” He cast a smug grin at The Wither then began to laugh. He looked like he hadn’t aged a day, although his skin appeared to have pock marks and was sallow in places; and then, as Sausage watched, thin cracks appeared below the outside corners of his eyes, exhibiting the bright magenta colors that had scored the elven demon’s skin. “And now I have a refreshing supply of magic, courtesy of Xornoth. You see now, dear Mythical Sausage, that we could have been more powerful than him at the drop of a hat. But you like to waste yourself on softer pursuits.”

“No… Why are you here? We already got rid of you – we did it twice, even!” Sausage’s mind raced. He could try to rush the warlock, but he didn’t have any bladed weapons on him; they sure as the Nether weren’t necessary against his friends. He didn’t dare risk taking out the Staff of Mythland in the terrifying chance his other self might get his hands on it. But he had Gem’s staff. He pulled it out of pocketspace and leveled it at the warlock. “I guess I’ll just have to do it again!”

His evil self put out his hand, and the Dark Mythland Scythe appeared. “You could do nothing against me in the dream realm. Neither could GeminiTay, with that little stick. It was Pearl who bested me, but she isn’t here, is she?” He glanced toward Scott’s body. “None of your friends are, it seems.” He grinned viciously. He then swung the scythe in the air and slammed the end down on the ground. The eye sockets of the skull on the back end of the blade glowed and a transparent red dome appeared over the exact lines of where Xornoth’s circle had been, encasing him, Sausage, and the fallen brothers – cutting off The Angel and The Wither from interfering, as Exor’s power fueled the warlock through the soul he had consumed.

Sausage threw a pleading look at them. “Go! Finish what we started! I’ll deal with him!”

The Wither tried to pierce the dome with its fingers; god of good or of evil, death prevailed over all. However, the magic held. “But we need—” It stopped itself and tried not to look toward Scott.

“Go, my love,” The Angel insisted. “I will remain here and assist when I can.”

“You’re wasting your time, you old, washed-up spirits,” the warlock mocked. “Don’t worry. I’ll send you back to dust, too, when I’m done. I owe you payback for ripping me into tiny pieces. But, foolish of you to use a soul linked to someone like him to try to fix inter-reality barriers.”  He pointed the skull-end of the scythe at Sausage. “And foolish of you to offer me the chance to reassemble myself.” The eye sockets flashed again and a bolt of red energy shot out.

Sausage heaved himself out of the way then leveled Gem’s staff again and thought of the spell firebolt. The staff answered, and orange flame shot toward his crimson-eyed double.

The warlock dodged it more quickly than Sausage had been able to move and then chortled in response. The skull’s eye sockets glowed, and soon it became a match of casting attacks, deflecting with counterspells, dodging around, attempts to get closer to one another for shorter range spells, and – inevitably – came down to attrition. Sausage was trying to keep the attacks from landing near Scott’s body, and while his spells were more varied, he was slower.

He finally had to conjure a shield and try to keep his feet as a volley of black energy bolts pounded into the shield. As it began to crack under the pressure – and from Sausage being unable to sustain the spell for much longer – he frantically looked around for an idea. What his eyes landed on was Scott’s regular sword, discarded to the side in favor of the Rune Blade. He dismissed the shield and ducked, then managed a roll to scoop up the sword, and swung himself bodily around to make a run at the warlock. He conjured another shield just long enough to block a red bolt, then he pocketed Gem’s staff and took the sword hilt in both hands. He jumped and slammed the edge against the haft of the scythe, forcing his evil double to brace it instead of firing off another spell.

Sausage slid the blade upward, aiming to try to damage the skull portion if he could get that high. The warlock grunted and shoved against it, then pulled back on the scythe enough to loosen the sword. He then whipped the curved blade downward. Sausage hopped back but swiftly brought the sword up again, clashing against the scythe’s blade.

Now their dance was melee to melee, with Sausage continuing to try to either strike at the skull or just keep the warlock from casting another spell. He put as much force as he could behind each blow; he could not afford to lose. Yet this was different from how he had dealt with his inner self in the past. Before it was in parts psychological and mystical, physically hands-off. Moving the warlock portion of his soul into a pocket dimension was done with a thought – and the help of the spirit realm’s energy.

Yet also, he had gotten older. Stamina was not on his side anymore.

The warlock grinned over their once-more joined weapons and gave a robust shove. Sausage stumbled backward and fell over Scott’s body. He cursed at having lost track of where they had been moving toward. His crimson-eyed double chuckled. Sausage sat up and intended to throw himself back to his feet, but then the skull-end of the scythe was slid under his chin, forcing his head up so he could only meet the leering gaze of his past mirror image.

“What’s the matter? Too old and tired to keep up with me? People don’t age in a limbo reality. That’s what you tried to condemn me to. Forever alive, yet nothing to live for. But you opened the door once again. You poked holes in the fabric of existence. I was able to gather myself up again, after those wretched phantoms used me to fix your other mistake. So many mistakes, Mythical Sausage. They do add up, don’t they? Was I your first mistake? Who knows. I could just let you keep on making them, but then again, now that I have consumed Xornoth’s soul in this world, I don’t think I’m going to let you go off and reset things again. I have enough of myself back together to accomplish my own goals.”

He pressed the skull against Sausage’s throat. “Oh wait. You can’t risk resetting everything again, can you? The creature has all of your friends in one neat little collection. If anything happens to it, you lose all of them in one go. And if anything happens to me, I swear I will just come right on back. I’m infused with all of your magic, and everything that Xornoth and Exor granted! You know the story by now: twin souls, bound in conflict, unable to exist without the other. We’re kind of like that. There is a different solution than what happened with these two, but I won’t be telling you that.”

Sausage was too worn down to interrupt the monologuing. He released his hold on the sword and prepared himself for the risk of taking out the Staff. If he could manage one more jump, then he could at least try to get the Rune Blade into The Angel’s hands before he became trapped with the warlock. Then at least two spirits might be able to save everyone, even if it meant releasing them all into the reality where they were anchored. They could all build new lives there, regardless of how it was isolated. At least they would be safe, right?

He closed his eyes and sought out his resolve. Take out the Staff. Stay focused on the timing. Don’t let him grab it from you…

The skull smacked into the underside of his chin, distracting him. “Don’t fall asleep now,” the warlock chided. “Where’s the mouthy reply? The incessant rambling? Too tired for that as well? How very far the mighty have fallen. Go to sleep then, Mythical Sausage. You’ve used up all of the time you had. And what a waste it was.”

No. I can’t have wasted it. I’m so close to saving Pearl. This time I WILL save her! Sausage gritted his teeth and lashed out with one foot, knocking the warlock off balance. Then Sausage twisted around and planted his foot against Scott’s body, grasping the hilt of the Rune Blade and yanking it free, shoving Scott in the process. He swung around just as quickly, and thrust the Blade into his double’s gut with a grief-stricken cry. He didn’t put much thought into where he was sending the warlock, instead focusing on the thought of him having zero ability to access magic, and therefore leaving him no window to use Xornoth’s soul – which Sausage was sending off with him. He hoped that would be enough.

“You… You… c-can’t get rid of me… this easily,” the warlock gasped out. “You and I… are linked. You’ll see me again. I swear it… Through all of time, I s-swear it. You can’t… escape… y-yourself…” He staggered backward off of the Blade, clutching at the fatal wound, then collapsed.

The red dome flickered out as the spell expired. The Blade fell from his hand, and Sausage sat back, gasping for breath. He felt pain in his own gut, but that might just have been residual sickness from what he had just done. He started to cast an apologetic look toward Scott. Even if the elf was beyond having felt any of it, now that the heat of the moment was gone, he regretted the mistreatment.

But The Angel was there, cradling his god’s fallen champion. His head snapped up at Sausage’s look, however, and the human got the feeling that there were enraged eyes trying to burn a hole through him. Sausage knew he should be retrieving the Rune Blade but instead drew his knees up and lowered his face into his arms as he folded them on top of his knees. Would he always be haunted by his evil self? Was there truly no way of banishing him once and for all?

It was a few seconds before he realized there still wasn’t time available for sitting around. And he wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or worried that The Wither wasn’t in sight.

~*~

The specter of death ran its hands over the graying giant flower stalks and blackened regular-sized flowers alike. The ruination of such beauty saddened it, only adding to its existing distress. It worried for Sausage, and it worried about what would happen if he failed.

And it cursed itself for ever thinking of using that soul, in particular, to repair the walls between realities.

Its thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone weeping. It came around the side of another of the giant gray flowers to see a young woman with fairy wings crouched down pushing at the soil with both hands. She was also dangerously close to a fire. The Wither whisked around and put out the flames, then drifted closer to her. This had to be the ruler of House Blossom.

“Lady Katherine?” it rasped, although tried to make its voice sound gentle.

She looked up, startled, and emitted a small, “Eep!” at the sight of, well, a specter of death.

“I mean you no ill will,” The Wither hastily said. “I come on behalf of Lord Sausage on a mission to seek his fellow rulers. I am sorry to see the state of your kingdom. There is still a beauty to it, I assure you. I am one who can understand the line where life, and endings, and new beginnings might cross. One small light can save where even the most forlorn hearts might dwell. That light is called hope.” It looked to where she had been fumbling with the dirt. “Although, hope can take time.”

Katherine stood but glanced at the dirt patch. “That time you speak about wouldn’t happen to be seconds, would it?”

“I am afraid not.”

“But – these are magic seeds! Or, at least I should think they would be. The magic here usually works quickly. Did – Did you say Sausage sent you? Who are you?”

“The Wither of Mythland. I am… an ancient spirit of these lands. Perhaps you remember when Lord Sausage was under the effects of an ice spell? As I recall, you attempted to cure him.”

“Oh. Yes, I remember that. Um, what does that have to do with ancient spirits of the land?”

“I aided in the solution to the matter. I am an ally of his, and of Lady Pearlescent and Wizard Gem, and… Lord Scott as well. I am here to aid you now.”

“Well, I know what regular withers do, and it usually doesn’t involve helping anyone, unless you count what can be made from Nether stars. If you don’t mind me asking, what makes you different from one of them?”

“I am here to save your soul, Lady Katherine. The devastation does not end here, and a new future must be forged. I have the luxury of explaining a little of this to you. The others were not as lucky. And this may not be so lucky, either, as there is currently great danger delaying our quest. But I promise I will ferry you to safety, and you will be able to create new beauty in the world.”

Katherine looked down at the dirt patch again. “What do I have to do? There isn’t a river of the dead I have to cross, is there?” She chuckled nervously.

“No. You merely need sit down here with me.” The Wither went to the nearest giant flower and settled on the ground. Really it just wanted to distract her from obsessively watching that dirt patch. Despite the fire and ruined flowers, there was still an air of tranquility to the area. It needed that lull.

Katherine cautiously sat, although she stared upward at the blackened petals above. She waited for The Wither to say more. When several minutes passed without it speaking, she glanced over at it. “Well, what now?”

“I apologize. I am weary. I needed a quiet reprieve. This is a pleasant place for that.”

“Everything is on fire! How can you say that??”

“It is peaceful here. I know you feel troubled, and rightfully so, but the land is accepting of events, and will lay in rest to await a chance at renewal.”

She once more looked toward the patch of soil and sighed. “Seconds, minutes, days… Normally seeds take weeks or months to germinate. I guess I… need to be patient.”

“It will be able to grow and thrive without you. You will have to trust in that. You will see new growth on the other side. Lady Katherine, thank you for allowing me these moments. Many of the others were quick to call me ‘demon’. That is a past I sought to leave behind, but mortals will always fear someone like me. We must go now.”

Katherine closed her eyes. “Goodbye, my Overgrown. I did my best.”

The Wither reached in and pulled out a piece of chrysocolla in the shape of a tulip.

~*~

There were actually several more minutes of solitude before The Wither’s senses were filled by the warmth of The Angel’s presence, and it looked up to see him flying overhead. “Here, my love,” it called softly, but knew its words would carry to The Angel’s mind.

He banked to the side and glided down. The Wither intended to show a smile within its hood, but its gaze was drawn to the Rune Blade in his hand; there was fresh death clinging to it. The Wither stood in alarm. The aura of that death screamed Sausage at it, and now it made to grab at The Angel. “That aura… You – You didn’t—? I know he has done dangerous things, but we are so close!”

“He used it, on his other self. That is the death you are sensing. If it feels exactly like him, then perhaps we should be concerned with how far he has fallen.”

“I have all of them now. We need only get to safety, then it shall be done. Lord Scott might not emerge favored by Aeor again, but you will still be able to look in on him. Have faith in this just a little longer. We give hope to a world that might otherwise not last.”

“And what of you? How are you faring? You are not meant to carry a soul for so long, especially not so many. You are anchored to our home, but we are in the world where you were chained to the Plane of Souls. It may want its due.”

“Then we must return to Lord Sausage and take the final step. Where is he? Why not simply call me when the deed was done?” It nodded toward the Rune Blade.

“I thought it best to leave him alone with his decisions. His strength is failing, anyway. This will be over with soon, one way or another. I am sorry you have had to be so burdened.” The Angel took The Wither’s hand and brought it up to his indistinct face to kiss it. “We will return home to do this. I refuse to risk disruption from the upheaval of the land. We will not repeat any of this any longer.”

~*~

The fight had gone out of Sausage, and in exhaustion he agreed to make the conscious decision to jump to the wither-angel reality to rest before making the attempt at splitting the soul relics and sending them to a new world. Here The Wither also felt safe to remove all of them from itself, setting them in a pile in a beam of sunlight while The Angel worked to make a space where they could be arranged into one straight line. He chose a fallen log and used a burning touch trailed over the length to smooth away bumps and remove other growth.

Sausage rested in the meantime but when sleep eluded him, he stared at the palms of his hands and remembered how he had first taken hold of the Rune Blade. It made him feel sick to think of holding it again, after the way he had removed it from Scott, but it was their best option for releasing everyone’s souls. The other option was utilizing the spell Gem had used to free The Angel and The Wither, but that required the Blade as well, and he couldn’t do both at the same time.

He forced his thoughts away from the worries and tried instead to dream up a new reality for everyone. New lands, new adventures, everyone could start over with a new lease on life, healthy and energetic, building new things and making new discoveries.

A sanctuary, The Wither had once said to him. A sanctuary for everyone.

He longed for that shelter, too. Maybe there he could find rest, and then start a new life of his own.

.

The Angel was the one to rouse him. “It is ready. Ensure that your resolution is true. I will assist you.”

He eyed the Blade held tight in The Angel’s hand, then got to his feet and followed him to the log and line of relics. There was no particular logic to who was where, except for Pearl’s being closest to where he would be standing, and he only in part registered that Pix��s was at the far end. The Angel seemed to give him a hard look, then held the hilt of the Rune Blade toward him. Sausage took a breath and wrapped one hand around it to take it, then added the other and aligned it above the relics.

It was almost laughably too short in comparison to the line of precious stones, and only supernatural speed would have allowed anything close to splitting them all at the same time. But then The Angel stepped up behind him and placed his arms alongside of Sausage’s, hands closing over his where he grasped the hilt. It was intimidating, but there was also a comforting warmth. Sausage felt… safe. Shielded. Protected. He had been at odds with The Angel since this had all started, yet in that moment he felt an unexpected tenderness. Other words from The Wither came to mind. We are linked.

“Focus on the world you wish to create for them. I will guide your hand.”

Sausage felt a rush of power flow into the Rune Blade from around his hands. Before his eyes the blade lengthened, new runes appearing in glowing gold with an undertone of the blue of the original ones. He quickly schooled his thoughts and envisioned all the things he wanted everyone to experience anew.

He felt The Angel raise the Blade slightly—

Yet lowered it to gauge a clear line across all of the relics.

Then raise it again, higher—

Then down. Sausage’s hands shook underneath The Angel’s hands, palms sweating against the hilt, but he kept the vision in his mind for almost a full minute longer. New. Safe. Everyone. A new home, a new chance.

He heard an odd sound from The Wither. Sausage’s eyes flew open. Automatically fixed on the distance, he first saw that Pix’s relic hadn’t been perfectly split down the middle. Given its shape, that hadn’t been unexpected, but the two pieces did rest in line with the halves of everyone else’s.

All except Pearl’s.

Hers was now a pile of shards.

“NoooOOOO!!” Sausage screamed, jerking backward and throwing The Angel off him at the same time. “W-What happened?! H-How?!” He turned the now normal-sized Rune Blade over in his hand, staring at it in horror. “D-Did we hit it with the cross guard? H-How could we have missed? Pearl… What have I done? PEARL!!”

“The Blade fell true,” The Wither exclaimed in order to intervene, rushing forward to place its hands over the pile of shards before Sausage might grab at them and lose one in the grass, or dash them from the log altogether in a fit of rage. “I can… I can still feel her soul energy…” Its eyes glittered rapidly in concentration. The Angel moved to put his hands over The Wither’s, giving its senses a boost. “It has… been dispersed back into the fabric of reality.”

“S-So she’s back in the mortal world?” Sausage asked, mouth going dry. “Just… dying all over again?”

“Yes,” The Wither reluctantly confirmed.

“WHY?! Why didn’t it work?!” Panic and despair swelled up inside as Sausage’s mind began to spiral. “This – This can’t be happening! After everything we went through to get here!!”

“I do not know,” The Wither replied quietly, keeping its hands over the shattered sunstone.

Sausage rounded angrily on The Angel, holding up the Rune Blade. “This is an elven blade! Do you know why?!”

“It is not elven. It is dwarven. I have no association with them.”

With a cry of outrage Sausage threw the Blade to the ground, then began to sob and fell to his knees, slamming a fist into the dirt. “Pearl… No… What do I do now? I’m back where I started…”

The Angel turned to The Wither. “What of the others? Can you sense where they are?”

The Wither deliberately put its hands over Scott’s relic, then over Gem’s. “They are… somewhere new. I now have a sense for how that reality feels. Perhaps…” It moved back to touch the shards of sunstone. “Hmm. No. There is no piece of her essence in that place. I thought, perhaps if she was scattered, she might exist in more than one reality. Yet it is only your home reality.”

“Th-Then… I have to… I have to go back.” Sausage lifted his head, face streaked with tears but conviction in his expression. “I have to try again. I can’t fail her!”

The Angel lunged to snatch up the Rune Blade, then spread his wings to block The Wither behind him. “Then you do it alone. One last attempt. If you fail, you return here and use this on yourself to join the others. Do you not understand what your actions so far have caused? Do you wish to unleash your other self yet again?”

“I-I’ll go alone. But let me have the Rune Blade. If – If I use it on her directly, and not a soul relic, maybe it will work!”

The Angel scoffed. “Can you truly bring yourself to slay her with your own hand? You were becoming callous toward the others. Is she all you really care about?”

“IT WAS MY FAULT!! I gave her the crystal that put magic in her lands! And I kept messing with other magic near her! I CAUSED THE LAND TO LINK TO HER!! When it burned, she burned! I have to reverse what I did!!”

“One. Chance.” The Angel proclaimed. “I will not give you this weapon otherwise. It was not meant to be in the hands of a mortal in such a state as you.”

“Give me the pieces of her relic, instead,” Sausage demanded, holding his hand out. “Maybe I could put it back together, and then…” He trailed off. He didn’t know what he would do. But it would be something to remind him of what he was struggling toward.

The Wither swept all of the shards into one hand, then held them close to its chest. “My hands alone may touch these,” it reminded him.

“Fine.” Sausage closed his hand, then in the next second held the Staff of Mythland. “I’m going. You keep that safe. That is the final repayment of your debt.” With a thought, he was gone.

The Wither lowered its hands, then spread the shards over the top of the log, pushing the other pieces of relics out of the way. They were mere broken gemstones now, although it thought about keeping them in a memorial. But for now, it put its attention on the separate shards. After studying them for a moment, it pulled back the hood of its cloak, eyes turning blue in the sunlight.

The Angel watched, uncertain. The Wither preferred its appearance remain hidden, even when there was only the two of them. In response, he clarified his own features. Golden hair, golden eyes, wings the color of a sunset, and a face that resembled Scott. His lips parted to speak, revealing fangs. “Are the timelines becoming more turbulent? What does that mean for our past?”

The specter that resembled Sausage looked over at him, and its eyes softened upon seeing the features of its beloved once again. “I do not know. I have no understanding of what has been done. You and I continue to exist, so nothing has been undone. We must wait to see… what…” The Wither’s attention was drawn to a sudden glow from one of the shards of sunstone. As they both watched, a second shard began to glow, then the pieces slid toward each other and connected.

Ten minutes later a third piece took on the glow, and slid toward the two combined pieces.

“He is not going to return, is he?” The Angel asked.

They watched in silence, waiting. After half an hour, a fourth shard began to glow and move.

“He is not.”

“How many pieces are there?”

“Hopefully less than the time his magic and life have remaining.”

~*~

At first Sausage was relieved to see Pearl again, grateful she wasn’t actually lost in some parallel limbo. But he did have to watch her burn then wither away again. He ignored The Angel’s command. How would they even know if he failed more than once, anyway?

Yet he only managed three jumps before despair took hold again. He was tired and weak. The effort of timing the repeated jumps to go back and forth for the others had taken its toll on him. He was running out of magic.

He practically fell from the beanstalk when he had meant to glide off toward Mythland, too exhausted to fully engage his elytra. He landed on one of the lower leaves and slid partway down before managing to stop himself. He worked to catch his breath, clutching the edge of the leaf until he could manage to deploy the elytra properly. Then he simply glided to land in front of the farmhouse.

He stared at the palms of his hands. He felt none of the spark that danced out of visible sight but which allowed him to take hold of the fabric of reality and make a path through it. He took out the Staff and looked it over from end to end. Then, setting his jaw with determination, he snapped the Staff in half over his knee. The resulting release of energy surged over him and through him, becoming absorbed by his depleted innate magic, and he felt his power be restored. In the process, gray streaks spread through his hair.

That was of little concern; at least he had the magical strength to try again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

He used up what the Staff had given him, and squeezed whatever energy he could out of Gem’s staff next, but there was more of a backlash from that one since it wasn’t attuned to his personal magic frequency.

~*~

Elsewhere, a sunflower made out of a piece of shattered sunstone was almost finished with reassembling itself, and was filled with a particular glow reserved for the soul of deities. It sat out in the light of both day and night, surrounded by the halves of other, inert gemstones, entrusted with its own destiny by the two spirits who guarded it.

~*~

Old, worn, and white of hair, Sausage found himself limping through the catacombs of Mythland, searching in vain for any scrap of a magical item that he might be able to use. He wondered: could he even manage one more jump? Was it truly time for him to give up?

“It’s okay. You don’t have to try anymore.”

That voice. The gentle, warm voice of his dearest friend…

He reached out and when she took his hand to guide him away, his spirit left for a higher realm. Meanwhile, as his body came to rest on the soft moss underneath, there was still a whisper of magical energy that stirred. From the magic of the land the staff had come, and to the land it returned, flowing through the moss and soil and stone. There it would settle and renew itself until it was needed again.

.

Some thousand years later the magic stirred once more, drawn to spread toward the call of the soul that had once wielded it.

 ~End~

 ---

[Post A/N: True facts, the word “time” appears in this fic 60 times. I suppose that’s going to happen when you write a story involving time travel. | Also, hopefully it makes sense now why these have been tagged as “scosage adjacent” :3c | Bonus artwork by Cynthrey! ]

[fragileizywriting]

I posted 2,008 times in 2022

That's 1,269 more posts than 2021!

1,634 posts created (81%)

374 posts reblogged (19%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fragileizy

@fragileizywriting

I tagged 1,812 of my posts in 2022

Only 10% of my posts had no tags

#speakizys - 1,645 posts

#demon lovin - 779 posts

#fire lily petals - 510 posts

#sharks and sugar - 319 posts

#locker talk - 139 posts

#izycrossover - 105 posts

#the ot3 server is bullying me - 25 posts

#talking about [redacted] - 15 posts

#izydraws - 14 posts

#anyway - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#‘i don’t even know your name. i don’t even know when your birthday is. i don’t know how your eyes light up when someone you love calls you’

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

“Why did you give me this, Adrien?” she asks, rather small.

“Oh. Oh, uhm. Do you not like it?” He turns to her, finally looking away from the tank, his gaze meeting hers. His eyes look almost brown, so dark, yet so readable. She can’t even look away. “I thought you’d like this. I thought, you know, since you always talk about how much you want to see sharks all the time, I thought maybe we could—”

“You’re right, I do—”

“—see the sharks together?—”

“Correct. Adrien, this is— holy hell. This is perfect—” she bites her lip so that a cry can’t get out, pinching her eyes tight. Her eyelids squeeze, strong enough for color to blur and blend into nothing but white, tears streaking down her hexleather and touching her bare skin. She hiccups when there’s a thumb on her jaw, warm, wiping right where the seam of the hexleather meets skin.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s all that perfect when you’re crying,” he murmurs.

He has no idea. He has no idea that she’s paralyzed. In fear, in desperation, wanting to tell him every single little thing and knowing not to— she’ll ruin everything— she’ll ruin their entire friendship— if she tells him that she loves him so much that it hurts to breathe. 

She loves him so much that it hurts to breathe.

Oh, oh, and the thought of that admission is what gets her to sob, watching his outline haze into nothing but yellows and dark greens as she gasps out, something sharp and something desperate, clinging to breath on its edges with nothing but serrated claws.

“It is perfect,” she sobs. “This is the greatest thing anyone’s ever given me.”

“Then what’s wrong, Kitty?” he asks her as she leans into his hand, cupping him by the wrist. Wishing so hard to be able to feel his hand without the hexleather in the way. “Why are you crying?”

“B-because I—” she shudders again. No. Don’t. Don’t ruin it. Don’t ruin the only thing left in life that makes sense. That makes everything worthwhile. “Because y-you make me so happy, Sunshine. I can’t believe you got us to have the aquarium all to ourselves tonight— I can’t believe you did this for me. I can’t believe that you’d do this for me.”

“Of course I would.” He gives her a little smile. Just brief. Just enough for her to see it through her swimming vision. “You’re my best friend, and I love you.”

21 notes - Posted May 8, 2022

#4

ALL OF THAT WRITING FOR FLP AND STILL ONLY 233 PAGES? JESUS >:(

23 notes - Posted December 7, 2022

#3

blanche is my sweet little darling and i love her. she's allowed to maim as a treat and deserves kisses from one (1) adrien (and maybe one (1) luka if she's vulnerable enough)

30 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

#2

"who, him? no, my familiar is harmless!"

(he is very much not harmless!)

Want to know more of this AU? Click Here

someone in the ot3 server asked what chat looked like and i don't have any art because drawing men makes me miserable (more than drawing in general, honestly, because of my problems with holding pencils). HOWEVER.

i had art from 2018/19 from when this au was first conceptualized, but it was only a shitty png version of it as the psd file had gotten corrupted... i redrew parts of this to fit the au as it is now. it's not perfect, and i wanted to change some more things, but my hand... ough. i cannot draw more. my hand is on fire... but i wanted to show you what i have at the moment before i forget.

i wish i could change marinette's hair to black in this, but since chat is already void, it would just look messy. i'm sure if i were more talented i'd figure something out, but for now, let's just all pretend that her hair is black in this. not as dark as The Void that is Chat. also, i don't think anyone noticed this in the original story, but marinette's eye color is never talked about. i wanted to give her blue eyes only when she's using magic, because it would make her look cooler, but i got lazy super quickly when drawing this. i guess that's fine. i had a lot of people question why i changed a marinette's eye color the last time i tried it, so...

anyway, i need to take a nap ToT

40 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

she just slathers herself in it, up until it starts to hurt, hissing to herself as she uses her knuckles to roll tightened flesh. maybe 'slather' is too harsh of a word, but butters herself is definitely applicable-- gah! no! no thinking about butter! no food, not yet, not until she's taken care of herself the way she needs to.

shower? done.

wash hair? done.

exfoliate? done.

deodorant? done.

pajamas? done.

she still has a skin-care routine to go through, all six steps to make sure she's hydrated but not enough to where she's breaking out into hives and reddened skin. it's a delicate balance, one that she's spent so long trying to fix, and if this ruins her night she's about to crash and burn and start kicking and screaming into her pillow.

dinner be damned.

breathe. breathe. it's okay. things are fine. just a long day, that's all, there's no need for the knots to form in her shoulders. she's tired, she's hungry, she's aching for luka's attention, and she wants to smooth out the knots in her thighs before he's back upstairs.

"do you want some help, mousey?"

she blinks tears out of her eyes. "no, no-- i-- i can do this, it's fine, everything's... fine."

breathe. breathe. things are fine. everything is fine. her parents are thankful that she helped out in the bakery today, her grades in school are fine, her boyfriend isn't upset with her, all the kwamis are full and mullo is flying around with a basket of blueberries right behind her, gorging out on a meal before her parents go watch a movie together...

why is she so stressed out?

"i know you can," luka approaches cautiously. she looks up at him with a huff, eyes tired, pouting before she can even stop herself. he sits in front of her, right at the foot of her bed on the cat-shaped floor cushion. "but that doesn't look comfortable. you're hurting yourself like that."

"luka..."

"breathe." she inhales on command, exhaling to the side so she doesn't accidentally move his bangs with her breath. "again."

she does.

"good?"

"good."

"lightheaded?"

"no."

"feeling weird?"

"i don't think so. aside from... i don't know. this." she points to everything about her.

"tell me what's wrong, beautiful."

"i'm tired," marinette sighs out, like it's a justification for the way she's been treating herself. her hands are ringing from how much friction she's used against it, even with all the lotion, she's completely and totally overstimulated. "everything is so much right now."

"i know."

"a long shift on my poor feet--"

he lifts her leg up to place in his lap. "yeah."

"and, and-- and school."

"mmm."

See the full post

47 notes - Posted January 25, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sevensins-stuff]

I posted 2,030 times in 2022

195 posts created (10%)

1,835 posts reblogged (90%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@eternallydaydreaming2015

@lettheratsin

@rsmrymnt-tea

@otome-on-the-side

I tagged 684 of my posts in 2022

#ask me - 96 posts

#143 cupid - 31 posts

#obey me - 29 posts

#obey me swd - 25 posts

#om - 22 posts

#omswd - 22 posts

#anon ask - 18 posts

#romeo tag💗 - 12 posts

#lucifrrs - 12 posts

#lol - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 131 characters

#my ultimate hc is that mc reminds the brothers so much of lilith because she took after the humans she had so much love for already

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Just finished the event and I could give it a 5/10. The event honestly would've been fine without the keyed stories since they were incomplete. My biggest problem with the events now is that the devs are trying to force in every character they have (but no thirteen this time, surprise surprise!). And then you have Satan with his cat obsession and new to the crew, Barbatos' only other personality outside of being a butler as knife throwing. It was hot when it was confirmed, but now that's all he does if it has nothing to do with tea or baking with his adaptive son. Overall, the story was alright. Something obviously could've happened within the plot but didn't because of the sheer amount of characters they had to stuff in and introduce in a single lesson.

48 notes - Posted March 22, 2022

#4

Hello, first time here! Can i request an MC that naturally shares food? Like regardless of what they eating they just go and "hey want some?" even if it's like, a bar of chocolate or a whole small cake (and will likely feed the other person)

The demon brothers react to an mc that naturally shares food

"Hey, want some?"

Lucifer

He doesn't really like sweet foods, but one small bite wouldn't kill him.

He obliges to the piece of cake you offer him and he takes the fork from your hand, feeding himself.

He does like that you think about sharing with him often, but he wouldn't let you feed him unless he were knocking on death's door.

He's overexagerating but he's too proud to let himself be babied by you

Mammon

As much as he wants to say no, he's a real sucker for you.

It's so hard for him to look at you while he opens his mouth so expectantly...all for a potato chip.

It's almost embarrassing to feed him since he makes it feel like something so taboo

But he's just too cute to refuse.

See the full post

53 notes - Posted February 6, 2022

#3

Ficlets

💞=Fluff ❤️‍🔥=Smut 💔=Angst

Lucifer

"You're disgusting." ❤️‍🔥

"I quit." (Human lawyer!Lucifer au)

"It's a horrible world we live in." 💞 (au with 2 Fem!ocs)

"Don't touch me." 💔

"You make me sick." 💔

"I hate everything about you." 💔

"I am doing this for my kingdom." 💔

"Tell me what you are really like." (/F!mc) 💔

"Don’t pretend like you’re proud of me, you condescending dick." (/F!mc) 💔

"You look so sad when you think he can’t see you." (/F!mc) 💔

"Can you hate someone and love them at the same time?"/"Everyone is going to have to pick a side. Even you." 💔

Accidental touches (x F!mc) 💞

"How long have you been standing there?" 💞

Aspectabund (x F!mc) 💞

Spy!Lucifer x Intelligence!Reader ❤️‍🔥

“Red is the perfect color on your skin.” (/F!mc) 💔

Mammon

Heartache 💔

"Don't touch me." 💔

"We might as well get to know each other." (x F!mc) 💞

"Great. Really great, this is just perfect."/"Please, don’t make this worse than it already is." 💔

"How does that make it okay?" (/F!mc) 💔

"You seem to care for the human." 💔

"Don’t even think that for one second."/"Maybe you’ll stop missing me one day, but I’ll never stop loving you." 💔

See the full post

72 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

#2

Headcanons

Slice of life

Not fully dressed

Demon bros comfort mc

Mc proposes

Solomon falls in love (F!mc)

Dirty texts

An introduction to Halloween

A guide to the demon brothers 1 (horns)

A guide to the demon brothers 2 (wings & tails)

Kissing in secret

Mc just wants to fight

Movie dates

Satan takes someone's virginity

Mc is comfortable and confident

Sharing chocolates

Team Solomon

Little shameful things

Levi getting caught

Relationship with Simeon

Chubby mc with Diavolo

Comfort with Levi, Asmo, & Simeon

Late night love songs

Relationship with Belphie

An mc that likes to share

See the full post

95 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Headcanon based on this fun fact!

They weren't always as close as they seem. The prince had a certain face to keep on at all times, but the sorcerer was different. Free from any and all obligations, he could notbring himself to feel threatened by the prince's status. That filled the prince with a rage later titled jealousy.

The sorcerer would make his presence greatly known within the Devildom. Just as these demons promised their unwavering loyalty to the prince, their loyalties waivered with the pacts they made to the sorcerer. To the human, it was a joke, a dance. A game. However, to the prince who grew tired of his disrespect, it was a challenge. A challenge best solved, as he thought, face to face.

And so, he called out to the sorcerer and issued him a challenge he couldn't refuse. A fight to the death, as per demon customs. Winner takes the throne. Surely a difficult offer for the sorcerer to pass up. So he heartily agreed.

The prince was the first to attack. Hoping to get a quick hit in, he moved with the inhuman speed he was born with. But the sorcerer was not phased one bit. Not with the demon's speed. Not by his challenge. And certainly not with his jealousy, which he had anticipated. Blind with rage, the prince failed to notice when the sorcerer inflicted a shrinking spell on him. Although he did manage to get the first hit, it didn't have the impact he was hoping for.

The human reached down and pinched the collar of the demon's shirt to lift high in the air. Just high enough for the prince to witness the sour smile that painted itself onto the scorcerer's face. Humiliation, a fate worse than death. The prince quickly admitted defeat.

"I will admit my defeat. The throne is yours. Now end my suffering so that I will not have to live with this taint to my bloodline."

The sorcerer chuckled. "I'm not in the business of killing you. Or taking your throne , for that matter."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"A pact from that butler of yours. He intrigues me greatly."

157 notes - Posted August 13, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[ashbelero]

AKA a tutorial on color theory and skin tone that you shouldn’t have had to hear from a pasty white guy.

I’m not here to talk about what brought me to do this tutorial. I’m just giving my thoughts on color theory, basically, because most of these examples, WHILE TOTALLY VALID, use other pictures as reference points to pick out color. That’s not even necessary all the time, so I’m showing how I choose skin color from the wheel itself.

We’ll be using this sneak preview of Mammon from Obey Me! with piercings, which will be appearing on my Patreon soon. I am literally willing to give you guys exclusive preview content to make this point.

For simplicity’s sake, I went ahead and gave Mammon a base coloring just to give us an area to paint in. Look at that sad, gray skin. He’s so sad. Why would you do this?

I’ll start with what I think the biggest problem is. Here’s a selection of skin tones I use for white or asian-coded characters. Some of these are color-picks from Belphie and Beel, as they’re in my palette currently, along with the tones I use for Matteo. We can see that those colors tend to be clustered towards the white corner and the top of the color scale.

I theorize that when people want to make a skin tone darker, what they’re doing is either using black and gray as their shaders, or simply dragging the color selection down towards the bottom, the black side of the color picker. But that side is also where colors are their least saturated.

Skin tone is determined by melanin concentration. Melanin isn’t a different color for different people - it’s simply more concentrated in some tones than in others. So when we’re choosing a darker skin tone, what we have to do is move down into more concentrated and saturated colors.

Here I’ve selected a few shades of “pale” skin and concentrated them to show a variety of shades and colors that can appear in normal skin tone. You may want to compare shades with the ethnicity you’re portraying before you select your midtone for that character.

The purple tones I’ve selected at the bottom are uncommon, but can often appear in the skin tones of people with extremely dark coloration, which can sometimes suggest an almost violet hue. I think that’s awesome and I implore people to explore reference pictures and models of all backgrounds to literally broaden your spectrum.

As an aside, I personally don’t even like the tones that are often used in official art of Mammon because he does still appear de-saturated in some, so I knew from the start I was going to be selecting my own color.

First point to consider: Never choose your highlight or lightest color as the base for your midtone!

What we want to do is play around with the base color for our model, and then select our highlight and lowlight tones from there. Once you’ve selected your midtone, it’s okay to slide a little vertically to get your highs and lows, but make sure you don’t lose the concentration of your pigment or you’ll end up shading your model with an entirely different color.

Below I played around with gold and copper tones for Mammon to determine the best complement to the color of his hair, eyes, and piercings. As he’s a fallen angel and technically has no ethnicity, I had the freedom to do that, but I’ve been trying to lean more towards latinx/hispanic for his overall aesthetic. (I am relying HEAVILY on other tutorials and friends who know better than me to get THAT part right. Once again, this is only about color theory.)

As a side note, #2 is probably the closest to Mammon’s canon coloration among these.

I personally use linear/color burn and color/glow dodge with concentrated colors to achieve my high and low tones. I used mainly a marigold color for this round, but I usually only end up saving the midtone color and using my background to determine the color cast of my highs and lows, so the highlights and shadows might look totally different if Mammon were standing in, say, a dark blue room with a pale light source... but that would not change his base hue.

Here’s the color palette I ended up getting after toying around a bunch. Just from a color perspective, I think this makes his hair and the gold jewelry pop a bit more while also making sure that they don’t drown out his color.

I hope this tutorial was useful, and if my BIPOC followers and friends have issue with anything I’ve said above, please feel free to correct me and add to this post as you see fit! Once again, this is only from the perspective of someone using color theory to determine these factors, and I am not an ethnic or racial minority in any way, shape or form. My opinions and views on this matter are probably flawed and subject to guidance. I suggested doing this tutorial as a passing thing and someone said that I should, so I did.

Look out for the upcoming “Demon Boys with Piercings” post available publicly on my Patreon for patrons AND non-patrons!

[ceruleanchillin]

Honeymoon Headcanons: Mayans Edition

Characters: Angel, Coco, EZ x F!Reader

Miami (Angel)

It wasn’t difficult at all to decide where the two of you would take your honeymoon. When you weren’t gonna be naked, Angel wanted you in sundresses and bikinis. You wanted him in linen shirts, and to feel him up in a club. Couple that with you both wanting a tropical environment, and Miami it is.

Angel letting you handle the accommodations, because you seem to know more about what you wanna see/where you wanna go than he does. He only cares about a bed and shower for when he’s not taking you in the inappropriate places. He just hands over the cash, though he complains about his hurt wallet.

Angel hard as a rock when he sees your new name on your plane ticket.

The two of you nearly missing your flight because your husband needs to “show his wife he loves her”.

You babying him on the flight, because Angel has never flown anywhere before.

“Mami, it’s perfectly valid to feel like a flying toaster can’t safely get you anywhere but a casket. Which they can’t even put you in, because you’ll be everywhere!”

Cue you distracting him with kisses and dirty words in his ear, which gets you initiated into the Mile High Club

Barely making it into the cute little condo before the two of you are at it again, collapsing in the late hours to jet lag and mutual satisfaction.

Your first official day is spent dragging Angel around the humid streets. Knowing he stresses easily if you plan things too tightly, and wanting to wing it yourself. It’s surprising how well you to fit in, it almost feels like home.

Angel switching from being jealous, because your tiny cotton sundress is attracting more than just his attention, to him kissing all over your dewy skin because so much of it is visible.

You getting as jealous as Angel, because it seems like each place you drag him to has openly interested ladies. It’s the white linen shirt that he won’t fully button no matter how many times you try to make him.

Angel basking in the attention, and even playing it up to force you to be the one to initiate inappropriate public sex.

Smirking when you break after a woman pays for his (and unintentionally yours) order at a small cafe you stepped into and you snap and drag him to a hidden place.

“I only love you querida, mi alma.” he whispers in your ear when he bottoms out inside you.

You two are a beautiful couple. Photogenic as all hell. Alone, neither of you have a problem attracting interest, but together, you make people want to be seen around you. That’s why you have no problem club hopping to all the exclusive places.

Angel taking photos and videos of you dancing because he’s so enthralled. He can’t wait to show your kids one day when they ask why he fell for you, and he explains how full of life you are.

Getting enough liquor in Angel to get him dance somewhere away from the club, especially since he (lies) and says he can’t.

You and Angel competing to see who can get the most people to buy your drinks + the two of you losing track because you both get drunk.

A quickie in the coatroom is the prize, Angel fucking you to the hypnotic beat.

Spending a few hours apart the following day, only to still keep texting and FaceTiming each other until you met up, touch starved, at a small restaurant.

Deciding to spend the rest of the day at your Airbnb laid up under each other after Angel scores weed. Teasing Angel about his monetary complaints when you spend all night enjoying the small backyard pool.

Angel thanking God for getting an adventure loving woman as his soulmate when you wake him up the next afternoon to inform him you rented jet skis for the day.

You being impressed when, while jet skiing, Angel silver tongues your way into an invitation to a nearby yacht party out of the host.

FaceTiming Gilly to make him jealous that you two are doing Hookah and drinking Casamigos in a hot tub.

Angel ramping up the mockery when EZ and Coco appear on screen, attracted by Gilly’s whining. Everyone looking overworked and salty, while you and Angel are living your best non-sober lives.

Slipping away from the party to one of the rooms on the boat, because once again, you and Angel never know when to stop teasing each other before it ends up in sex.

Feeling bold enough to suggest that since Angel’s been documenting so much of the trip, that maybe he should film this too.

The aftermath being a surprisingly sweet series of kisses and confessions where the two of you express how thankful you are to have found each other. How you can’t wait to build a forever together.

Marfa + Roswell (Coco)

No one knew how you got Coco to agree to travel for your honeymoon until you finally revealed where you were going. Splitting a week between Marfa and Roswell.

You and Coco are that “weird” conspiracy, incense, and weed couple, so it makes sense.

Giving Coco an edible before you leave, because like Angel, he doesn’t fuck with air travel like that.

“They got me with that bullshit in the military, but that was out of my control. You askin’ a lot right now, you’re lucky you’re cute mujer.”

Coco getting progressively handsy during the flight as the edible hits. Eventually, you stop fake-fighting his neck kisses and forward touches.

Also like Angel in that he’s unafraid to become a member of the Mile High Club.

The ride from the El Paso airport, to the car rental place, to Marfa takes far longer than Coco would like.

He’s used to long stretches of trip on his bike, and when you notice him becoming antsy, you distract him with interesting facts about Marfa.

The entire time, Coco can’t help but think that you’re the perfect road trip co-pilot, only to realize he actually meant his life in general now.

Coco proud as hell when you fall in love with his accommodations choice like he did. The colorful airstream trailers of the El Cosmico hotel are the two of you through and through.

You both trying to be responsible adults and refresh after travel, but continuing to get lost in each other during the whole process.

Shower sex -> Making out while drying off -> Touching while searching through your bags for something to wear -> bed sex -> repeat

Looking thoroughly mauled when you finally manage to get Coco off of you and into the car in search of food the next afternoon.

Coco being happy you can’t cover up due to the heat, while you wonder what superpower he and his boys have that let them wear flannel and long sleeves in the heat.

Dragging Coco to a cute cafe you saw on instagram, and him knowing, by the hipster design of it, that his wallet is about to cry.

Stealing food from his plate, and laughing at him sucking his teeth and whining when he catches you.

“You’re stuck with me forever now Johnny sooo….get used to this.”

“Small price to pay for that I guess.”

Finding small shops to go to and being Siamese twins in every one. Coco showing he has good taste in a lot of things one might think he wouldn’t. Him opening up his wallet at everything you 'ooh' and 'aww' at. He can’t help it, he likes you happy, and your kisses and adoring looks are addicting.

For almost everything you get, Letty gets something too. Neither of you wants that tantrum when you get back.

You fighting yourself to avoid the art supply store, and Coco not having it.

“I have so many supplies already, it’s an addiction at this point.”

“So? Get some more. It’s our week, we shouldn’t stress about shit.”

Coco bragging on your talents and successes to the art shop cashier when you checkout.

“Cocoooo.” you murmur hiding your face in his shoulder, arms around his waist.

“Don’t be shy ma, you’re fucking amazing. I love your skills.”

Cue the cashier swooning at the two of you.

Finding unique liquor stores and getting tipsy on samples. It becomes twice as fun when locals, and other tourists alike, start discussing the Marfa lights with you, and you and Coco impress everyone with your ideas.

Being invited to a bonfire smoke session with the other El Cosmico guests when you get back.

Sketching Coco by the firelight, because he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in that moment, and now he’s officially yours.

The sex being on another level of intimate that night, because all day you and Coco have been engaging in your respective love languages, and it culminates in mutual need for each other.

The drive to Roswell being more tolerable for Coco, but he still misses his bike. Your excitement about AlienFest is so palpable however, he quickly forgets.

Your hotel being more conventional, but the people you meet making up for it. Finally, you and Coco aren’t the weirdest ones in the room.

Taking the time before the festival starts to check in with friends and family and accumulate odd souvenirs for them. You believe Coco is intentionally getting them stuff they’ll hate.

“Taza won’t wear that baby, he has better taste in jewelry than UFO earrings.”

“Ok, but can he bitch about us not getting him anything? Plus, you can guilt anyone into anything.”

Doing cute edible pastries at the festival.

“You know Aliens are demons right? Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard were doing summoning rituals in the Mojave in 1946, and Roswell was the following year.”

“Word?…Shit. Tell me that again when we’re not rolling. I wanna read about it………you’re so smart mami.”

Coco realizing between every snack stop, every dance he shares with you, every trinket you pick up, and every little conspiracy tidbit you share, that you’re his wife now. That the peace he’s been feeling all week, that he thought he’d never have, is going to be his new normal.

New Orleans (EZ)

You and EZ both enjoy engaging with history and culture, and felt that your honeymoon should be built off of your shared interests. During your meticulous wedding planning, it was decided New Orleans would be the honeymoon destination. It didn’t hurt that you missed your southern roots too, even if you weren’t from New Orleans.

Traveling with EZ is a dream considering you’re both pretty organized, together people. He’s not afraid of flying, but you’re always a little nervous.

EZ being Best Husband™️ and soothing even the most minor of your stresses by turning your attention to the excitement of your trip and your new relationship status.

Teasing EZ in-flight won’t get you Mile High Club initiated, because he finds it much more entertaining to punish you by letting you work the both of you up, and making you stay that way for the duration of the flight. He’s got enough will power to suffer through it, because your soft whines make it worth it.

The airbnb is everything it was promised to be, and you’d appreciate that later, but all you can think of is your husband when you step through the door. That’s the other half of why EZ likes to leave you waiting. Your aggression and exclusive desire for him gets, and keeps, him hard.

It rains the following day, which is just as well, because neither of you are quite ready to stop physically expressing your love for each other. The day consists of ordering food, falling out of your clothes and onto each other, separating to read, falling back on each other, and quick naps.

Angel sending mocking texts in your Reyes group about how you’re trying to turn his brother bamma like you, only to stop when you threaten him with no souvenirs.

EZ and you taking responsibility for your own tour because let’s face it, you both know exactly what you want to see, and can plan a more satisfying tour for the both of you. You take turns deciding where to go next.

When it’s his turn, EZ picks an art museum, and can’t quit smiling about it. You think it’s because he picked a place he really wanted to go to.

“Babe, I have a surprise for you.”

“What?” your excitement always makes EZ’s heart race with his own.

He hands you the guide brochure he picked up at the door, folded to the section he wants you to look at.

“Faith Ringgold exhibit?!”

He hums and nods, grunting when you knock into him with a hug.

“Thank you for thinking of me. I love you.” you look up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears and he just kisses you, afraid he’ll cry if he says anything.

The two of you avoid the tourist trap spots for lunch and find a cute family owned cafe. You order for the both of you based on what you know about southern cuisine and both of your tastes.

You love watching EZ fall in love with the food as he keeps asking “Can you make this?” about everything he eats.

The two of you walking through the Garden District in the evening. Hands swinging between you with no plans but to admire the beautiful homes and foliage.

EZ noting how awestruck you are, and you describing what you love about the historic, towering homes.

He catches that when you describe what your dream home in the area would be, he and your future children are mentioned frequently, and it makes butterflies dance in his stomach. He can picture your family in the yards around him.

The two of you almost make it back to your Airbnb, but give into your baser urges after all the domestic conversation. EZ pulls you into an alley for a quickie, the two of you fighting to silence the other’s vocal expression.

You teasing EZ after that he’s more like his brother than he thinks. Him teasing back the two of you would’ve been caught and arrested if he was like Angel.

The following day is relaxed and less planned. The both of you getting thoughtful gifts for each member of your family, blood and otherwise. EZ scores major points for the gifts he suggests for your mom and dad, and you kind of want to jump him again.

EZ is glad you’re impressed, but it’s nothing to him. It all comes naturally because he loves you so much, and refuses to be anything other than the husband he knows you deserve.

AN:

I didn’t want to add this, cuz I wanted to end on a sweet note, but you just know Angel would accidentally send that vid to one of his boys.

Personally, I lose it for shit like this. Anything domestic in writings is my jam, so I decided to make these headcanons.

- Fun fact: Jet Ski is kind of like Bandaid in that it’s become the generic term for “personal water vehicles”, but it’s actually a specific brand’s name for their PWVs. I learned this while writing this enjoy💀.

[poptod]

Will You? (Rami Malek x Reader)

Description: Meeting Rami in the back alley behind an awards show.

Notes: ugh ive been having writers block for the first time in like two years so ive only been writing short stuff. i have a couple fics backpiled for various rami characters so thats coming up! gender neutral as usual WC: 1.5k

+

Ugh.

How quickly it all became too much. You wondered, clutching your aching head, why you even came here; large parties were never your scene, public events even less so. A world-wide broadcasted movie awards event was nothing near anything you'd done before. Earlier in the day, as you were dressing and readying yourself for the evening, you stared into the mirror and wondered then, as well, what you were doing.

Maybe––probably––it had to do with the fact that one of your favorite actors' presence was assured, and you rarely ever visited New York, making this the first time you'd been in the right place at the right time to have the opportunity to do this. You steeled yourself then and you steeled yourself now, digging into your clutch bag to pull out a carton of cigarettes.

You fumbled with the cigarette as you reached back in, searching for your lighter. A frustrated grumble grew in your mouth and came out as a curse. With a harsh sigh you yanked your hand out, throwing it up into the air, and sitting with a thud on a wooden box laying by the side of a large trash bin. You rubbed your face harshly, attempting to wipe away the irritation. To no avail––you had no lighter, and your nerves were itching, teeming with aggravation that crawled like bugs beneath your skin. You needed this and the world didn't like you.

The door you'd left the building from opened once more, swinging shut with a loud clanking sound that seemed to echo in the vacant alleyway. Drops of water fell into the puddles at your feet, still present from the earlier rain, and now filled with bits of trash. The very same water almost splashed onto you as a car passed by, its' wheels revving and spinning away through a massive puddle. It must've been midnight, but assholes were still awake as well, and the city lights showed no sign of stopping.

This was why you only visited New York City.

"Here," someone with a deep, rough voice spoke, and you looked up to find a vein-filled hand balancing a blue lighter between the second and third fingers.

There weren't any active lights in the alleyway, but the puddles reflected the street lights that stood a few meters away. That was enough to recognize him when you glanced to his face.

Rami fucking Malek.

He turned almost the second you looked up at him, meaning he didn't catch the sudden, stumbling recognition that flooded your expression. Thankfully, you had the time to calm yourself before he sat down across from you on a dirty (and probably wet) stool.

"Thank you," you said, lighting your cigarette and breathing in the sweet smoke before you said anything else. "You're a lifesaver."

"No, I just have a smoking problem," he said.

You both laughed, softly, and looked away.

You took another drag.

"You're Rami Malek, aren't you?" You said through the smoke that escaped you. It was rough on your throat, but you didn't especially care anymore. Somehow, you remembered a flask of water––just not the lighter.

"Yeah," he said with another soft, bashful, chuckle.

"I like your work. Or, your style," you mumbled as you tapped the ashy end away. He might've been a star of your dreams, and mere images of him might've taken your breath away, but you would treat him like a regular person. "It's.. unique, but familiar."

"Thank you," he said, nodding, a charming grin on his face. "May I ask your name?"

"(Y/N)." You shifted in your seat as you looked down. An ounce of humor came to you once you said, "you won't recognize the name."

"No, but I'm happy to recognize it in the future," he said, tilting his head in your direction.

You broke out in a laugh and a wide, blushing grin, shaking your head. God, he looked good in a suit––all black. Silver in his lapel. His neck revealed colored veins that led up to a jawline that would surely cut you. Why was he talking to you? Why was he being nice?

"You're a charmer," you finally said through your giggling, continuing with, "do you want some?" before he could say anything.

You handed the cigarette to him and he took it, pursing his lips and letting go with a puff of smoke. Even in the hot, humid air, those clouds coalesced and drifted away just as usual.

"You're not an actor," he stated, his eyes fixed on the cigarette as he tapped the ashes away. "Not here for that, so why are you here? Just out of curiosity."

"That's... a very good question," you said with an exasperated laugh. "I'm a teacher, I don't know what I'm doing here."

"Teacher?" He repeated. "My brother's one of those. What d'you teach?"

He handed the cigarette back to you.

"Third graders," you grumbled. He sucked in a sharp breath in a wince. "I usually do first graders, but not this year."

"That's rough, I've heard those are demonic years," he said, earning a laugh from you.

"Yeah, that's a good way of putting it," you said as you doted on the cigarette. "I guess this is just the first time I've visited New York when an awards show is happening."

"How do you like the big screen life so far?"

"Not very much, but I never thought I would," you said quietly, but he still chuckled. "I... I did think about being an actor, when I was a kid. I think a lot of kids do these days, though. Actors are.. like the new Gods. You know, in ancient times people would worship idols, and that's what people call you now..." you met his gaze and couldn't tear yourself from it, "... idols. Images of something to strive for."

He nodded, his brow creased in deep thought.

"After a while the world shows you what celebrity life is really like, and you read all sorts of things, see how people change... eventually you don't really want it anymore," you said, shrugging. "Or you decide you want it, or want part of it despite the other stuff."

He nodded again but had little to say despite being a celebrity himself.

"Which was it for you?"

"Hm?"

A spell broke over his eyes and he appeared to return to normal, having not heard or comprehended your words.

"Did you become an actor because you wanted all of it, with the bad parts, or you wanted a specific part and still became an actor despite all the other things?"

"... complex question," he said after a moment, rocking his balance back and forth awkwardly as you laughed. "I wanted to become other people, transform myself into characters. I was attracted to the job. Not the other things attached to it."

"Well I'm glad you became an actor anyway," you said, relighting the cigarette with a quick drag. "That way I could meet you."

"And I could meet you, as well," he said in that same, deep voice he used when he first spoke to you.

You could do nothing but chuckle and cast your eyes down, shaking your head.

"Yeah, I guess you could," you mumbled.

He reached forward, snagging the cigarette from between your fingers. That made you look up, drawing your attention back to the subtle lines marking his face, and the glow of fire that revealed cool, green eyes behind thick lashes.

A loud wave of cheering came from inside the building, and the both of you looked back at the steel door. Still unopened.

"I should probably get inside, the cameras might notice my seat's empty," he said in a similar mumble.

The cigarette, now nothing more than a filter, dropped from his lips and fell to the ground, squashed beneath his shiny, black shoe.

"Ready?" He asked.

"Have to be," you said as you stood. "Not wasting a fifty dollar ticket on my damn social anxiety."

He chuckled and said, "I'd invite you to sit with me, but there aren't any free spots. How about..." He'd been opening the door, but he paused, causing you to misstep and halt yourself only when your chest was an inch from his. Your eyes darted up to his. "Come see me after the show. I have a '97 bottle of Montalcino at home that I think you'd enjoy."

You nearly choked on your own spit, but fortunately for you, it only came out as a cough and a clearing of the throat. 'What', almost escaped your mouth in the most astounded tone before you bit it back.

Was he propositioning you? Was this a friendly invitation? Why was, again, Rami fucking Malek asking to spend anymore time with you than he had to?

You realized a silence had spanned between you when his eyes flickered down to your lips, at which point shock fully brought you back into your body.

"Will you?" He asked hopefully.

"Yeah," you murmured. "I'd like that."

[d3monslust]

𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 - 𝐀.𝐃.

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Only setting up traps for them , Andy didn't see any of this coming

𝐖𝐂 : 3,151

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: pregnancy, mentions of miscarriage & abusive relationships , cheating , manipulation , violence

𝐀/𝐍 : tumblr deleted the original and I thought for couple of minutes I haven’t backed it up to the point I had a panic attack :) also I worked really hard for this , any kind of interaction is appreciated!!

////////////////June 7th 2020\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Every story has a happy ending , where the villain gets defeated and the heroes win , but in eden , no one could recognize the corruption and the decent. Everyone hid their darkest and filthiest desires deep down inside them , in their abyss of their souls . Andy knew that , from first hand . He was still getting to know the place , the idle juveniles laying in the sandy beaches , the laughs of the middle aged men echoing through the thickness of the trees’ leaves . A literal paradise ... with no God .

Dolan had promised his wife to keep her safe, and eventually after his decadence , he was more fazed than anything . Their inseparable form could be made out from kilometers ago, their vivid and full of life auras leaving hints of sunshine from time to time . Winning the couple of the year and being stunned was not in their plans but the did not dodge it . Until Dolan started venturing at inexcusable bars , reciprocal pink lipstick decorating one side of his neck while he reclined next to his bond , mumbling about his ambiguous accomplishments. He had her to the point , Mariah felt overwhelmed. The weight of his nifty assets , the gravitas of his clumsy , yet anticipated acts made her scream and wince .

But Mariah David Dolan , did not intend on giving up so easily , only because her husband was demonstrating his incompetent self . Haphazardly, or not , the female found herself at Sherlock’s , who fasty evaluated and corrupted all of her nasty problems . Taken the right measurements, Mariah decided to treat themselves to a dinner , the brunette averting his gaze back from his laptop to his wife. “Did something happen ?” Mariah never cooked , even at special , “crowded” occasions , she wouldn’t lay a finger at the metallic kitchenware . “No . I just though about all the work you’re recently hooked with. A nice dinner with your wife would help you blow off some steam” smirking at the fit of the last words, she left Dolan alone, drowning in his intellectually safe thoughts.

The capriciousness of the vexing atmosphere made the couple exchange some absurd looks. With Andy being the always tired one, sexual intercourse was lost long ago . “Something you would like to say ?” “No .” She went for a debate , any sort of the key for relationships , communication. If that clink unraveled , there would be no sweet salvation for the married couple . “Well , I want to say something.” Andy whispered a silent “go on” as one of their housekeepers wiped off him some of the pasta’s sauce . “I’m pregnant .” the brunette almost choked at the hear , she couldn’t be . “What ?” voice so small , the trait of vulnerability showing .

The fraction made his stomach toss and turn with anticipation, his dreams for the unknown slowly falling apart . “I’m pregnant on the 3rd month .” eyes infested with fury , the blue like sea color dissipated. “And when were you planning on telling me , hm ? When the waters would broke ? Or when the bump would start to show ? Or when you couldn’t fucking miscarriage?” his excessive, painful words ventured to withhold her insurmountable fury . Unceremoniously, his unbeatable character almost took back his sharp words , the marvel Mariah always waited for could intervene their scold and corrupt his grudge . Albeit she had cried and prayed for that baby to come , her husband didn’t yearn it .

“Did you talk to the gynecologist? Can you ?” he stated chastely , reclining his tensed back to the chair . Who could envision Andy Dolan with a child ? The reluctance became vexing , the tension had to be dwindled if she wanted to keep that inexcusable -for him- child . “Yes . We ... discussed and he said that I cannot ... get rid of it .” her unconvincingly words passed from the one ear to the other . He abruptly threw his crystal glass at the respective wall , agitating the woman to run to clean the mess . The hot , ambiguous tears wetting her cheeks . “Cant you just love me ?” she mumbled , her fasty movements elicited a cut from the sharp glass . She hissed at the pain , she wanted to resemble the perfect , sincere , housewife Andy pleased . To conquer the theme , so as to stand next to him with all her lucid pride while clutching his right hand .

And the things became even worse , chaos consuming the island , darkness drowning the residents . But the worst was Andy’s behavior shift . The unintelligible man faltered and his intriguing about his serene family faded , woefully leaving only his malice and possession . Fighting with his own demons , his rigid and virile facade came and ended up resented . The 24-hour absence of the paternal figure made the child cope with egregious insults and quarrels . Curling up in her little bed , her hands covering the ears as not to listen his beloved parents . Was her the reason they fought every night ? And as the family withered , Andy prepared to hit with sweet and sour vengeance .

“Please ...” the woman begged , the tears blocking her already blurry vision . Fatigue in her system degenerating, she tried to refrain this , but Dolan’s wrath could not be avoided . “Please what , hm ? You had a fucking debt ! Look after that damned child . And I swear to god Mariah ^ if something had happened to my daughter!” he scolded . “Oh come on ! Stop acting like you care ! You never did ... you never cared about your family .” His intimidating methods would usually work , and if not he would try for the vicious skin-to-skin contact . Slapping her and looking her terribly weak silhouette, squirming and crying under him . She remained frigid , not wanting to get that answer , Mariah ran to the basement , advancing around the marble halls like a lost puppy . Andy rubbed his stressed temple , waiting for his own kind of wonder to come and take him from this type of hell . The paradise where demons are hidden .

Andy never wanted to become one of them. That vicious, hungry, creatures . Demons . The olds said that if somebody approached the North river he would see a little red creature . A graceful , gorgeous demon . That was bullshit , demons didn't exist , his friend Michael had told him , that poor man - he had taken the subject of claiming to be the Antichrist of the end times too thick . He ended up at an asylum - good man , sick brain . “What are you thinking ?” . God , or whoever , heard him sent him his guardian angel . The nifty woman was everything he wished for . A real living angel . And that chaste, naive flirt shifted into this; whatever that was.

“Nothing to be honest . But let’s not talk about me , hmmm ?” the girl nodded heartily . Y/N had found her person , the one she could trust and never receive betrayal , the one she could cry at and talk about her insurmountable problems . Their meeting was casual - one , two drinks exchanged , some additional winks and the saccharine act of sex to help Y/N realize her feelings. When she was with him , the blithe and sybarite feeling would bloom inside her , becoming as beautiful as a sanguine rose . She chuckled at his works , could describe him as selfless ? No . But to her ... yes . Her despondent self hid his abusive and possessive persona . For her eyes and only , Andy Dolan was a god , innocent and perfect . “I wanted to ask about ... the divorce ? When are you two signing it ?” he had to be astute and answer handily . But they answer was always the same “Oh sweetheart, don’t worry . Mariah is a bit pertinacious but I’ll persuade her , okay ?” and she would fall at the trap , again .

“You’re always answering the same !” maybe today she would revolt and fortunately leave the poisonous love of Andy’s . His eyes shone dangerously, he didn’t want to do this . “Y/N’s not like Mariah” he would remind himself , but the poor girl was sticking her nose almost everywhere . “Aren’t you pleased , hm ? I took you from that fucking clinic , I helped you withdraw and this is your thank you ? I’m disappointed in you , Y/N .” his esoteric character on sight again . His cogent and invidious words caused the sentient girl spill the salty water . The male disdaining to help or comfort . “You deserve this anyway .” she stumbled back , her apprehension increasing whilst seeing him standing up from the bed . That absurdity had to stop , but he had saved her and it was her time now .

As Andy returned home , and the futile try to persuade his wife about the divorce exhausted him , he found himself at his daughter’s room . Observing her sincere and innocent moves . “Daddy ?” “Yes , Baby ?” his far-fetched sweet talk made the two smile in sync . The blonde’s smile making daddy crack . “Can I tell you something?” Andy nodded , hoping the child wouldn’t have read any of his recreational messages . “Mommy told me the reason she doesn’t want you two to break up !” his eyes lit up at her appendix . Perhaps it was the money or the child but anyway - Andy had to know . “What’s that ?” patting his lap for the girl to sit , Hera made herself comfortable at the warmth of his legs . “She said that she won’t let you fool around with every individual who has two holess.” “She said what ?!?!” “Yes , yes but what did she mean when she said “every individual with two holes .” ?” “Not now , Hera .” he quickly placed the kid down , as she sulked at her daddy’s extraordinary behavior.

By the time Andy stated the predicament , Mariah had ruminated on her terms . She should have said this , fuck she really shouldn’t . Her dull and attention-seeking words pushed her husband’s last buttons . “Are you fucking braindead ? What was that you said to my daughter ?!” she knew where that debate would end up . Condescendingly , she wrapped her arms around his neck . Her touch-starved grating amusing his carnal urges . Not wanting to dwell on the situation , Andy let it happen . Her amorous posture , the well-med hair , how didn’t he feel it coming ? Her hands traveling at his shirt’s buttons while Andy’s fingers went for her top . Discarded clothing were soon decorating the floor of their kitchen . His greed for more would eat him up one day . And he waited - patiently and calmly for that day . Her tenuous dominance caused waking up his boredom. But his prurient mind , thought otherwise.

She licked his upper lip , Andy letting her tongue slip into his mouth . The sloppy kiss turning into something more passionate, more loving . “I’ve missed this .” she mumbled in between breaths , making a smirk plaster on Dolan’s face . “I’ve missed you .” he hushed her by kissing her , the loving , lingering kiss making butterflies fly in her stomach . “Andy ?” he groaned at the call , not wanting to eye roll , he approved the question and motivated to go on . “Do you love me ?” “Yes. Only you . And no one else . I know things are hard right now but I’ll make it up to you.”

Bare bodies tangled . Two bodies in one . His hips snapped viciously at hers , hand grabbing a harmful fist of hair . Abruptly pulling it back , making Mariah hiss at the sudden contact of pain . The persona she would only see , not even Y/N , the sadistic one . Her head touching his sweaty torso , the tears in her eyes strengthening his stamina . The coil in her stomach tightened and as the loved noticed it - his hands traveled between her puffy lips , toying with her little bud . “I’m .... im-” her muffled cries interrupting her . “I know baby . Cum , cum with me .” and the coil in her belly broke synchronized with his . The addicting feeling of euphoria engulfing them both . “You did so well .” his sugary words causing her pride to rise , awaking her love for him . Just like the old times . “I love you , Mariah .” she perched at his tight embrace , inhaling his intoxicating scent . “Mhm me too .” she had to savor the moment . Mariah didn’t know what could possibly find her tomorrow .

////////////////

And as Andy distanced himself from Y/N, he kept his promise and made up the tangle. At least everything that could be fixed . The insuperable bond they created was ineffable. The somnolent love , almost dead , rose back from the dead . His pernicious and arcane self opened at his therapist . The Dolans couldn’t be happier . Apathy no longer lived between them . No invidious implication wafting around the tensed atmosphere. Just some more scarce , anticipated details and Dolan would finally fall into blithely.

Andy planted the usual good morning kiss on his wife . Excusing himself for his aimless absence on lunch and venturing to the car . The fraction of 2 to months without seeing Y/N, made him tacit. Where was the power Dolan’s hold ? He couldn’t falter, not now. He would withhold and keep things conservative. His conscience screamed no , but he shut it off , not wanting to trust his instincts . Choosing the obliviousness.

Approaching her modern like house , the cars of topical police confused his comprehension. Incompetent to walk inside , albeit he promised not to care - a part which was got circumvented - some of his worry remained to Y/N . “Officer , is she okay ?” the concern in his eyes made the blue - dressed man doubt his accusation . “Sir , are you Mr.Dolan ?” the man let his white scribbling block down , paying full attention to the brunette . “In the flesh .” two more patrols approaching, no feeling of timidity in their eyes . His envision had to be mendacious . A prosaic one , more realistic. “Andy Dolan you are arrested for the murder of Y/N Y/L/N” his conception blurred, everything changing into automatic. His eyes caught the figure of his wife talking to another police man - she wouldn’t? Would she ?

Everything happened so quickly, the metal handcuffs were clutched onto his hand, the ignominious state making him sentient. He would go to prison and there was no denial in that . At least he would leave Eden .

/////////////// Now \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

He had learnt the news . Mariah was in all this . She had been informed about Andy’s illegal affair , not only with women but with drugs , too . On the one side, she had managed to plan her husband’s perfect suicide but the contradiction she received made her tentative. Therefore she visited the professionals . Sherlock’s beneficial - for both Mariah and him- and handily trap got Dolan arrested . They had planned everything, even the littlest detail . The plan was easy , yet complicated.

He would wake up at 7:15 a.m. as always . Head to the kitchen to make his morning coffee , catch up with Mariah who would accidentally leave the house . His phone would remind him about his last meeting with Y/N , where she would end up thing with him . Or what Mariah had decided to do for her . Y/N had left the island months ago when Mrs.Dolan appeared in her house and threatened to kill her and her soon-to-be-born child. As Andy would drive his way , Sherlock would leave his fingerprint everywhere , placing them carefully at the edges of the gun . Next step would be Y/N’s doppelgänger, nice and murdered next to the white rug .

-

The unbearable route of the dull prison . The thousand of men behind the metal bars , hungry for every kind of fight and sexual intercourse nettled his every atom . Compelling himself not to communicate with anyone , Andy , who had received a life imprisonment lost and the last bit of faith . There was no salvation for him , it never existed . “You have a letter .” the word taking him out of his dwelling thoughts. His family never sent him letters , not that they were coming . Drugs were forbidden, or that was the law applied . “Sender ?” “Unknown .” Andy wasn’t in the mood for playing games . This almost one years in prison erased all of his lenient future. Additionally, alleviating his last mendacious fantasies about life .

Taking the rigid piece of paper , the handwriting of a woman caught his attention . Refraining himself from toring it apart and throwing it to the trash can , he want for abstinence. Cutting the edges with a small knife which used to hide right down his pillow , the form a photo fall on the floor . Inhaling a piece of pure reluctance , Andy took the shiny piece of paper between his hands . The silhouettes of two girls laughing at each other quirked his eye brow . But her ineffable and disheveled beauty stopped his breath . A baby adjoining her side , made him caught the implication . The transparent eligibility to join this family causing him to incandescent. That was his child and his Y/N .

Last thing , eyes traveling at the bottom of the photo

- SHOT WITH NIKON 456 | 6/4/2021 | 7:56 p.m.

And they were alive .

////////////////////////////////////////

Tag list ; @ferndolan @brooklinn13 @lavenderahs @mllxngdonswife @kitty4860

If anyone wants to be removed or added just say it lol

[retrievablememories]

afterdeath | lucas

title: afterdeath pairing: vampire!lucas x fairy!reader genre: angst, forbidden romance, fantasy, vampire!au request: May I request a Vampire!Lucas with a fairy!s/o (Forbidden romance perhaps?) word count: 8.6k warnings: descriptions of death and sickness, mentions of a funeral, viewing, and funerary preparations, major character death (but...with a slight twist), mentions of blood and drinking blood, smoking cigarettes, arguments/conflict, mentions of physical violence, some romeo and juliet elements? a/n: hmm this fic probably could’ve been more detailed but i was trying to avoid triggering my own damn self with so much talk of death...ha...not sure why i went this route but i wanted a forbidden romance with an actual decent ending for both characters and this was the first idea i had recommended songs: OLLA - jhené aiko

Year 1508

“We’ve felled the demon!”

“Indeed, we have!”

Cheers ring through the dawn as a large group of fairies dance around an immense bonfire, raising their shouts of celebration to the sky. Within the fire burns the body of the Primitiva Vampire, the One and Only Pureblood, haphazardly thrown over the wood pile and relieved of her head—which sits near the bottom of the burning mass of wood, her face still twisted in a mien of anger.

As the sky begins turning lighter with the onset of sunrise, the fairies continue their celebration, staying close to the fire all the while. They carry large flaming torches to guard against any of the Primitiva Vampire’s followers who might try to sneak upon them and strike in that sliver of space where the sun has yet to rise.

The Primitiva Vampire had a long reign of terrorizing fairies and turning humans and other supernatural creatures into vampires. Each transformed being became a terrible revenant, one which viciously hunted villages and stole into people’s homes for more blood, more death, and more unwilling adherents to the vampiric cult.

Mass numbers of fairies had been decimated once the vampires first tasted their blood and took a unique liking to it. For over 200 years, the carnage continued on at the hand of the Primitiva Vampire, who had one day blinked into existence in a way that could never really be explained by any conceivable means, either human or magic. And without ever giving a hint to her strange conception, she tore across cities and towns, converting others into night creatures like herself and building a loyal following of half-bedeviled beings.

When fairy populations had dwindled to nearly extinction-level quantities, they were left no other choice—fight back or be wiped completely from the universe’s ledger. So they took up arms, honed their magic skills, and did just that.

And now, all their efforts culminate in this blood-stained morning. It marks a much-anticipated moment of revelry before they have to return to their posts to watch for the night creatures inevitably waiting on the other side of the sunset, ready to avenge their slain Goddess.

Present Day

“You probably shouldn’t be here right now.”

“I wanted to come,” Lucas replies, taking your hand is his large one. “I wanted to see you.”

“I can figure that.” You laugh quietly, a little afraid to let your voice rise higher in case it carries too far. “But that doesn’t mean you should’ve come.”

Lucas holds your hand tightly. His skin is cold against yours due to his slow blood, and colder still from the chill permeating the air. It’s only one of many vampiric traits that the other fairies would think of as strange or barbaric, but you don’t see it that way. The chilliness just reminds you solely of him.

“Well, I missed you. And I’m here now, so you’ll just have to deal with me.”

The building you’re standing behind is damp, old, and dilapidated, and it’s not even one of your pre-designated meeting places. In front of you is a rusted chain link fence, which barricades a field of tall and unkempt grass. More aged and crumbling buildings scatter themselves across the distance, taken over by grass and climbing vines.

You don’t know what’s out here. This is one place within your district you haven’t been to before. It was Lucas’s idea to come here, after your last meeting place had nearly been discovered and he found it too risky to keep going there.

The entire city of Beijing is split up into different districts, each belonging to a different faction of supernatural beings. Some nonhuman races have close ties with each other and allow frequent cross-district mingling; others are sworn enemies, forbidden to fraternize with each other under pain of death. In these latter cases, crossing into another’s territory without express permission—or in rare situations, ties to a powerful ally (or allies) on the other side—is asking to get arrested, injured, or worse.

Lucas would be your tie to the vampire side and you his tie to the fairy side if your species weren’t centuries-long enemies. Instead, you’re relegated to having him sneak in and out of your district and hide what he is with blood-scent blockers and eye contacts to make the trickery easier to get away with. There’s only so much you can do to disguise your fae nature; stepping into vampire territory would turn you into a shining beacon.

“Hmm…” you sigh, shaking your head with a small smile on your face. You grasp Lucas’s hand so you’re now holding it with both of yours. “How long do you think we can keep this up? Going from place to place like this. Hiding like criminals.”

Lucas gives a lopsided grin—one that cannot morph into a full smile because of the sadness coloring it. “I don’t know. Forever, if we’re lucky.” He chuckles.

You stare at your intertwined hands, unaware of the sheer intensity of the longing expression on your face, though Lucas sees it clearly. It threatens to burn his heart to ash. “Unfortunately, fae don’t live forever like you do, so maybe not. Besides, your people would probably find out and come after me before we could even settle into a ‘forever.’”

He shakes his head fretfully at your words, squeezing your hand. “Do we have to talk about all that now? You know we don’t have much time together. Let’s just enjoy it for what it is.” Lucas pulls you into him, tucking your head into his shoulder.

“That’s fine by me,” you say, and resist the urge to make some dark joke about how scandalous it is for a fairy to have their neck so close to a vampire’s mouth—or a vampire’s anything.

You both stay together in that dingy and old spot for a while, talking in the dark until he tells you he has to go. He follows you the whole way back home to ensure you’re safe, keeping to the shadows until he sees you disappear past your front door. Then, he slips away again to head back to the familiar manor in his own district.

It’s nearly morning when Lucas gets back to the large house he shares with the other six men. By this time of day, he knows they will either be in bed or getting ready to turn in.

“Still visiting that fairy, I see.”

The unexpected voice doesn’t scare Lucas, but it does make his body tense up a bit in irritation and a slight sense of anticipation. He sighs and stops in his tracks on the way to his room, though he doesn’t face the clan leader just yet.

“Is that a problem? Because you know I’m not going to stop.”

Kun makes a noise of disbelief. “Of course it is. You know what the consequences are if anyone outside of us finds out.” Lucas turns to him slightly, and the look on Kun’s face is more disappointment—maybe even slight fear?—than anger. “I clearly can’t stop you from doing what you want to, but I can’t help you if the Association gets involved.”

Lucas rocks back on his heels and sighs, rolling his eyes at the mention of the vampire organization. “Fuck the Association. They’re nothing but a bunch of old ass hags who have no purpose in their lives other than ruling over every other vampire in the world.”

Kun looks weary at his words. “You really don’t care, do you, Xuxi. They’d have your heart on a stake if they ever heard that.” He pauses and rolls his eyes. “They’re also not that much older than me, so I wonder who you’re calling an ‘old ass hag’...”

“Isn’t it a good thing that they won’t hear it, then?” Lucas laughs, but it’s not an entirely humorous sound, and he gives Kun a searching look as his chuckles die off.

“Don’t look at me like that. I have no interest in telling them anything, mostly because I also have no interest in our whole clan being wiped out.”

Lucas nods, reaffirming his somewhat shaky but still present trust in Kun, needing the regular reassurances for his own calm. He stretches his arms above his head and takes a few steps like he’ll go to his room, though he doesn’t move to leave just yet. “Just don’t see what the big deal about all this is. All this over some ancient bloodsucker who died like 500 years ago...who cares.”

Kun winces again, though he doesn’t bother with reprimanding Lucas this time; he only shakes his head and sighs heavily like it’s already a lost cause. “A vampire and a fairy together is more than blasphemy—it’s ridiculous. It’s illogical. They all think we’re bloodsucking demons hellbent on killing them.”

“To be fair, there’s definitely a sect of vampire zealots or two who are trying to do exactly that despite the laws.”

Kun sighs. Lucas is right; what can he say to argue that? “Xuxi…”

“I’m telling you I’ll be fine, Kun-ge. You don’t need to worry about me and Y/N. Things have been going fine for this long.” Lucas nods, then heads off to his room for real this time. Kun watches him leave, feeling a lot less reassured than the younger man.

Ten takes Xiaojun and Lucas on one of their weekly outings to a blood lounge. Blood lounges are an easy and accessible way for vampires to get blood, though the legalities of this practice are a little muddy. Before getting with you, Lucas didn’t mind drinking straight from the source—going to one of the back rooms and sucking some willing, vulnerable being just to the point of death—but now, it feels like a type of transgression. Drinking someone else’s blood can be an intensely intimate act, on the same level as sex depending on the context, and he doesn’t want to do anything to make you think he’d be unfaithful.

To his fortune, there is no club rule about having to feed off other beings; many vampires take their blood in fancy champagne glasses, just like drinks in a human club. He does that now as the three men sit in a darkly lit booth.

Their conversation is unexciting for a while, with Lucas keeping careful not to mention you or any of his recent visits to your district to avoid any prying ears in the lounge. However, things soon get interesting. “We all know how Renjun got taken off the Association’s Registry a year ago, right?” Ten asks suddenly.

“Yes, of course.” Xiaojun answers like he’s already bored of this turn in the conversation. “That’s what happens whenever a vampire dies.”

Ten nods, but his eyes are wide like he has a secret he’s itching to tell. “But I don’t think he actually died.”

Lucas’s ears perk up at that.

“Why?” Xiaojun asks.

“He was seeing that human before he supposedly died, you know—”

“The one who lost it and drove the stake in his heart? We all know how it happened—”

“Can you let me finish? Anyway, I’ve heard some...suggestions that he faked his death—that maybe he got a magic user to set the whole crime scene up and make it look like it was real. Illusory magic, or something like that.”

Xiaojun sits forward. “A magic user. As in a fairy? Or a witch? Who?”

“I don’t know, just someone who uses magic. People are starting to think he and the human faked it all and ran away to Tianjin. I heard someone even claimed they saw somebody who resembled him when they went to Tianjin recently, though I don’t know how true that is…”

Xiaojun’s interest is thoroughly engaged now. “Think the Association will go looking for him, if it's true?”

“I don’t know if they’d care enough to hunt down an unregistered vampire who’s laying low and not creating chaos with other citizens. We all know Tianjin is way more relaxed about inter-species relationships, too. But the Association doesn’t like looking stupid. And that kind of trick definitely makes them look stupid.”

Lucas sits back, taking all of this information in. He is uncharacteristically quiet, but he doesn’t know what to make of that situation or why Ten is telling them about it. He thinks he can guess why, though, by the way Ten’s gaze lingers on him, and that scares him a little. The way this rumor piques a forbidden interest in him scares him. Lucas lifts the glass of blood to his lips and drinks from it, trying to distract himself from the current conversation.

“All this for a damn human. Only an idiot would try something like that,” Xiaojun says, shaking his head.

“Maybe a smart one. It did get him off the Registry.”

“How can you be a smart idiot?!” Ten and Xiaojun start arguing over the semantics of the term, and Lucas watches them in amusement, though his mind remains in two different places for the rest of their time in the blood lounge.

—

Later that night when they are back at the manor, Lucas pulls Ten aside, just like the older man expected him to.

“What’s wrong?” Ten asks, though his expression shows he already knows exactly what’s the matter.

“You...the stuff you said about Renjun earlier. I…” Lucas doesn’t know how to start or break his idea to him softly, so he decides to just say it. “Is it really possible?”

“I think it’s possible. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to get off the Registry…though many other attempts were way less successful.” Then Ten hesitates before saying, “You could try it.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am.” Ten’s expression softens a little. “I know you and Y/N love each other a lot, but there’s no way the Association will ever let you stay together if they find out. Y/N’s life could actually be in danger. Both of you are, every moment you spend together while living in these districts. If you really want to stay with Y/N, then…”

“...But I wouldn’t be able to see any of you again.” You and Lucas have become so entwined with one another that he can hardly imagine a life without you, but he also finds it difficult to picture his existence without his brothers. They’ve become like blood family to him over the last couple centuries.

“Yeah.” Ten sighs deeply, and although his reply is short, Lucas knows that one word is carrying the weight of all of his stress and sorrow about the idea. “Maybe we could find a way to visit you sometimes. Get the fairies or witches to do some of their magicky shit.” Ten laughs quietly. “But...it’s still just an idea. You don’t have to do it.”

Lucas shakes his head slowly. He wants to put the idea to bed and try to continue on with his life, managing his clandestine visits to your district when he can. But now that he knows of an alternative way, no matter how unreasonable or unbelievable it is, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to forget about it. “Kun-ge is going to kill you once he finds out this was your suggestion. You know that, right?”

Ten shrugs, and the sadness lifts momentarily in the curve of his lips. “He can try.”

The next time you and Lucas meet up, it’s in yet another different place under an ancient and mostly abandoned bridge. As a precaution, you stand together underneath the darkness of the bridge and stay out of sight, though there are few chances of anyone being around to see you in the first place.

He has to muster up the courage to tell you of his idea, unsure of how you’ll react or what you’ll think of it. It’s a lot to ask of you. Your kinships and friendships are not as extensive as his, only having a brother and two cousins left in the world, but he doesn’t know if he could ever ask you to leave them behind like this. Or if he could shake off the guilt that would remain from it.

“There might be a way for us to change things…” Lucas starts, skipping the build-up because he knows it would take him forever to think of something appropriate to say. “But I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

“Change things?” You glance at him curiously. You wish you could see the deep red of his irises, but they are hidden behind his brown contacts. “As in, with us?”

“Yes. So that maybe we wouldn’t have to sneak around anymore. Or at least...not sneak around as much as we do now.”

“What is it?” you ask. Despite yourself, your wings flutter against your back as wonder and excitement rise in your chest. You and Lucas have waxed poetic many times before about how you wish things could be different; and neither of you have ever been able to come up with a workable plan. But now, his claim that maybe something is possible has you dangerously curious.

“Taking myself off the Registry. I could basically just...disappear. The Association can’t harm what technically no longer exists.”

You stare at him in confusion. “But you can’t do that, right? Only under special circumstances…”

Lucas sees the question in your eyes and nods. “Right. Like if I die…” You flinch, shaking your head immediately. “...or pretend I’ve died.” This makes you pause, not expecting to hear something like that come from him.

“Pretend...you’ve died. Faking your own death?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but...there’s another vampire who we think has done it before. And...it worked. Supposedly.”

You shake your head again, but you turn the idea over in your mind. “How would you even do that? Someone would have to know you’re not really dead. That can’t be as easy as it sounds...”

Lucas swallows hard. “I know, it doesn’t, but maybe if we plan it right...I think we could pull this off. Some of the others...already know about it.” Only Ten, really, but that’ll inevitably change soon.

Your heart is hammering in your chest just thinking about this plan—the small, undefined plan that it is—and you’re unsure how to approach it. “If we leave under those circumstances, we can’t come back here to Beijing. Which means we won’t see anyone else again, our families and friends...”

“You understand that.” Lucas’s voice comes out strained.

You sigh, wringing your hands. “I do.”

Lucas hangs his head, closing his eyes tightly. “It’s too much to ask of you. We can just forget about this, really. I know sneaking around has been difficult, and I just—”

“I never said I wouldn’t agree to it,” you say softly, interrupting him before he can begin deriding himself about the idea.

Lucas’s head perks up again, and you both look at each other for a long moment. A cold night breeze flows through your clothes and rustles your wings, which remain tucked close against your back.

“Just think of it as leaving the nest, I guess,” you say, though there are tears welling in your eyes. “Growing up and making a life for ourselves. We can do that...right?”

Lucas bites his lip and closes his eyelids to stave off the tears trying to form in his own eyes. “Yeah. We can do that. Even if it’s a bit...unconventional.”

You nod hurriedly, wiping your eyes with the backs of your hands before any more tears can make their way out. “If you really want to do this, then we need to visit my brother.”

—

Your brother is predictably not thrilled about the idea. He likes Lucas well enough, but he’s never been very good at hiding his skepticism about your relationship. Though he would never say this to you directly, he never expected your relationship to make it past a few months; and yet it’s been a year and a half since you and Lucas started seeing each other. Maybe he’d be glad about your relationship’s stability if your partner was anyone other than a vampire. Alas, he instead spends all his time stressing over whether either of you will be found out at any moment’s notice.

“You’re playing with fire,” your brother says as he sits down at his desk within his apothecary office. He shakes his head the entire time, but he rifles through his collection of books on magic anyway. If there is anyone who knows a potion or spell that could work for this scheme and would actually be willing to keep it all secret, it’s your brother.

“I know that, Aldriel.” You cross your arms, sighing impatiently at your brother’s continuous reprimands since you’ve stepped through his door. “That’s why we came to you. You’re one of the best magic wielders and potionists around.”

“Oh, I’m well aware. No need to blow smoke up my ass,” Aldriel replies, never one to let a moment to brag slip away. He continues flipping through his book fast enough to make the words on the pages blur, his brow creased with focus. He is paying attention to the words and pictures on the pages, though you also know him well enough to realize this is him trying to distract himself from the many thoughts that must be crowding his brain.

“Don’t be so worried about it,” you say, trying to speak against the lump that’s suddenly forming in your throat. “You’ve always complained about wanting me out of your hair, anyway.”

Aldriel pauses in flipping through his spell book to look directly at you now, his brows creased even further and his face creating a visage of bitter desperation. “Not like this.”

Sighing, you turn away from him and let him go back to his textbook, knowing you’d probably start to cry if you look at him any longer. And who knows what will happen once that begins.

You go back to Lucas, who is sitting in the other room with his face turned to the window. It is nighttime and the blinds are closed, so you know he’s not looking at anything in particular. His mind must be similarly preoccupied.

“You okay?” you ask, touching his arm.

“Fine,” he answers, though he doesn’t turn to you. He just grasps your hand where it slides down to his own, gripping your fingers tightly. “As fine as I can be in this situation, I guess.”

You sit down in front of Lucas on the floor’s intricately decorated rug, resting your head against his knee. “It’ll be okay.” You aren’t sure of the words when they leave your lips, but you have to believe in them or else all will be lost.

—

You both spend a few hours at Aldriel’s place. At one point, you try to prod Lucas into going back to his clan to avoid raising suspicions for being gone too long—you can just get the potion to him some other day—but he insists it’ll be easier for him to stay and receive the potion now.

Finally, in the hour before dawn, your brother’s door opens and he steps through. “It’s ready.”

Both you and Lucas come alert at that, and you step back into Aldriel’s apothecary to see what he’s developed.

“This is an advanced death glamor potion,” your brother says, holding up a small glass bottle. “It contains a magic incantation that will leave you dead for a week and only a week. Seven days. Your body will remain in perfect stasis, so there’s no risk of the regular side effects that come with death.”

“A week?” you repeat, nervousness coursing through your body. Lucas looks equally apprehensive, and he squeezes your hand tighter.

Aldriel nods, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “That should be enough time to take care of the funeral arrangements and make everyone else think you’ve passed.” He says the last bit while gesturing to Lucas. “I’m not super clear on how vampire funerary customs work, though, so—”

Lucas nods. “No, it’ll work. That’s enough time.”

Your brother’s mouth creases into a thin line. “Good.” He passes the vial to Lucas, makes an expression like he might say something else, and then shakes his head, glancing to you instead. “You plan to go to Tianjin, right?”

“That’s right,” you say quietly.

“You’ll need to find a place to stay, then, until you can get one of your own. And I think we both know exactly where that will be.”

The potion works just as Aldriel said it would. It’s hard to know whether to be dismayed or relieved about this, though the former emotion quickly wins out with everyone.

Lucas takes it a week after meeting with your brother and procuring all the necessary fake documents, claiming it’s best not to wait any longer for it. You feel apprehensive about doing it so soon; or maybe you just want to stall for a little while longer. By now the other five men in his clan all know, each with varying reactions to it but ultimately unable to do anything to change his mind—not even Kun.

On the night Lucas uses the potion, Kun makes one last ditch attempt at reasoning.

“You don’t need to go to this extreme,” the older man insists. Though his voice is cold and sharp and deceptively calm, his entire face is a picture of perfect anger. Everyone had already had their turns talking to Lucas alone and telling him what they needed him to hear—and now it’s just Kun left.

“It’s my decision,” Lucas says, keeping his voice steadier than he feels. “I want to be with Y/N. There is no other way.”

“You’re endangering the entire clan with this. You’d throw us all away for one person?” Kun’s eyes are red-rimmed, but not just from the rage; Lucas knows he’s been crying. Lucas shuts his own eyes, his forehead creasing as he presses the pads of his fingers to his temples.

“Don’t say it like that.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Lucas shakes his head, knowing he is treading on very dangerous waters with what he’s about to say. As if the situation weren’t already contentious enough. “You closed yourself off to love a long time ago. After Jingyi died. You just wouldn’t know.”

The vivid red hue of anger bleeds into Kun’s irises at the mention of his late human lover, and he has to make a very concentrated effort not to reach for the younger’s neck. “How dare you speak of her.”

Lucas opens his eyes again and looks directly at his elder now. “You’ve let the Association run your life too much,” he says, though the words come out sounding a bit defeated. He’s not even sure why he invokes Kun’s lover now; maybe he is trying to make the split easier by provoking the other man into hating him. “You’ve let them beat it into you that love is not worth trying for. What did you gain from that, in the end? But more loneliness.”

Lucas gets the breath knocked from him when Kun slams him up against the wall, and the unpleasant sound of wood splintering strikes against his eardrums. A long vertical crack forms in the wood behind Lucas, but not wide enough to make the wall separate completely. Not using his full strength, then, Lucas thinks to himself.

Kun looks for all the world like he might kill Lucas then and there without the younger man ever needing to take a potion—just bite his heart right out. He crumples Lucas’s shirt in his hands, fisting the fabric tightly enough to create small rips in it. His irises are the color of newly spilled arterial blood, and alongside the red rimming of his eyes from his earlier crying, it makes for an agonizing sight—one that sears itself into the back of Lucas’s mind. It’s made even worse by the new tears spilling down the older man’s face.

He chokes out through the tears, “You cannot do this. I raised you. You would have me destroyed twice?”

Lucas wishes he could shut every one of his senses off right now, but he can only manage to shut his eyes, once again, against the pain in the other man’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Kun-ge.”

—

After that, Lucas goes back to his own room and sits on the bed for a long time, replaying the events in his head and growing colder with the realization of what he’s about to do. He stares at the small vial on his dresser until he can’t stare at it anymore, and then he downs it all at once. He looks at the vial with renewed interest as it actually disappears once the fluid is gone, the glass evaporating away in the palm of his hand like water droplets under the sun. No evidence.

Lying on his side, he stares at the wall across from his bed and waits for the spell to begin working. He doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually his vision begins to blur, almost so imperceptibly that it’s difficult to realize until he notices everything in his field of view is doubled, objects bleeding out of their lines like pictures drawn by a drunken artist—there’s a strange ringing in his ears too, a sound on the edge of his hearing but still present, and he doesn’t know what any of it means, or if this is how other beings feel when they are on the brink of death—it’s frightening, and he feels a momentary pang of sympathy for other nonhumans and humans alike who have no choice but to experience this terrible ordeal at the closing of their lives—

It’s harder to keep his eyes open now, so he closes them and lets all sounds and sensations fade out of his hearing—he only holds one last memory of you in his mind, of the soft and filmy texture of your wings underneath his fingertips, of you laughing whole-heartedly at something silly he’d said, and he joins his hands together in the universal symbol of prayer even as they grow weaker, hoping and praying even to his cursed vampire ancestor that this won’t be the very last memory of you—

—

“Yes, he has...most certainly departed from this world.” 

An Association council member known as Belial announces this to the room of men after doing a thorough check of Lucas’s body. His voice is distant and saddened. The texture of it is almost tangible, dragging everyone down with it like a physical thing—akin to a rock being dropped into a thin sheet. “Such a fledgling, too. Truly tragic and strange circumstances.” Belial stands beside the bed, shaking his head and looking down at the still form of the younger man as if he might discover an answer if he stares for long enough. “Was there no indication…?”

“He was probably exposed to bad blood,” Ten replies, his voice tense and quiet. Though Kun is clan leader, he doesn’t say anything at all, leaving all the dirty work of explaining the lie to Ten.

Belial’s gaze turns to Ten. He shifts his head slightly to turn his ear towards him, as if he didn’t understand what the other man said. “Bad...blood? As in death by blood weakness?”

The room feels like it’s been sucked of air once these words are spoken, and the younger men shift uncomfortably. Sicheng never lifts his gaze to look at Belial, though Yangyang’s eyes keep darting between Belial and Lucas on the bed like he’s waiting for something to happen. Hendery is just as anxious beside Yangyang, both of them passing uneasy energy between each other. Xiaojun’s face is still fixed into the same permanent frown it had been in since Lucas first told them of the plan. His eyes remain downcast and fixed on Lucas, silently asking Why did you have to be the idiot this time?

“Yes, blood weakness. He hadn’t drank as much blood as usual in the last few days...maybe he seemed a little restless...but we didn’t think it was unusual. He...didn’t seem sick.”

“Where would he have gotten bad blood from? We vampires always take such care…” Belial’s tone turns condescending, as if he could expect no better from a young vampire—someone not even wise enough to tell bad blood from uninfected blood. How could one let themselves be taken out of this world by such a fundamental, basic mistake? Kun curls his fingers into a fist at his side, though he quickly remembers himself and tries to let them relax.

“The blood lounge,” Hendery blurts out. Every eye turns to him now, and Ten’s mouth thins into an agitated line. This isn’t what they agreed on. “M-maybe it was spoiled blood from the blood lounge. It had to be. He’s more careful than that…”

Belial’s eyes are whirling with so many emotions that it’s hard to pin any singular one down. “Serving bad blood, with or without knowledge of it, is an incredible offense within any vampire district. In that case, the establishment must be shut down—after an exhaustive investigation, of course.” This statement causes more discomfort among the gathered men, almost too much of it to be properly concealed.

“I think that won’t be necessary,” Kun interjects quietly. Belial looks at him with an expression that reeks of offense, and Kun returns the stare, glaring straight into the elder vampire’s eyes. “He died of blood weakness, most likely from drinking from some disease-ridden human. Even though he used the blood lounge and blood bags, he was in the habit of getting outside blood on occasion. It was a moment of poor judgment that cost him his life...and nothing more than that.”

A tense silence stretches over the room, and Belial’s eyes still don’t leave Kun’s. The other men remain statue-still, waiting to see what will happen—if it will work—until Belial says, “Yes. Of course. I’ll file his passing with the Keepers of the Registry, as protocol states.”

The other men stay quiet and motionless until Belial departs from their house.

“You used your compulsion on a council member,” says Yangyang, and even his voice is trembling when he speaks.

“I didn’t think that was possible,” Xiaojun notes, though his tone is more irritated than awed. “They’re all so much more advanced.”

That action obviously didn’t come for free, though, because Kun is holding his head like it hurts, turning away from the rest of them. “Such recklessness is not my style. Primitiva help us all. We’re all dead if we’re found out.”

“Why did you say that,” Sicheng deadpans, his words directed to Hendery. Even though Sicheng hasn’t said or done anything since stepping into the room, he looks thoroughly exhausted. “You almost gave us away.”

Hendery holds himself up on the bed as if he’ll collapse, his body bent with all the weight of their lies. He makes a motion like he might sit on the bed before remembering it’s where Lucas’s body is resting, and he straightens himself with some effort. “I...but he was thinking badly of Lucas. Like it was his fault.”

“It was,” Kun says faintly.

“You can’t let your emotions get the best of you right now. Just let me handle the talking.” Ten’s expression is stressed, and for a moment he starts to wonder if he should’ve ever said anything to Lucas at all.

Xiaojun shakes his head. “For now, there is a lot more we need to do than just talking.”

Vampire funerary procedures are much different from what many other supernatural races are used to—even blasphemous to some. Everything is handled at the home of the deceased instead of a funeral home or mortuary, in keeping with the tradition of honoring one’s vampire ancestors—and ultimately, the Primitiva Vampire. After the Primitiva’s gruesome death hundreds of years ago, all that had been left was her ashes once the fire burned out, but her followers still gave the remains a proper processing and burial.

The men dress Lucas in one of his nicest suits and perform all the necessary actions that would be involved at a funerary home, including preparing the casket. All of them help throughout this process as tradition dictates, though it is more difficult than any of them expected it to be. (No one even makes a dark joke about you’ll have to do this for me when I’m gone, which speaks to their inner turmoil.)

The viewing is equally challenging to get through, if not more.

Many of their vampire friends and acquaintances attend, including various members of the Association. Everyone seems to buy the blood weakness lie perfectly, which means Kun’s compulsion worked as it should have. That knowledge does very little to relax any of them in the grand scheme of things, though.

Though they know Lucas is not really gone, the sight of him lying there in that dark coffin with other vampires looking sadly down at his still face and dabbing their tears away is deeply frightening.

The night of the viewing goes by at a glacial pace, and every other night after that up until the funeral passes even more slowly, like time itself has dropped its speed to prolong the torment.

When the last few straggling visitors for the viewing are gone, the men go their separate ways to try to deal with the not-so-small trauma of the day’s events. Kun goes up to one of the manor’s several wide balconies, one that they’ve all used as a familiar hangout spot or simply a place to unwind over the years. The sun will not rise for another forty-five minutes or so, giving him enough time to sit and think before it becomes unsafe. He is not very surprised when he finds Ten already there, though he decides not to leave.

“You stopped smoking three decades ago,” Kun comments, waving his hand in a pitiful attempt to clear out the smell of smoke filling the air. There’s no hint of teasing or personality in his voice, only hollowness and exhaustion. He sits beside the other man in one of the chairs sat outside. “Where did you even get cigarettes from?”

“Don’t worry about me. This is just for the nerves.”

“Why would I worry, it’s not like you can—” Kun pauses before saying the word they both know, realizing it hits far too close to home right now. Silence falls between them until Kun asks, “Do you actually believe this will be worth it?”

“It will. We’ve worked too hard for it not to be.” Ten takes a drag from his cigarette. “We’re giving them a second chance. Isn’t that something to feel good about?”

“A second chance. How interesting.”

“Everyone deserves one.” Ten glances at Kun from the corners of his eyes and doesn’t say anything more, but Kun already knows what he’s vaguely implying.

“And yet everyone doesn’t get one.”

“All the more reason to take the opportunity when it becomes possible.”

Kun doesn’t reply to that. Ten places a hand on his shoulder, but the older man meets this with little regard as he rises from his seat and walks away at a sluggish pace.

You stand in the train station ready to buy a ticket, clutching documents falsifying your identity and feeling more terrified than you possibly ever have. Today marks the seventh day, and you don’t even know if Lucas is alive right now. It was too risky to have any of the other clan members contact you—not until you and Lucas meet up in the designated place. You know Aldriel is an excellent potion master, and if he says the spell will work as intended then it will, but there’s always that seed of doubt.

Your parting with Aldriel had been typical of your relationship with him—you crumbling before him and him pretending like he was fine, lending enough strength for the both of you to survive on, though you knew he was also bleeding from the heart.

“You better not forget about me,” you’d told him, smushing your face into the sleeve of his shirt to hide your tears, though there was no stopping the flow. It was staining his shirt sleeve right through.

He’d scoffed at you, though it was a watery sound. “I couldn’t if I wanted to.” He’d held your head closer against his shoulder, the both of you glued together in whichever way seemed fit when you’d walked through his door one last time to say goodbye. “We’ll see each other again. Don’t worry.”

You’d lifted your head from his shoulder then, looking at him with an aggrieved expression. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Aldriel put his hand on top of your head, petting you like a small puppy. It was a thing you’d disliked since you were both children, but which only made your heart hurt even more now. “Have more faith in me than that, dear sister. You’ll see.”

When it’s your turn to get a ticket, you step up to the counter and hand over your information, trying to keep the shaking in your hands to a minimum. The teller behind the counter is also a fairy, their wings tucked against the back of their uniform but peeking out at the sides. You childishly try to take some solace in that, hoping there will be some solidarity between you two. Maybe they’ll be less critical of your legitimacy than any other being might be.

The process is scarily easier than you’d thought it would be, though you are sweating the entire time. A fake name and birth date, and no one suspected anything. All of this would have to be your new identity now if you were to live with Lucas in Tianjin without being discovered.

Getting on the train when it comes is only part of the long journey ahead. It doesn’t provide you with much relief, but you are at least thankful to have one segment of that journey complete.

—

It takes another cab to get to your destination once you’re off the train, but you soon arrive at the house of one of Aldriel’s friends and his similar-name twin—Raziel. Raziel was Aldriel’s most trusted and oldest friend, their woven history extending back to childhood. The three of you had grown up together, and you’d even been quite familiar with Raziel until they left for Tianjin some years ago. Now, you’re back in front of each other again under circumstances that you never could’ve guessed.

“You’re here. Good.” Raziel welcomes you into their house with open arms, tugging you into a jittery hug that you anxiously return.

“Have...you heard anything?” you ask, though you know it’s futile. Raziel wouldn’t have gotten any more information than you have, not until Lucas was standing right on their doorstep. They shake their head and give you a sympathetic look, patting your hands.

“He’ll be alright. Everything will go well. I believe it.” Raziel guides you further into their house, presumably towards the room you’ll be staying in while you’re there. “It’s all so romantic, though—even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. I hope you know you’re doing a good thing, in the end.”

You force your facial muscles into a smile, though it is a ghostly and fleeting one. “Thank you.”

Either way, you will have to wait until nighttime to know if Raziel’s words come true or not; the sun is still high in the sky. It’s only midday. You’ve never before hated the sunlight, but right now you curse the sun’s rays that elongate the time between you and your lover.

—

“You all, give him some damn space,” Ten says, trying to pull the younger vampires away so they won’t crowd around the coffin. “He doesn’t need the scare of his life looking at all your faces when he wakes up.” Despite trying his best to be the voice of reason, Ten also has to refuse the urge to station himself beside the coffin and watch for the slightest movement of eyelids, the tiniest twitch of the lips. His hands shake from the frayed nerves of a week of nothing but death and gloom, and even though he doesn’t need to sleep, he thinks he will be out for at least two days after all of this is over.

There is no set time, no designated signal for when—or the dreaded if—Lucas will awaken. The waiting game feels longer than it really is, especially with the hours until the funeral commences steadily counting down. However, it is not very long before there’s a big sucking breath coming from the coffin, the sudden sound of lungs being filled after a week of complete stillness. Everyone rushes back to the bier when this happens, peering wildly inside the coffin.

Lucas’s eyelids flutter for an eternity before shooting open. He immediately seems distressed upon waking, sitting up out of the coffin so quick that it stutters on its stand, and the others have to steady it before it tips over.

“Xuxi...are you okay?” Sicheng asks, voice hushed with nervousness. Despite his unending anger and distress about the situation, Kun has also crowded in to witness Lucas’s awakening, and he visibly sags with relief to see the younger man is at last awake.

The look in Lucas’s eyes is wild. They are momentarily afraid that maybe something has gone wrong with the potion—maybe it has affected his mind somehow and he doesn’t remember any of them— but then he says,

“Y/N. Is Y/N okay?”

“We don’t know,” Sicheng replies. “I mean, hopefully. But it was safer to not have so much cross-communication going on—you’ll have to go to the meeting spot to find out…”

Though the reasons for this make sense, this does not provide consolation. Lucas fumbles his way out of the coffin with the men’s help. It’s clear he’s still disoriented, which makes them even more nervous, if that’s possible at this point.

“You should drink some blood before you leave,” Hendery suggests, and everyone else agrees. Lucas won’t argue that, so he downs one of the blood bags they have stored until he feels a little more like himself.

“You have to go soon, the funeral is set to start in another hour—we’ll have to leave—” Yangyang warns him, though the words fade at the end of his sentence. He doesn’t know how to continue his thought or how to even begin saying goodbye.

Lucas fills that gap by steeling himself and saying his farewells to each of them in turn, though his eyes are troubled and his chin crumples like he might cry at any moment.

“Don’t say I never helped you out with anything,” Ten says, a few tears slipping down his cheeks. Being separated is painful, but it’ll ultimately serve its purpose of giving Lucas a chance at having a love that none of them could. After seeing Kun suffer the way he did after losing Jingyi, Ten wants to spare another one of his mates from dealing with the same fate.

When Lucas gets to Kun, there is a slight awkward silence and a swift exchange of glances—Lucas’s soft gaze butting up against Kun’s more solid one, which is simultaneously pleading to him and rebuking him for his actions. Still, Kun embraces him tightly enough that their bodies could join together.

“Xuxi…” Kun starts, “I don’t…” And then his words break, leaving an unspoken thought between them.

“One day, you’ll forgive me for this,” Lucas whispers to the older man. Kun gives him an endlessly hurt look in return, silently asking him how he could even conceive those words. When they separate from each other, it’s with much reluctance. Lucas looks at them all and nods once, his mouth tight with grief.

“Right. Time to go, then.”

—

You awake in the middle of the night to cool fingers on the side of your face, which startles you completely out of your sleep. Opening your eyes to an unfamiliar room scares you even more, and it takes you a moment to remember why your surroundings have changed. The knowledge comes back to you quickly when a large palm slips against your own, long fingers twining with yours.

“Xuxi,” you whisper quietly, the sound of his name hanging in the air like a prayer. One of the last few times you’ll be able to freely call him that, except in private.

You can’t see his figure well with all the lights turned out, but he had no problem navigating through the dark to reach your bedside. Wanting desperately to see his face, you fumble around for the bedside lamp switch before turning it on.

“Y/N…” Lucas’s face is suddenly illuminated to you in all its golden glory, a myriad of emotions flickering over his features.

“I didn’t even hear you come in,” you say breathlessly. You’re somewhat sad and wish you could’ve met him at the door, embraced him after his long trip, but it doesn’t much matter anymore because he’s here now.

“Poor Y/N. My baby must’ve been so tired.” Lucas bumps his forehead against yours, his whole body drooping with relief as he practically sinks into you, and you giggle a little as you complain about having to hold his weight up. There is a tingle behind your eyes that threatens to turn into a sudden burst of tears, but you try to hold them at bay for a while longer.

“Are we safe?” he whispers, needing your confirmation. “Raziel said so. But...are we really safe?”

“That’s frightening to even think about,” you reply quietly. “We can’t stay here too long, but for now…I think we will be.” Lucas nods without a word, still holding your hand. His blood-scent is completely absent, as it usually is when he’s around you, and you know he’s used the blockers. Soon, with the ability to go out together and not be arrested or threatened for it, that will not be necessary to disguise his vampirism anymore. “It...won’t be easy.”

“No, but the things we want out of life usually aren’t.”

You squeeze his hand. “Raziel will help take care of things for us. It won’t all be trials and tribulations. I hope.” More hesitantly, you ask him, “What was it like? Being dead?” You know that vampires, being once human, still have souls and an afterlife to go to like most other living beings.

The look on his face is worrying. He doesn’t meet your eyes; he only shakes his head and stares at your joined hands. “It was cold without you.” His lips pull into a weak and chapped smile, if only to quiet your worrying, but that doesn’t work as intended. You decide to leave it for now, figuring there will be more time to talk about it when he feels ready.

Turning the light back off, you both press your bodies together as close as they can physically get, Lucas’s head on your chest and his long legs all jumbled together with yours. You fall asleep before he does, lulled away by his comforting and safe presence. He stays awake for a while longer, staring into the dark and the dark staring back into him, before everything else falls away.

[fandom-collective-writers]

Vampire in a Bottle (Le Comte de Saint-Germain x MC)

Fandom: Ikemen Vampire

Pairing: Le Comte de Saint-Germain x MC

Prompt: cursed object

Warning: Smut!!

Intended Audience: Female Audience

Word Count: 7,251

Requested by: anonymous

Written by: @lordsister​/@lordsisterxotome (Click here to support me on ko-fi!<3)

Disclaimer: I do not own Ikemen Vampire or any of its characters. All of that goodness is the property of Cybird. I do, however, own the plot of this fanfic. Please do not repost this on any other website.

Other notes: I legit expected this to be 5 maybe 6 pages long. Was not expecting it to end up being 15 whole ass pages long.

       She’d heard stories about creatures tied to objects, bound to them my wizards or witches or priests. Everyone had. The djinni of the lamp, silkies and their skin, even myths of demons lending their bloodlust to legendary swords. 

       The vampire stuck in the wine bottle though, now that was a first.

       It had come as a surprise when MC had first stumbled upon the mansion on one of her hikes outside the city. She must’ve hiked the same path a hundred times and never had she caught so much as a glimpse of the sprawling estate, even if it was only a shell of its obvious former glory now. Had she taken a wrong path somewhere? Drifted away in her thoughts too much and unintentionally wandered away into the bushes? Looking back the way she’d come, she realized that no, she hadn’t veered in any way from her usual path, which made the sudden appearance of the mansion especially strange. 

       It was quite the complex, all graceful arches and columns, reds and whites. A massive fountain topped with a headless statue centered an overgrown path, and even from her vantage point still a ways away from the building, she could tell that what was once a manicured garden lay behind the mansion. It was like something out of a fairy tail; she wondered about it’s story, who lived here and what events had taken place within its walls. Now, the place was positively decrepit, still somewhat majestic, but old and creepy nonetheless.

       So, doing what any normal person would do, MC thought, ‘Very old and creepy,’ and turned back the way she’d come. There was no way in hell she was going to wander in like some airheaded protagonist out of a horror movie and get pestered or possessed or who knows what else. Nope. She was going to choose life today.

       It seemed her fears about the place being somewhat supernatural were true though, because a few minutes later, when she was sure she was about to step back onto a more familiar leg of the path, she emerged right on the same cliff overlooking the estate as before. The mansion sat there expectantly and she almost imagined it was saying, “Oh, you’re back.”

       Blinking, she stared for a moment before scoffing and shaking her head, soft mutters of “no, no, no, no, no,” falling from her lips as she turned away and rubbed her eyes. Her heart was beating a little faster now, sweat forming on the back of her neck. This was too strange. She’d hiked this path a hundred times and there had never, ever been a mansion here before. Furthermore, there was no way she was going around in circles. She knew the area and its trails well enough to have been able to find her way even if she did get lost.

       Pulling out her phone, MC tried and failed to find her location on the google maps, cursing as the words ‘No Signal’ replaced the usual friendly bars in the left-hand corner. Shoving the device back into her pocket, she sighed and stomped back down the path. This time she paid attention to familiar landmarks, carefully retracing her steps. For a second, she thought for sure she was in the clear, that she would come out on the path and walk away to forget this ever happened as some strange hallucination.

       Apparently that was not to be the case today though as, lo and behold, when she ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, there she was again, the mansion laid out and waiting before her. She could practically feel it rolling its eyes at her this time. 

       Collapsing on the leaves and pine needles, she laughed breathlessly. No way was this happening. Why today of all days? Why couldn’t the universe just let her keep having her normal days without throwing in a mansion that appeared and disappeared like a ghost ship too? She felt like she was going crazy. 

       After a few minutes of deep breathing and burying her face in her knees, trying to rub the image of the mansion away, she rose to her feet. This place wanted her to...do something? Fine. She had a feeling it would just keep making her walk in circles until she came inside. Best case scenario it really was just an old mansion and she would find another way back to the trail after having searched the property. Worst case scenario? She was dragged to the underworld by whatever vengeful ghosts might inhabit the place. No problem, right?

       Her legs felt weak as she picked her way down the cliffside, slowly getting closer and closer to the hulking abode. The grass on the vast lawn was so overgrown she had a hard time making her way across it, nearly tripping a couple of times when it got caught around her calves and ankles. As she got closer, she started to realize just how massive the place really was. So similar to most of the castles and palaces and royal mansions she’d visited on trips, whoever had built this place and lived here had gone for extravagance, a show of wealth, but something about it was quiet in a way that made it seem like it was meant to be tucked away back here. It would have been beautiful if the situation were different and she wasn’t so freaked out.

       On the bright side, at least the weather wasn’t cloudy like these kinds of places usually were in books and movies, and she didn’t have the feeling anyone was watching her. It was a sunny day, the sky blue and dotted here and there with the occasional cloud. It was a small comfort, but comfort nonetheless as she faced the beast.

       Taking a minute, MC just stood there in front of the mansion, staring up at broken windows and ivy covered columns and weeds poking up through the stones. “What do you want from me?” she grumbled to herself before shaking her head and taking a deep breath.

       Heavy iron rings hung on the wooden doors, their white paint peeled away to reveal the brown wood beneath. Her hand looked tiny in comparison to the ring as she grasped it, cold and dark against her skin, and pulled the door open. It grated against the floor as it opened, and she paused, tensed and waiting for something to jump out at her, for a swarm of bats or something. But nothing came and after a minute, she peered inside. Part of the roof had fallen in, allowing shafts of daylight to pierce the gloom and illuminate the grand receiving hall. Her shoes padded softly against the marble floor as she took a few steps inside, careful of the debris. A grand staircase of white stone led up to a second story and as she turned in a circle to fully take in the room MC saw more signs of wealth: giant paintings, moth-eaten tapestries, silver candlesticks nearly too tarnished to recognize. 

       A gentle breeze blew in from the open door behind her, stirring leaves across the floor and up the stairs. After another quick glance around, she crept up the staircase, brushing her fingers across the cold, stone banister as she did. Choosing to turn to her left once she was at the top of the stairs, she followed a long hallway in what she guessed was the west wing. More paintings and golden sconces decorated the walls, curtains made of dusty velvet framing smashed windows. The mansion had yet to make its next move, to give her any indication of what it wanted her to do, where it wanted her to go. It was hard to tell because everything was so old and nature had long since started reclaiming the place, but she thought she saw signs of a struggle, irregularly torn canvases and tables knocked over, their vintage contents spilled all over the floor.

       She startled, gasping, when a door at the end of the hall creaked open, a strong breeze whistling down the corridor and urging her along. MC could feel the mansion’s impatience pushing in at her from all sides, tugging at her hair and pushing at her back. Balling her fists, she gulped and creeped towards the indicated entryway, trying to mentally prepare herself for whatever she might find. 

       Her breath stuck in her throat as she took a careful look inside, surprised at the luxury and opulence that met her gaze. The chamber was so large and gilded it had to be the master bedroom. The walls and ceiling were framed in gold, the ceiling painted with some scene that belonged in a cathedral. The canopied bed had long since succumbed to moths and the forces of nature, but the size of it could have rivaled any king size bed, and the rugs, once richly colored, still retained some of their ancient plushness as she stepped into the room. Reaching out, she ran her fingers along the carved edge of a table, tracing the intricate whorls and flowers. The same signs of a struggle were here too, a sharp gash taken out of the leg of the table and old books and shattered glass lying on the floor.

       A strong gust of wind blew in from the broken window, disturbing the heavy velvet curtains and knocking an old wine bottle off the small table in front of the broken pane. She winced as the bottle hit the floor, expecting it to shatter, but instead it bounced, rolling until it stopped against her foot.

       MC blinked and bent down to pick it up, noting the strange weight inside it. There wasn’t a label and she tipped it back and forth in her palm, weighing its contents. The red glass was too dark to see whatever was inside, but it didn’t feel like liquid sloshing around, that was for sure. Idly tapping a nail against the cool surface as she went to put it back on the table, she nearly screamed when something tapped back. 

       Letting go of the bottle and skittering back, she tripped over a chair, sending her falling on her ass. The bottle didn’t bounce this time, shattering instead with a sound like thunder that shook the mansion. A whirlwind filled the room, sending debris flying as it exploded outwards. Crouching and covering her head with her arms, MC waited, eyes squeezed shut and heart pounding, for whatever was happening to stop. It could’ve been seconds or minutes; she barely knew which as the gale settled, ending as quickly as it had begun. Uncovering her head, she peeked, shaking, around the room. Anything that had been in contact certainly wasn’t now, nothing but shafts of wood and scraps of fabric remaining. But the furniture held the least of her attention right now, not with the sudden appearance of the room’s other occupant.

       He was on his knees, heaving and gasping. She couldn’t see his face from her place behind the chair, only locks of yellow hair. His clothes - a long coat of burnished gold, brown trousers, and soft leather boots - were all embroidered in gold thread, rich and quietly vibrant. 

       She didn’t understand who he was or where he had come from. It refused to click in her mind that he had actually been stuck in that wine bottle, tapping back to her. People didn’t come from inside bottles. That kind of thing only happened in myths and fairy tales - things that were only stories.

       Rising to her feet on legs still shaky, she kept her gaze on the man as she slid a foot back, thinking to make a quiet exit, unnoticed. Of course, with so much debris scattered about the room, something like a quiet escape was absolutely impossible. Before the edge of her shoe had moved even a few inches, it disturbed a shard of wood with enough force to send it scittering a few inches over the stone floor, breaking the silence only broken by his heavy breathing.

       Piercing yellow eyes snapped to her and she gasped at the intensity within their depths, frozen, a deer in headlights. He turned, stumbling to his feet, eyes still locked with hers, and dear god, she believed in fairy tales looking at him. His face was unnaturally beautiful, something someone had dreamed up rather than someone born. It spoke of marble sculptures carved in his image, of candlelight on silk sheets, and there was a depth to his eyes, something she couldn’t fathom, something that marked him as...inhuman.

       MC hadn’t realized that her jaw had dropped and she swallowed, opening her mouth to say something and choking on air. Before she could manage her way through anything even vaguely coherent, he surged forward, barely a centimeter in front of her in the blink of an eye. Yelping, she tried to jump back, but his arms were already around her, dragging her against his chest. She struggled fruitlessly in his grip as he buried his face in the crook of her neck, lips and nose nuzzling against the soft skin as he breathed deep of her scent.

       “W-What are you-? S-Stop!” she demanded weakly, the panic rising in her chest choking her pleas. 

       “Smells so good,” the stranger breathed, his voice hoarse from disuse, and pulled back just enough that he could peer into her wide eyes. He looked absolutely wild now, ravenous and uncontrollable. “I’m sorry, but I need your help, mademoiselle.”

       The hand around her shoulders grabbed a handful of her hair, gently moving it away from her neck. Her fingers clawed into his lapels as she stared at him, fearful and confused, prey in the arms of a predator. His face lowered to her neck once again and she shivered as his breath fanned against her skin. What was he doing?

       “Try to relax, ma cherie.”

       The unexpected pain of two fangs sinking into her made her scream, bucking in his unyielding hold as he took long drawls of her blood. 

       It was physical pain as well as mental pain, the pain of confusion and everything she’d thought she’d known about the realistic world cracking. Pain. And then pleasure. Pleasure unlike any she had ever experienced before, setting her entire body alight and turning her mind white.

       And that was how she met him, Le Comte de Saint-Germain, a starving vampire trapped inside a wine bottle for 100 years.

       She’d woken later with her head in his lap, the ghost of his touch on her cheek stirring her. The ceiling spun above her and MC groaned, turning into him and covering her eyes with an arm.

       “Shh, you’re okay, ma cherie. It’ll pass soon.”

       Her eyes flew open, met with an abundance of gold and yellow, and she shot upwards, falling on her side as the world spun again. Hands reached to steady her out of the corner of her vision, but she flinched away from them, remembering the strange pain and pleasure his bite had brought. 

       “Stop!” she bit out, and he did, hovering a few feet away from her. “Who are you and what did you do to me?!”

       He blinked at her, seeming to think for a second before answering with a gentle smile, “I am Le Comte de Saint-Germain, and...moments ago I was starving for your blood.”

       “Starving for my-” She shook her head, still confused and afraid. “What?”

       “I’m not human, as you might have guessed.” His tone was polite, but warm, friendly as he spoke to her. “I’m a creature out of your myths and folklore, a vampire.”

       And her day officially couldn’t get any weirder!

       There, sitting on the cold, stone floor and shredded rugs, Le Comte had told her his story, that he was an immortal vampire trapped inside a wine bottle by another of his kind who he’d once considered a friend. He had been the one to build the mansion and live in it, assimilating into human high society and traveling between countries for centuries until the event of his capture.

       When MC had asked him about how the mansion had appeared and disappeared, he’d answered that it was part of the curse placed on him, that none should have been able to find and release him. Even he didn’t know how she had managed to stumble upon it.

       She believed him, choosing to trust the earnestness in his gaze when he’d apologized for biting her in a fit of starvation, but it was still a lot to take in, and they just sat there like that, blinking at each other, for a good minute or so. He seemed just as curious of her as she was of him, a little disoriented too, but she guessed that was to be expected after being trapped in a wine bottle for a hundred years. Finally, she said, “So what happens now? What are you going to do now that you’re free?” What was she going to do? She couldn’t just walk away from this place like it had never happened, right?

       He hummed, chuckling as he gazed around at the ruin of his home. “Rebuild, I suppose; catch up on what I’ve missed in the past hundred years.”

       MC blinked, biting her lip as she contemplated the impact of what she was about to say. An hour ago, all she had wanted to do was get away from this place, to forget it and never see it again, but now her heart felt strangely heavy at the thought. If she left this place behind now, she would regret it, she could feel it in her bones. Could she be blamed for wanting to live out whatever fairy tale this was, just for a little longer?

       “I…” Those yellow eyes met hers again, and her fate was sealed. “I might be able to help you with that.”

        Thus began her relationship with an immortal vampire, visiting him every day with new technology and books on the modern age for him to catch up with. More than once, he returned to the city with her, eager and capable of exploring for himself. He adjusted surprisingly easily to the new time period and all the technological advances that came with it, but she guessed that was part of being immortal, having to adapt quickly to the change of time. 

       She didn’t know what magic he possessed, but every day the mansion looked a little better, damaged furnishings either replaced or repaired, broken windows whole again, even the hole in the ceiling of the entry was miraculously fixed when she came one day. The lawn and garden still needed a great deal of attention, but those could definitely wait, especially since Le Comte was still weak after his long entrapment.

       “Le Comte?” MC called as she pushed the door open. The mansion welcomed her like an old friend now, warmth and the faint smell of sandalwood wrapping around her as she stepped into the entryway. She’d come to look forward to these daily meetings, noticeably out of it to her friends and colleagues when work or bad weather kept her from making the trip.

       “Here, ma cherie,” she heard him call from somewhere up the staircase. He could’ve been anywhere in this massive place and she still would have heard his call - another magical feature of the mansion and its connection with its owner. 

       It was weird. It had been months since she had found the mansion and Le Comte, but already she could barely remember what her life was like before. Her happiest moments were spent here, with him, her days filled with the smell of chamomile that she’d come to know as Le Comte’s, and easing the tension in her shoulders from the stress of modern life. 

       But it was more than that too, so much more. 

       She wasn’t dense. She knew what it meant for her heart to flutter the way it did at the mere thought of him. Truly, she’d had no intent of pursuing anything more than friendship when she started helping him. What more could there be between a human and a vampire? It had all seemed like a fairy tale, the beautiful mansion and the equally beautiful man in the bottle, waiting for her to find them, but this story would not end in romance, she was sure of it...or at least she had been. 

       She’d tried to reason with herself at first, that it was just the allure of something new and strange and magical in her ordinary life, that it was just the natural attraction of a vampiric predator to his human prey, but when had reason ever convinced a love-struck heart? He wasn’t going to hurt her, she was sure of that, and there were plenty of nice men in her normal life that she could have chosen from if she wanted a change of pace. No, she was in love with Le Comte and there was nothing she could do about it, no forwards or backwards, no place for her love to go, so it bloomed quietly in her chest, growing with each affectionate smile he sent her way. 

       MC found him hanging a painting in the hallway, a landscape she remembered him asking her opinion on last week when they went into town together. It made her cheeks warm a little, remembering his approving nod when she’d told him she liked it. The long, pale yellow coat he’d adopted lay across the back of a nearby chair, and the sleeves of his white button-up were rolled up, exposing pale forearms. It shouldn’t have made her blush, but to her shame it did, the sight of her crush’s bared skin making her feel like some pervert, excited by the least bit of exposed skin.

       “What do you think?” Stepping away from the painting, he dusted his hands off and she did her best to keep her eyes away from the elegant flex of his fingers. 

       “Looks nice,” she answered simply, turning her gaze to the painting and anywhere other than him. She could feel him looking at her, and she wondered what he was thinking, what was going on inside his head. 

       He hummed, pleased. “I bought it with you in mind.”

       “W-Why?” She didn’t know what to say. Lately, it was like each word he said to her was intended to make her heart pound.

       “I thought there should be something of you here.”

       Her cheeks were as good as on fire now, and she resisted the urge to reach up and press her cool palms against the heated skin. “I-I see.” She kept her gaze glued to the painting, staring but not seeing the whorls and colors that made up the bodies of two lovers entwined and hidden within the painting, not daring to look at him. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

       He didn’t respond, and the atmosphere suddenly felt too heavy, too many implications in his gaze, in buying this particular painting. Clearing her throat, she turned on her heel even as she spoke, “I’m going to go finish the cleaning I started in the kitchen yesterday.” MC cursed the way her voice swooped and dove, unwilling to settle on a tone and octave. 

       He chuckled and the sound warmed her to her bones. “Okay.”

       Her legs felt shaky as she made her way back down the steps and to the kitchen, blowing out a long breath as soon as she deemed herself far enough away from him. Mechanically, she pulled out the cutlery she’d been polishing the day before, her mind drifting as she did. Her heart felt shaky in her chest, fluttering and pounding and ready to run back up the stairs and throw itself into the hands of the vampire it belonged to. But she would do her best not to let it. 

       Falling in love with him was one thing. Starting a relationship with him was another. She couldn’t fully fathom what it would mean to be a vampire’s mate, what impact it would have on her human life, but she knew the cost would be immense. Besides, there was no telling if he even returned her feelings. He cared for her as any friend would - she knew that at least - and the affection he displayed was undeniable, but she refused to see it as anything more than platonic. Le Comte had already lived so much longer than her, and probably loved more than her too. Making assumptions would only lead to pain on both their parts.

       MC jumped, a noise of pain and surprise passing her lips, when her fingers slipped on the steak knife she’d been polishing, the sharp edge slicing the skin of her thumb. In seconds, a line of blood rose to the surface, gathering to drip down her skin in small drops. Hissing in pain, she turned to the sink, about to clean the wound, but she jumped when her attention caught on the sudden figure in the doorway. She hadn’t heard Le Comte approach, hadn’t even felt his presence, and how still he stood as he hovered in the doorway was immediately unsettling.

       “I wasn’t paying attention,” she tried to fill the silence, “I cut myself on one of the knives.”

       Still nothing from him, his gaze locked on her bleeding thumb.

       “Le Comte?”

       He seemed to startle out of whatever trance he’d fallen into, a shudder passing through him as he glanced up at her face before looking away entirely. His usual poise and grace was replaced by something hard, something sad. “You should leave,” he murmured, eyes shaded by his golden hair as he turned away from her, his movements stiff. 

       She blinked. “What? Why? I-”

       “Leave.” His voice was harder now, resonating with something that gripped her soul with icy claws. “Now.”

       So she did, helpless to disobey. Holding her bleeding hand, she ducked past him and hurried down the hall, through the door and down the path before her mind started to catch up. It hurt to be pushed away so cruelly by the one she loved, but she knew why he had done it, the memory of his fangs plunging into her neck months ago still a fresh reminder. He’d promised never to hurt her again, but he was still a vampire, surviving on blood. One slip up and...why didn’t the idea of him biting her bring her fear anymore?

       Her steps were small and slow as MC walked to the mansion the next day, tripping and stumbling more than once over roots and rocks she had always avoided easily before. She hadn’t slept well the night before, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, those golden eyes were there, inviting her closer. She had considered not even coming today, but she’d eventually decided otherwise after spending all day unable to focus and watching the sun near the horizon from her bedroom window. Something restless in her heart wouldn’t let her avoid him.

       “Comte?” she called, too softly, when she opened the door. The newly polished wood and iron gave way easily under her touch. No answer, but she knew he could sense her, just as the mansion could. 

       The mansion at night made her want to curl up in front of a fire, preferably in the arms of her loved one. The candles in their newly restored candleholders cast warm, golden light on the richly colored walls and paintings, and she tried to ignore the burst of heat in her chest as she passed the painting Le Comte had gotten for her. The lovers within the frame became especially apparent in the romantic light, hands and lips on naked flesh. 

       She continued to Le Comte’s bedroom, taking a deep breath as she lifted a fist to knock. Still no answer, and her brow furrowed, but just as she was about to grasp the knob she heard something shatter from inside the room. 

       “Comte?” A pained moan and her heart jumped into her throat. “I’m sorry, but I’m coming in!”

       The glass shards lying across the floor were the least of her worries as she barged in, her attention falling on the man bent on the rug. A sense of deja vu settled over her, but before she’d taken even a few steps towards him one of his hands shot up, stopping her in place.

       “Why’d you come?” he grunted, his voice choked and dry. He didn’t give her any time to answer, continuing, “You shouldn’t be here.”

       “I came because I was worried,” she admitted softly, soothingly. “Comte, are you starving again?”

       “No!” The harsh edge to his tone made her jump, but she held her ground, digging her nails into her palm as she took another couple of steps towards him. He turned on her from his place on the floor, baring long, sharp fangs in a snarl. “Don’t come any closer!” 

       Maybe she should have, but MC felt no fear as she knelt in front of him, warm palm meeting his cool cheek. He stared at her, eyes shining with astonishment and hunger, sadness and longing. “Why didn’t you tell me you were starving?” she questioned, giving him a heartbroken smile. “Why didn’t you ask me for help? Do you not trust me enough for this?”

       Heartbeats passed as he stared at her, and for a second she wondered if he had heard her through his ravenous haze, if he was already too far gone in his bloodlust. Finally, his lips parted and he whispered, “It’s not that.” He closed his eyes, drooping into her touch. “It’s not that.”

       Without a word, she reached up, undoing a couple of buttons on her blouse. His eyes still closed, Le Comte let her guide him to the crook of her neck, but as soon as the warmth of her skin pressed against his cheek, he jolted, tearing out of her hold and dragging himself back along the rug, away from her.

       “You know nothing!” he hissed through clenched teeth. “You have no idea what I want to do to you!”

       “Then tell me!” she pleaded, hands fisting in her skirt. “Let me help you!”

       “I want to bite you!” he cried, anguished that she didn’t understand even as his eyes glinted with a feral light. “I want to sink my fangs into you and fuck you until all of you is mine! Until you’re filled with me!”

       MC stared, frozen at his omission. Maybe she hadn’t known the extent of his hunger for her, what it fully entailed, but she would happily let him have everything he wanted of her depending on his answer to her next question.

       “Is it just because you’re starving?” she asked quietly. “Could anyone satisfy you right now?”

       His gaze locked with hers, weighing the question. He knew exactly what she was asking. “No,” he admitted, his voice hushed, and the tension in the room reached a climax. “Only you. I starve for your blood, your body, and yours alone.”

       “Then I don’t care,” she laughed breathlessly. Her heart felt like it was ready to beat out of her chest, and she couldn’t restrain her relieved smile as she met his wide-eyed expression. “Bite me...fuck me...and I’ll still love you.”

       A heartbeat later, she was lifted off the floor, weightless, and tossed onto the bed. She bounced on the mattress, sinking into the luscious pillows and blankets, before a solid weight settled over her. Grabbing her hands, Le Comte pinned them above her head, hot tongue leaving a wet trail against her neck. His hips settled between her legs, pinning her to the mattress as he teased the sensitive spot on the side of her throat with the tips of his fangs. 

       “Oh…” She writhed under him, skirt slipping up her thighs as she wrapped a leg around his waist. Her body still remembered how it felt to be bitten by him, the overwhelming pleasure, the heat. “Please…!”

       “Abel,” he whispered in her ear, making her still for a moment. “I want you calling me by my real name as I claim you.” His fangs slipped so suddenly into her neck, she barely registered the pain before pleasure claimed her unprepared body, nerve endings set alight with sudden arousal. Her vision blurred and she might’ve screamed, but she didn’t know, too focused on the way his body was pressing into her suddenly oversensitive one as her blood flowed into his mouth. It was more powerful this time, whether made so by the sudden confession between them or his increased need for her, she didn’t know and didn’t care. All she could think of was the mournful emptiness in her core and the rush of release that ruined her panties as he continued to drink from her.

       When MC came to, she was naked, bare to him in the firelight. Her heart was pounding and her inner thighs were wet, slick with her cum. Le Comte...Abel...wasn’t on top of her anymore, his hands on her calves holding her legs apart as he knelt by her feet. She gasped silently, eyes widening, when she realized he was equally bare, every inch of him more gorgeous than she could have ever imagined as the firelight danced across his skin.

       “So beautiful,” he purred, kissing up the inside of her leg from her ankle to her thigh. “You were sent here just for me, weren’t you? Sent to free me, all for me to love.” She couldn’t answer, squeezing her eyes shut and digging her fingers into the sheets as he neared the apex of her thighs. “Mmm, you smell positively delectable, mon amour.”

       She yelped, fingers flying to his hair as his fangs burrowed into the soft skin of her thigh. It was more painful in a spot so vulnerable, but the pleasure after the pain was more intense too, making her writhe in his grip as another wave of release soaked her thighs. She mewled and panted as he took greedy gulps from her, laving his tongue lovingly across the bloodied skin when he’d had his fill. Her body shuddered with the aftershocks of a second orgasm, and she whimpered, too sensitive to his touch. Such rapture shouldn’t have been humanly possible, wasn’t humanly possible.

       “You’re the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted,” Abel moaned, eyes half-lidded as he peered up at her from between her legs. His hands ran up and down her legs, bending them at the knees as he crawled closer, hot breath fanning against her wet pussy. He took her in so greedily, so hungrily, she had to resist the urge to close her legs around him, to hide away from the intensity of his gaze. Never had anyone looked at her like that before, starving for her. 

       MC gasped his name breathlessly when his tongue licked a stripe along her slit, and he groaned at the taste of her arousal. “Absolutely soaked,” he purred, licking his lips. “I don’t believe I even need to prepare you for me.” 

       She trembled as he licked her again, yelping and bucking her hips into his face when his mouth wrapped around her clit. His grip on her hips held her still as his tongue delved inside of her, chin shining with her wetness as he slurped and moaned. Though she had never admitted it, this was what she had wanted for so long, her love reciprocated to the utmost. And as much as she wanted him to continue, she was already oversensitive from the intensity of her previous two climaxes. She wouldn’t be able to take much more without it becoming painful soon and she wanted him inside of her, filling and stretching and claiming her.

       “A-Abel,” she managed to say, her vision blurred with pleasured tears. “T-Too much. Too sensitive.”

       That’s what she said, but she still nearly cried when his tongue left her, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes shut to keep herself from shoving his head back between her legs. His warmth fell over her as he moved on top of her, soft lips kissing the corners of her eyes and trailing over her cheeks. She mewled when his hardened cock brushed her throbbing core, unintentionally teasing her. Even just brushing against her, she could tell he was huge, bigger than any human male could ever be.

       “Are you okay?” he murmured softly, and she nodded.

       Opening her eyes, MC cupped his cheek, leaning up to kiss him with as much love and need as she could muster. “Please,” she whispered against his lips, “Make me yours?”

       Even though she’d already confessed so much to him tonight, Abel still looked at her with such amazement in his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe she was actually real and here with him. Placing his hand over hers, he closed his eyes, smiling into her palm. “I don’t deserve to...but it would be my honor.” He didn’t say anything more, but he didn’t need to; the weight of mutual love and adoration that filled the space between them and his overjoyed smile against her skin said enough.

       Without wasting another moment, he reached between them and gently guided himself into her, hazy, lust-focused golden eyes peering into hers as a shudder wracked their joined forms. Her nails dug into his back, core squeezing around the pulsing length burrowing inside of her.

       “Relax, mon amour,” he whispered, nuzzling the soft spot below her ear. Taking a few deep, shuddering breaths, she tried to relax the clenching in her lower stomach, gradually adjusting to the stretch. 

       “Please,” she whined, planting kisses across his chin and jaw. “Move.”

       The world she knew fell away, nonexistent. All there was was him and her and this place, wrapped up with velvet and warm firelight as her vampire made love to her.

       His thrusts into her were slow and forceful, the pleasure it brought rolling over her in spine-tingling waves. Her back arched, head thrown back to expose her neck to his hungry lips, as he held her against him. 

       “Perfect,” he moaned against her skin, his breath raising goosebumps on her flesh. “Absolutely perfect.”

       Her toes curled as he lifted her hips, changing the angle and hitting spots deep inside of her that made her see stars. Her arms laced around him, vice-like as she held onto him desperately. Each powerful stroke into her teased the edge of her climax, igniting her nerves, and the feeling of his mouth closing around the nipple of one bouncing breast made her scream.

       She writhed, helplessly grinding her hips to meet his thrusts as he sucked the hardened bud, teasing it with his fangs. His other hand pinched and rolled its twin, his thrusts turning harder as he fucked her into the mattress. He let go of her breast with a wet pop, leaving a trail of wet kisses in his wake as he moved up her chest, nipping at her collarbone for good measure.

       “Does it feel good?” he purred in her ear, honeyed voice dripping with sin. “Do you like the way it feels, my fangs in your throat and my cock in your cunt?”

       “Yes!” she cried, desperate. She wanted so badly to cum again, to reach her climax for the third time tonight. It was already so, so close. “Please - anhg! - Don’t stop!”

       He chuckled, warm breath fanning against her skin. “I don’t intend to.” His cock slammed into the sensitive spot inside of her, his hand reaching between her legs to find her clit. “Not until your body knows me and me alone.”

       She could feel the coil deep in her stomach starting to tighten, signaling her impending climax. “Haa...A-Abel! I’m - I’m close! Ah...more! Feels...ha...so good! I need more!”

       Something changed in him at her words, whatever control he had recovered after drinking her blood vanishing. Grunting, he grabbed the backs of her knees and pushed them against her chest. “Cum around my cock,” he coaxed, face alight with feral desire. The expression was unfamiliar on his gentlemanly face, but it still shot a pulse of heat straight to her core, making her squeeze around him. “Make me cum inside of you.”

       MC screamed, coating him in her release as he rammed into her, the new position sending her over the edge and into her climax. She sobbed, fluttering around his piercing cock as the blunt head pummeled her cervix, the slight pain making her orgasm all the more ravaging. 

       He groaned, thrusts turning sloppy as her core milked him, and with another few deep thrusts inside of her, he came, growling into her neck as he pulsed. She trembled at the feeling of his cum filling her, hot and thick and pooling somewhere deep inside of her as her eyes closed and her body turned weightless.

       She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until her eyes fluttered open, finding herself tucked under the covers and cuddled against a warm, bare chest. 

       “You’re awake,” Le Comte’s voice rumbled against her cheek, and she tilted her head to peer up at him as his fingers carded soothingly through her hair. “Are you okay?”

       “Yeah.” She blushed, noting the soreness and lingering warmth between her thighs. “It was just...intense.” The corner of his lips twitched in the beginnings of a smirk, and she kept talking before he could tease her. “Do you not sleep?” she said softly, reaching to tuck her arms around him in turn. 

       “I do,” he chuckled with a raised brow, relaxing into her embrace. 

       “Then why don’t you?”

       “...I’m almost afraid to sleep,” he admitted wryly. “Maybe this...meeting you...has all been a dream and I’m still stuck in that bottle.”

       Her grip on him tightened, snuggling him closer. She hadn’t known he’d felt this way, scarred by his time trapped and alone, but of course he would. He felt and processed experiences just as she did. Leaning up, she kissed him softly, feeling his arms pull her closer. “I’m real,” she murmured, holding his gaze, those brilliant golden eyes she had originally fallen so deeply in love with. “This is real, and I love you. I still don’t know how I was able to find this place, but I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”

       “What did I do for God to send you to me?” His breathing stuttered and he said on a shaky exhale, “I’ve done things, things that pervert the rules of nature, things that I never want to tell you. How can I possibly deserve you?”

       “Hmm, do you love me?” She smiled, her heart feeling full enough to burst from her chest.

       “Madly,” he answered, without missing a beat.

       “Then we’ll work our way up from there. Just know that I can’t remember ever being happier than I have been here with you these past months.” Leaning up for a last kiss, she felt him smile against her lips. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

       There was still much to discuss, a whole dynamic to work out between them, but it could wait until morning. For now, they could sleep in each other’s arms, blissfully in love and ready to face the challenges that would come with each tomorrow.

       They had all the time in the world, after all.

[imaginesforthosewhoseekthem]

Just a quick update

Probably should have put a trigger warning at the last post, but Mentions of pedophilia and r@pe. Reader digression is advised.

Thank you so much for everyone tho reblogged and liked the last post. I really don’t have time for the people being complete idiots when it comes to fandoms. I don’t generally let these kind of things bother me usually, but something about a character from a thing I really like being accused of a thing as serious as pedophilia, I just kinda snapped.

I’ve heard other things have been going on like people white-washing Mammon, Simeon and Diavolo. People sexualizing Luke...a LITERAL child. Calling Lucifer a rapist. Giving the voice actors shit for reasons I have no idea why. Shipping the brothers together which...look, I was expecting to happen eventually cus these kinda of people can't fuckin chill.

There is probably other stuff I’ve been missing. I didn't even hear that shit on here, by the way. I heard it on Tik Tok. Most of the things they’re doing are Just. Plain. Stupid. I feel like making posts on WHY what they’re doing is stupid and I feel like I shouldn't even have to explain. But you know, some people just don’t use or don't TRY to use their common sense that maybe...what they’re doing will cause them shit from other people. you posted shit, MOSTLY PROBLEMATIC SHIT, on the internet and are surprised to get hate for it...How...did you survive old enough to USE a computer with how stupid everything is. I dunno if I will make a post about why Lucifer is not a rapist, but it’s a pretty big phobia of mine, so it might take a bit to write. Also due to like 2 pieces of evidence as to why I could think people would say that about him, being the vampire event and the end of chapter 20 (If anyone else has reason to think that, do let me know. I’m only on lesson 26, but I will play through the game again and look at spoilers to get evidence. I don’t care about spoilers in this fandom.)

Fortunately, I believe the GOOD people of this fandom outweigh the dipshits. Because I don’t wanna make myself angry, I will make some bullet tips as to what we can do as a community and a fanbase to not let the toxicity spread.

If you are going to call a character a title THAT serious. USE. YOUR. BRAIN. There are fairly young people that play this game and they would never be allowed make a game like this if such titles were true. So maybe TRY to get some more information before you make accusations. If you’re not bothered, either face the music of looking stupid or say nothing. They’re FICTIONAL characters. Use that energy to get ACTUAL pedophiles and rapists arrested. 

You can draw Luke as an adult FOR SPECULATION. That’s fine. If you;re just, in your own way, expression what Luke would look like at Simeon’s age, that’s fine. You just have an idea of what that would look like. But if you’re doing it to sexualize a minor...that is being WAY more pedo than anything people accused Levi of doing. Luke is canonically 10 in human years and is a canonical child among the other angels. I don’t care if he’s thousands of years older than the human. If the devs SAY he’s a child, regardless on if the years are different, then he’s a child and you treat him like a fucking child. If picturing sexual things about them is how you treat a child, that is pedophilia. You are disgusting and should be disgusted with yourself. I don’t care if he’s a fictional child, it’s still gross to do that to a child. I BET you there are people that call Levi a pedo and then sexualize Luke at a “Legal” age. Stupidity really just evolves, doesn’t it?

The case of shipping the brothers together...Look, maybe I’ll make a separate post on this too, but the explanation is SO. PAINFULLY, OBVIOUS. That I really don’t wanna waste my breathe on common sense. I know the brothers are not directly related by blood. Doesn’t matter. It can apply with adoptive or step sibling logic. If someone has grow up with you or spent their lives with you as a sibling figure in your life, shipping them in still incest. Family doesn’t end in blood.The brothers all still share one father. They are siblings. I know some of the cards MIGHT seem sexual or something...but that is what fan service is. I think people shipping the siblings. I think they’ve stopped making those types of cards a while ago for this reason...but yeah. No...You’d feel weird if someone shipped you and your sibling or a friend close enough to BE your sibling. So don’t do it here.

STOP. WHITE WASHING. CHARACTERS OF COLOR! You don’t white wash actual people of color so why do this at all? “I wanna see what he would look like as a different race!” WHY?! Why in the wing, fluttering fuck does race even matter?! Can’t you just enjoy how they already look and look past that? In my mind, only one race exists...the HUMAN race....I dunno how this holds up with a game about demons, but still. If you are so insistent on making characters of color a different race, all that means is that you’re being racist. If you insist you’re not, you will have no problem cutting out the white washing and accepting how they look already. BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER!

In the case of the voice actors. If you see people harassing the voice actors on any form of media, the simplest solution is to give the voice actors your love and appreciation and reporting them to the app to get their comment or account removed. Simple. It’s online safety 101. If you’re worried about them getting hate in their DM’s, there’s not much we can do about it. It’s private messaging between the commenter and the voice actor. The voice actors are grown men with common sense and they will appreciate your love and support because it means you’re trying to help them however you can. They can block those people themselves if they are DM’d. Don’t feel terrible that you can;t do more. You can only do so much and the VA’s appreciate your love and support for the game.

Finally...don’t spread hate. That’s what these kinds of people WANT you to do. Don’t get angry. Don’t start text wars. It will just make people think this fandom is more toxic than before. I know you’re just trying to set the record straight and you can do that in a more polite way, but don’t waste your breath on people if they don’t want to listen. You can tell them politely because they MIGHT just be people that are misinformed, but if they push the point forward without listening and they still won’t pay attention, their loss. you were trying to stop them looking like a jackass. They had their chance. If they’re causing further harm, just report them. It’s as simple as that. These kinds of people are not worth getting angry at. Don’t stress yourself out over people being stupid and try to enjoy the fandom in your own way, alright?

Sorry for two serious posts in a row. I’ve had complex feelings since my last post over my recent loss and ranting like this did help a lot. I’m also playing Mystic Messenger on Jumin’s Route and Day 11 will be tomorrow, so I should be getting to the asks soon enough. I know I say that all the time, but I actually wanna get back into writing because I’m super passionate about it. It just...sucks when being depressed makes it tiring to do the thing you love the most. Seeing everyone enjoy my writing really makes my day and I want to try motivate myself to not take as long in between. I’ve never let other people being weird or toxic destroy how I feel about the things I love because life is short and all that. THESE recent things I’ve heard about the Obey Me fandom don’t even get under my skin, but it’s a fandom I’m really passionate about and that the Tik Tok community want to get across to others. So, I contributed the only way I knew how. 

Thank you for listening and have a good one ❤

[phoenixyfriend]

The “Momma Sturmvoraus was Literally Satan” AU

As requested by @spazzbot​. This AU was initially brainstormed on the GG fanworks server almost a year ago. Specifically, on the first day of 2020.

[ID: a truncated discord message by “Miss Nixy, Gay for RoboLadies” posted 01/01/2020. The message reads “I need to sleep but please for the moment consider:” and ends there.]

So. Let’s get to it.

Satan took a human form because why not see what's going on topside, live like a human, and “Oh shit is this pregnancy? This is pregnancy. Fuck, that's a tiny human. Which is now half demon. Am I supposed to take care it? Wonder if retconing this form into that Valois family was a bad idea. They do have SO much money though, I get to live like a queen. I suppose another child shouldn't hurt, it wasn't that bad. Oh, he's cute, this is actually making sense, why humans do all the sinning. Not counting dear Aaronev's murders, of course, those are just evil, but I did search out the worst of the humans to pair myself to...”

This is literally just "Tarvek and Anevka's mom was low-key Satan on a bored “let's be human for a decade or two to see what happens” jaunt, consequences happen because these kids are LITERALLY half-demon and arguably anti-Christs."

Also it's just Very Funny for Tarvek, ineffectual sexy lamp fashion twunk extraordinaire, to be an antichrist

Jeff thinks he’s pretty. Jeff keeps describing features that don’t entirely make sense. (Jeff’s canon name is Karl Thotep but they spent so long unnamed that the server collectively named them Jeff.)

This is not a crossover with anything, btw. Ambiguously Pop Culture Satan just got bored and went to have babies with a serial killer.

They’re just kids! That are vaguely demonic. So. Moreso than the rest of the Valois.

Sometimes "mom" comes back from the dead and visits Anevka and Tarvek to impart Wisdom and possibly magic lessons The rooms always smell faintly of sulfur after that...

They try to put Anevka in the machine but SHE isn't hurt and the MACHINE just melts

So that's the end of that.

It's very awkward for everyone, but the paperwork isn't too bad. It's very easy to write "incidental fire began during late-fugue experimentation, resulted in fire spreading through six rooms and several casualties, including Prince Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus."

As per @atagotiak​, “I feel like if we’re going in any way dimensional weirdness with thing, Tarvek got so good at exploring bc he could just clip through walls.”

With image provided by @thisarenotarealblog​:

Tarvek in Paris: My dead mother keeps showing up in my dreams to tell me I need to seduce my way out of my problems and also she looks like Satan. Tarvek's Voltaire-Appointed Therapist: I still don't know what that means. Just like the last five times. Tarvek: I keep telling her that I can’t seduce Colette, if seduction is that important she should get Anevka to do it.

Like he probably wouldn’t say most of that in front of any Voltaire-approved individual, but still.

Tarvek is still very good at self control but there's a Special Edge to his rants.

(Derailed in the moment to me thinking about Anevka in a sfw-but-concerningly-deadly succubus getup, because... yeah.)

Aaronev dies and goes to hell and his dead wife is just there like "hi! Time to be tortured for eternity!" He wasn't a good husband so. He can't exactly sentimentalize his way out.

“In the sexy way?” “... not for you, no.”

Mostly I just want the BULLSHIT that is "Storm Mom was actually just Satan getting bored and going on vacation as a retconned Valois girl, the kids are half-demons and sometimes it Shows."

To clarify: the Satan bit isn't the retcon. Grandma used to have one daughter. Now there are two. (Seffie and Martellus's mother doesn't remember being an only child, but sometimes...)

Satan retconned a new daughter in, which included a Valid Valois Venusian Vestment, so the blood tests play out.

The subtle signs of wrongness would be fun too. Anevka tends to smile a bit too wide and sharp for a human face. Inexplicable uneasiness, here you can’t point at any specific thing that’s wrong but it’s uncomfortable. Uncanny valley prettiness, almost like the porcelain she became in other timelines. Skin isn’t supposed to be that smooth.

My brain's pre-nap contribution at that point was "Satan's pronouns when not pretending to Human are sin/sinself" which is! Certainly a thing.

Tarvek, at some nebulous future point: I mean, your ancestors were monsters, but my dad was a serial killer and my mom was literally Satan, instead of just figuratively like Lucrezia, so. I mean. I kind of get what you're going through.

Per @firebirdeternal: Tarvek and Anevka growing up with "you're allergic to holy water" and not questioning it until a little later because What.

And then they test it and it's like "yeah, no, there's a rash now. That stung. What the fuck."

It INFURIATES Gil in Paris when Tarvek tells him that's a thing, because there's nothing chemically different about Holy water and regular water. But no, this is somehow happening.

It gets logged in medical journals as a Valois genetic thing because, well, Mom was like that too, right?

One time they both go into a church for an Adventure and Gil is very annoyed to find that Tarvek is like. Faintly smoking. It smells like burnt hair in here.

Gil: What smells like burnt hairgel? Tarvek: [glares]

Gil decides that it must be something particular to the church, like a fungus or something in the stone, contaminating the air and water so it only LOOKS like the holiness is what's setting off reactions.

It is not.

Tarvek once got into an argument with someone and ate a slab of raw, completely uncooked meat as a power move.

SVV seems to work perfectly. Everyone is fine. We get the ‘you fight like ducks’ moment.

And then Tarvek bursts into flames, and everyone panics because no they fixed this what the fuck is he still infected with Hogfarb’s oh my god... and then everything settles down and he's perfectly fine. Not a scratch on him, no longer turning funny colors. Completely unharmed. He's in a nicely tailored suit and looks faintly stunned

"I just met my dead mom, who's apparently Satan. She told me that after I died the first time just now, I should be harder to kill later, especially with fire, because now there's more demon and less mortal and guys I think I'm going crazy." "Is that a martini?" Tarvek looks down. "Apparently."

Tarvek starts just. Randomly setting things on fire by glaring too hard and has to tone it down. Meanwhile, Agatha and Gil are having crises about how he's somehow getting PRETTIER.

Is he faintly glowing? Maybe!

Gil handles it by angrily sniping at Tarvek about how of COURSE he's an evil little rat with a background like that.

Tarvek just wants a nap and to forget this ever happened. Many people are sworn to secrecy. It's very awkward.

Still, SVV did something, for handwave-y reasons, and so they're linked now. Gil and Agatha both getting tiny flashes of the same shenanigans.

They get none of the powers. They just keep getting Weird Shit.

Other characters with divine influence are like "Did you.... did you make a pact with a demon?" "What no that's our boyfriend."

Tho tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if a Heterodyne did sign a contract with a demon at some point in exchange for like. Materials. A hundred souls sacrificed in exchange for some succubus blood. Thanks!

Tarvek and Othar: Falling out of CW as in canon. Tarvek: WHAT THE HELL SINCE WHEN DO I HAVE WINGS HIDE THIS BEFORE I GET BOOTED FROM THE LINE FOR THE THRONE

IDK where Anevka is during all this. I think she might have decided to go sleep her way through the courts of the Ice Tsars. Vacation, y'know?

Othar after he's decided to make Tarvek his new Heroic Apprentice: AH, my poor afflicted young friend, it's noble of you to go against the dark nature of your tragic heritage like this. Tarvek: I hate you. I wish I could hate you to death. But you have a point. I shouldn't let my father's blood limit what I strive for in life. Othar: I... I thought your mother was... Tarvek: I know what I said.

Tarvek: Also you can't tell ANYONE about that, I can't have them thinking I'm not actually in line for the Storm King's throne.

He does admittedly have to like. Explain things to Grandma.

Terabithia is Tarvek’s maternal grandmother so this is supremely awkward. That said...

Grandma fondly remembers her pregnancy cravings; bone marrow and sulfur.

"Yeah so, my mother, your daughter, was... maybe actually Satan? But retconned into your life?" "Tarvek, darling, please. I figured that out half a century ago."

TARVEK ACCIDENTALLY FINDS HIM HIMSELF WEIRDLY INTENSE AT CONTRACTS

I mean that honestly just Tracks about Tarvek anyways? But like moreso.

He just. Writes something up and there's things getting signed or shook on and then the person tries to break the contract and either suddenly catch fire or are deeply unlucky for a set amount of time.

And Tarvek's just standing there like "how in the FUCK did I do that?"

Severity of infernal punishment depends on the severity of the breach of contract.

Tarvek finds out that Anevka's been convincing rich people to sign their souls over to her. It's a fun challenge. She keeps them in jars.

They can still remotely pilot their bodies but like. They can't TELL anyone what happened.

Satan: I'm going to go make babies and now everyone else has to deal with the consequences.

Anevka's living up to that whole "princess of hell" vibe. Tarvek's just like "nope nope nope I want the storm throne, not the hell throne, BYE MOM."

Satan's just feeling sinself down in hell like "awwww look at my babies go, aren't they adorable?"

Tarvek: Anevka, what... first off, how did you figure it out? Anevka: Well, I temporarily died when father put me in the machine, and... I can't say that hell kicked me out because they were afraid I'd take over, but mother DID say she'd rather I play about with human governments instead of Hell's. Tarvek: Okay, cool cool cool. What after you planning to DO with all these souls? Anevka: They make for some lovely reading lamps, don't they?

(Anevka absolutely sets herself the goal of acquiring new titles that rival her old ones, or even surpass them. She just black widows her way through Europa.)

I just want someone (probably Snackleford) to ascend, take one look at Tarvek, and run SCREAMING.

Tarvek still needed to be anchored to Higgs, because Tarvek is Baby.

Gil is eventually in a relationship with an Eternal God Queen and the Literal Son of Satan.

Family dinners can include ALL the in-laws if you duck down to hell! - You borrow Bill from... probably heaven, maybe purgatory. - You have Lu and Aaronev and Satan already there, though the first two... well. Aaronev and Lu get invited to dinner but they have to eat by themselves at the kiddy table and nobody talks to them or acknowledges their presence. After all, this is hell, and what better punishment for Lu than to be completely ignored, and for Aaronev to see Lu at her worst and be reminded that he gave everything for this horrible, horrible person who isn't even pretending to care about him anymore. - Zanta and Klaus get invited via portal. - Anevka saunters in with a blood-soaked dress and a complaint about militant demon-hunters refusing to let her go shopping for a new pair of shoes. - Zeetha tagged along with the OT3. (She can't wait to see this situation explode.)

Oh God, Satan is actually second place as far as good parenting goes.

Well, actually, fourth. Because Adam and Lilith. But second as far as bio parents go. 1. Zanta 2. Satan 3. Klaus 4/5. Lu and Aaronev N/A. Bill

Someone (Anevka) decides to stir the pot and invites Von Pinn, Terabithia, Bang.

Bang is basically Gil’s older sister, right? Right.

This is Zanta meeting Bang for the first time! Zanta is just: "It's so nice to meet my husband's adopted daughter." Klaus freezes. Bang freezes. Gil is the only one who is just. "Yeah." Meanwhile Zeetha is crying with laughter off to the side because both of them deserve this. (Zanta would legit love Bang though.)

Agatha: Tarvek, I think DuPree is-- Tarvek: Hitting on my sister? I know. Agatha: On your mom, actually. Tarvek: NO!

Also I do love the idea of like. Nobody tells Bang they're inviting her. She just wakes up in Hell like. "Ah. Yes. Fair enough."

Satan: Oh no no no my dear, you're here as a guest. Besides as well as you'd fit you're not one of mine, you've got other things waiting for you. Bang: Okay, but I love the decor. And is that Cheesecake?

Bang’s family has their own evil god in the novels, but! Bang DID pick on Tarvek a lot in Paris. Satan cares more than Anevka does. Bang might get the sexy punishment.

I feel like the fact that no permanent damage was done and it taught Tarvek a lot of things means Satan isn't gonna be all that upset about it.

And let's be real, if there's a character in GG who could look the literal Christian devil in the eye and be like "Yeah I tortured your kid, what're you going to do about it?" it's Bang.

Even Satan doesn't know what to do or think about Othar.

He sure is here! As Anevka’s arm candy! Nobody knows what to do except Anevka herself, who just wants to be Smug.

(What's that scene from Phineas and Ferb that's the mad scientist trapping the platypus within the rules of polite dining at a fine restaurant? Like he can't make a scene because that would be rude?) (That. Othar would dearly love to start a fight, but it's a Family Dinner. You're only allowed to fight verbally at those.)

(Othar isn't even fighting Satan, he just wants to argue with Klaus.) (And maybe fanboy in Bill's direction a bit).

[draken-rotzi]

Bug Man x Reader Part One*

Read on AO3

SO, wanted to write something of this topic bc we all need some more Musical!BJ in our lives, it’s a nice comfort ngl, I enjoyed writing it and hope you do too c:

(Got carried away so here's the first half while I edit the second one in the meantime, it takes a bit to get to the main part we all want to read forgive mE it's better in th next one believeme)

I'd love some feedback since I haven't written anything since 2019 ;v; some wordings might seem odd since my brain speaks spanish first english second

Summary; Old boring university life and a broken but hopeful heart meet the supernatural and whacky demon/ghost with the most, reader-chan needs to get out from a toxic relationship and what's a better help than a magic dead man? Cutting ties might seem easier when someone else arrives and flips your world upside down with no warning.

Mostly fluff, bits of angst l8r

Female reader, but tried to not give any other specifics to the character themselves, OCs appear

It was a fresh autumn afternoon, birds still chirped before migrating to warmer areas for the winter, the wind was cold but nice, not yet freezing but enough for people to wear light coats. You sit on a school desk, a class about taxes and fees, you drift off a bit looking at the window while half-listening.

You lived in a medium but popular city, it was a great place, with nice, kind people for the most part, huge malls, restaurants and lots of places to go out with friends or alone.

...

"Miss ___? Care to answer this equation here for the class?" The teacher asks, a tall, slender woman that radiated authority, it made some students shiver in times like this with a direct question.

"Oh? Yeah- sure miss Adams" You replied, while trying not to look confused since you just missed the topic, hopefully you remembered from the last lesson by the time you walked up to the blackboard and took the marker to write.

...

After class, you were walking with your friends to the cafeteria next to the main exit to wait for an uber to arrive; your side job as a freelance wasn't good enough yet to afford a car, but it helped pay the bills and to have enough for a bit more more than the basic needs.

Your two best friends at college were Itai and Rob. Itai was a funny dude, with a darker tone on his skin, not so tall and full of charisma. Rob was a bit more collected, but still a lot of fun to be around, being the voice of reason for you three most of the time, emphasis in most, because sometimes he got carried away too.

"Man I hate that class, I don't understand a thing! Why do we even need math?" Itai tells the group, sounding annoyed as usual, he was a simple guy, but simple guys need a degree too, to secure a better job.

"Well if you paid attention instead of eating that cold baguette in class you won't be that confused my man" Rob replies, laughing a bit at the end

"At least you weren't asked to do math in front of the class" You sigh, putting down your backpack and sitting on a table next to the building's exit, looking at your phone to know how much time was left for the driver to arrive, around 10 minutes.

"Yeah everyone felt so bad for you, but hey, if you’ll be daydreaming at least look at the front instead of the window next time, it might help you" Rob said while opening a bottle of apple juice, his favorite, he wouldn't drink any other thing, he was probably 60% apple juice after years of drinking it that often.

A few minutes passed by, the three friends chatting about the day's events, their plans for the weekend, and how to get the next assignment done. A figure appeared behind you putting a hand on your shoulders.

"Well hello ladies!" A man chirped, you turned around laughing softly

"Hey yourself!" you replied "Already off?"

"Yeah I've got the last hour free so I'm gonna head out to Kris' place, we'll play some games and work on that big project I told you the other day"

"Great, have fun! You say hi to Kris from me yeah?"

"Sure thing, see you later!" He says with a squeeze of his hand on your shoulder, then a quick pat on the head, turning around to leave.

"Bye, take care Nick!" you say as the man walks out of the cafeteria's door waving a hand.

Silence lingers for a bit until Itai breaks it

"Hey so, you're still going out with him?" He says with a crooked smile and a nervous look, Rob has a similar expression

"Yeeeah... it's been okay for some time now, you know? Hah" You look down for a second, pondering "Maybe this time is the good run?" Uncertainty fills the question, but you still smile to your friends.

Nikolas wasn't the model boyfriend, at least not for your friends; he was full of sweet words, hugs and kisses, only in private places though. When it came to the campus he treated you just like any other friend.

There was a small reason, according to him, he wanted to wait a bit more to make it public, get to know each other better, just to be certain from both sides.

That was the excuse a year ago.

It wasn't like he was out and flirting with other people, not at all, but one could expect to be treated like a love partner after so much time and moments together, you’ve gone to the movies, to dinner, to each other's houses, hell your families knew you two were dating, it just wasn't more than the bare minimum from him, seemed more like a thing someone does if they have free time, not make time for that thing, the thing being the relationship.

It seemed to be only a problem of neglect and apathy, probably, though you were so dumbly in love with him at first, you have been hoping and asking for a change since the relationship escalated to more than just holding hands and light kisses.

"I don't think anything's gonna change, he's been stalling for a whole year now" Itai mumbled, looking at Rob, he nodded in agreement

"Yeah, just dump him already, you deserve way better, you give him everything you got and he just throws the leftovers at you."

"I guess, but we're going out this weekend! You know he doesn't like going out often"

"With you" Rob adds

You hesitate a reply, it was true, most of the times you asked him to go out for a change, he was either too busy or decided to change the event the same day, turning it into a make out session in his house every time. Even though you saw each other 2 days every week, you have seen him go out with his friends more often, on actual enrichment outside activities.

"I know..." you sigh " I'll think about it, I'll try to talk with him about it next time”

Both of your friends let out a small groan of annoyance, they knew you weren't gonna do it, or that he'll just brush it off as always, between the lines of 'oh you're overreacting'

"Ah my ride's here!" You got up from the table and grabbed your backpack, tossing it over one shoulder.

"See he can't even give you a lift to your place!" Itai teased, they knew how you felt about the whole situation, but joking around sometimes made it a bit less bitter.

"Ha-ha, you know we live in opposite ends of the city! Besides none of you give me a ride either" you said while sticking a tongue out on your way outside the cafeteria

"Yeah because you live at the ends of the earth for some weird reason!" Rob joked back

Everyone said their quick goodbyes, and after a calm ride back home you remembered something just as you were locking the door, tossing your backpack into the living room’s couch you walked over to your room.

You flopped onto the bed, looking at your phone you opened some pending messages on the family group chat, apparently a distant relative of yours had died, and the family was gonna hold a small funeral tomorrow morning on the local cemetery, you didn’t enjoy those kind of events since you’d get really emotional, but since it was something really small, no more than 20 people, it was private and most likely no strangers would see you cry over someone you barely knew.

Tomorrow was saturday so it was okay to spend one free morning humoring your family.

After some mindless browsing on your phone, it was already 12:30am, you haven’t even got off your sneakers since you got home, you did a quick self-cleanup in the bathroom, tossing today’s clothes to the side to change into an oversized shirt with no pants as a makeup pijamas, it got a bit warmer in the afternoon so you wanted to enjoy wearing something light before winter fully arrived, getting under the sheets and you were out fast, maybe from all the overthinking of what’d tomorrow might bring, you’ve forgotten what are funerals like.

But there was certainly no way you’d know what would happen at all the next day

...

The event was simple, thankfully there was not much crying, seemed like everyone accepted already what had happened, some kind of illness you heard, at least they weren’t suffering anymore and they’ve come to terms with everyone close to them, that was nice you thought, it sure felt a bit heavy in there, as usual for funerals. After the ceremony, the family offered a barbeque in the departed’s honor to bright up the mood a bit; right at the cementery, maybe it was cheaper than renting a place for it.

Free tasty food was something only an idiot would decline, so you spent some time doing small talk with the relatives you knew best, but still you mostly just listened and ate in silence.

You saw a glimpse of color and movement out of the corner of your eye, since everyone was wearing dark tones it stood out, turning your head there was just an empty plastic table with some half-full plates and glasses, still, you felt a shiver up your spine, it was probably the weather.

When you looked back at your phone's clock it was already 6 pm, guess dad jokes and food made time fly, you said your goodbyes and condolences to everyone and headed out, you were still at the cemetery, so you had to call a ride back home, the driver dropped you near a convenience store just around the corner of your apartment, since you needed to buy a snack for dinner, on sundays you usually had takeout, so no need to worry much about it right now.

_______________________________________________________

“I know I didn’t imagine anything, that breather saw me at the cemetery! we even locked eyes for a second! It may work this time, just gotta get closer while they're alone”

_______________________________________________________

…

Walking down the street, humming a bit to some music and a bag of snacks in hand, dusk started to set, some stars could be seen and the sky was a beautiful fuchsia tone with oranges and purples mixed in the clouds. On instinct, you took your phone out of your jeans pocket to take a picture of the cute sky.

Just as you took a couple of pictures, to make sure at least one was good to share, something caught your attention out of the corner of your eye again

You felt a shiver like a cold wind out of nowhere, similar as to when a car drives a bit too close to someone on winter, but there was not even one driving car on the street.

"Oof, should get back now, it's getting colder" picking up the peace to get home faster-

A piece of paper slapped you in the face

“EW- wind trash” you muttered while grabbing what seemed to be a flyer, and it flew indeed.

You naturally took a closer look at it when you took it into your hands and out of your face, it was a very faded print, with an image of an… insect? man? holding a hammer over a small house and people, you chuckled, it was a funny irony cartoon, a bug crushing people.

Half of the flyer was unreadable because of some liquid or dirt, already dry but you couldn’t read what was supposed to be, written under the drawing was the end of an ad;

“Ghostly services one name away!

RESIDENTIAL - INDUSTRIAL - COMMERCIAL

Call BETELGEUSE

BETELGEUSE

BETELGEUSE!”

“Betelgeuse? ...Like that one star?” There was that shiver again, Halloween was a week ago, so this kind of paper seemed normal to be hanging around with the wind.

As you walked down the street, some lights started flickering, the cold wind seemed stronger and the sky was a deep dark purple now, strange, it was supposed to be clear dark blue by now, fall nights came quickly this time of the year, still it didn't feel like the usual night. You were just around the corner of your street when the closest light bulb exploded and zapped with a loud 'CRASH', making you stop for a second cowering from the shards

"What the-!? No one told me we'd be getting winter thunderstorms sooner what the eff" muttering swears you made a run to your apartment, scurrying for the door keys in the process, lights kept flashing and the wind made windows sing a high 'oooo' noise, you have seen this kind of weather before but no one would like to be outside when it happened, nervously and quickly you finally fit the key in the lock and opened the door, hurrying inside and closing it behind, a loud bang thundered through the silent room, the unexpected storm slamming against the walls and windows, you left the lights on before going out.

After a minute it seemed to calm down, wind turning into a breeze and the sky now it's usual black, no stars in the sky.

You let out a sigh and walked to the counter to drop your keys, the phone and your purse, you had to make sure all the windows were closed for the night, luckily it was Saturday, so no need to go out tomorrow on that crazy weather.

Windows secured, you changed into your winter pajamas, a gray pair of pants with a pattern of a cat on toast and eggs, with a pastel blue loose shirt. Making your way to the kitchen you decided a light snack would be enough for tonight, after that run and emotion on the way back home you had no energy to cook a proper dinner, not even microwave, it was also too late for it anyways you thought.

You put the snack bowl and a cup of water on the kitchen counter, looking to grab your phone. You noticed you still had the dirty flyer, forgot to drop it between the commotion maybe?

Placing it aside and unlocking your phone screen, you opened the ‘best friend's’ chat group

You. 'Hey guys, did you get any of that weird winter storm action today after school?'

Rob. 'Nah, it was a clear sky for me'

Itai. 'Same, also I was asleep all afternoon'

You. 'Strange, I got caught on this whirlwind on my way back home from the store, just my luck I guess >:('

Both of the boys. 'Lol yea'

Putting the phone down and chomping on some of the snacks, you thought about the events, it was indeed a clear sky earlier, only a couple of common clouds you took pictures of before it. You grabbed the phone again, quickly to see if any of the photos looked good.

"Pleasepleaseplease" you muttered in excitement, it was a very cute view, hopefully one picture captured it nicely.

And they did, a couple looked stunning, you smiled, thinking at least it was worth getting your hair all messed up by the wind, you were about to delete one picture it since it was blurry when you noticed a different kind of blur, it was gray with splashes of green in the corner, similar to what you saw at the funeral.

"There was nothing green on the other pictures, was it?" you looked through the other photos and they were pretty normal, full of pink, purple and blue from the sunset.

You looked back at the flyer

"Betelgeuse, betelgeuse, betelgeuse huh" You said in a playful tone, grabbing the torn paper from the counter, you felt a shiver, a strong one this time, well that was the opposite of a calming experience, but still the word felt strange when you said it, it wasn't like you hadn't said before, Orion was a popular constellation, and the Betelgeuse star was on it; but this time the air inside had a tense feeling.

All the lights went off after a second "Now a blackout? What's with today ugh" picking up your phone to use as a flashlight, after a couple of seconds before you could turn it on, all the lights came back again, but you almost had a heart attack when you saw someone standing in the center of the living room, enveloped in a green mist.

"FUCK wh- WHO THE FUCK-" you stuttered before turning around and grabbing the closest thing to use as a weapon, a wooden spoon used for beating eggs this morning "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHO ARE YOU? GET OUT!"

The figure was a man, taller than you, dressed in a striped black and white suit, dark hair with green tints at the end, a wicked smile plastered on his face, he took a look around, then back to you, endless chills went down your spine when you met his eyes, you could feel the tense aura from before growing stronger, anticipating, colder.

"Well who might I be? You should know, you called my name baby! Glad to make some business with you tonight!" He said as he extended a hand and walked, floated? quickly towards a paralized you, frozen in place, you only managed to put the spoon up in self defense from whomever this man could be, the lights were out for just a few seconds, was he inside the apartment all this time?

"S-stop right there you!" tried to threaten the man with the wooden tool, he didn't seem to notice nor care, wrapping an arm around your shoulders, then placing a sloppy kiss in your face, petrified, you shivered and gripped the spoon harder, he felt oddly cold.

...Did he just kiss you? Who does he think he is??

"No no, no stopping now! We just got started cakes, and now that you said my name three times, I can finally interact with you and everything here in the world of the living! Gotta say thanks it's been real boring being invisible for so long lemme tell ya-"

*WHACK*

You hit the man in the head with the wooden spoon as hard as you could.

...the spoon broke.

The man's smile grew wider

[walker-journal]

Clocks and Cyrophoenix (Adam +Alfie- POTW)

Characters: Alfonzo Ramirez (Phoenix- Annie), Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir)

Summary: The search for Nell continues in a frost dimension where Adam meets a grouchy charmander. 

Content Warnings: head trauma 

One minute Alfie was walking back to his apartment from a quick stop at the mailboxes, and the next he found himself at the edge of a cliff. His heart lurched into his throat as he reeled back in the nick of time, barely evading what was most certainly a fall to his death. Loose rocks beneath his feet tumbled over the precipice.

Wild eyes frantically took in his new surroundings; colossal pillars stretched beyond the void overhead. The air hummed menacingly along with the echoes of animalistic grunts — the source of which were out of sight. Frost covering the ground turned to sludge underneath his feet as condensation formed from his breath.

This wasn’t the elevator.

“Son of a bitch,” Alfie breathed, stumbling backwards as he shook the slush from his shoes. His day was going so well up until now. He turned slowly, trying to get his bearings on the unfamiliar environment. If there had been an outlet, it was long gone, leaving only a winding ravine behind him. He was left with no choice but to follow it in hopes of getting out of whatever hellscape he’d been thrust into.

He knew he should have taken the stairs today.

A figure dropped down from the edge of the ravine in a rush of white, beige, and glistening metal spikes. The assailant was dressed in the pale camo of arctic warfare gear, the darker colors of bandoliers and a goggled helmet were the only parts of their silhouette distinct from the surrounding snow. Black blood already drenched the tips of the two surgically sharp ice picks the attacker wielded in each hand. A shadow fell over Alfie as those brutal points descended towards his skull.

Yet the figure’s deadly blitz was broken by a sudden hesitation. The arctic soldier veered away from Alfie, sliding down onto the ravine bottom in an awkward stumbling gait as they tried to work off the momentum of the aborted assassination.

Two gloved hands reached up to lift opaque black goggles up from squinting brown eyes.

“Alfie?”

If Alfie thought his situation couldn’t get any worse, he was wrong. He hadn’t been travelling through the ravine for more than five — ten? fifteen? — minutes before being ambushed. He was completely unaware of anything lurking above until it was too late.

As the figure dropped into his field of vision, Alfie staggered backwards. With a piercing yelp, his back hit the ground and he scrambled to regain his footing. Not that it would have helped him any, but he was prepared to bolt away until the hulking silhouette gave pause and spoke his name.

He sat there, dumbfounded, as his eyes focused on the form of… a man? No — not just any man, but an irritatingly familiar one at that.

“Adam?!” Alfie questioned, incredulously.

What kind of fever dream was this? First, the elevator-turned-hell-dimension, and now Nell’s boyfriend was here? In all fairness, it could have been far worse. Still, he was floored.

“Uh, not to sound rude or anything,” Alfie said, pushing himself to his feet as the melting ice ferociously nipped at his skin. “But what the fuck?”

“The fuck today is that your ass is in Ice Hell,” Adam said, pointing one bloody ice pick up towards the sky.

  At first the sky appeared to be filled with moons, hundreds upon hundreds of pale lunar shapes, some of which loomed so large over the horizon that collision seemed possible. However more scrutiny revealed them to planet-sized icebergs floating in a frigid voice. Titanic ice bridges stretched across the emptiness between some of the colossus ice shapes in the sky, forming a glittering lattice which refracted light in dizzying refractions, casting everything in an eternal glittering twilight.

“Thought you might be another demon or one of the heat-drinker corpses when I picked up your vibes,” the Hunter explained. “But hey man! You're alive and not a chest burster alien! Sweet!”

“Ice Hell,” scoffed Alfie. That was just his luck, wasn’t it?

As he wiped his damp hands against his jeans, Alfie’s gaze followed Adam’s gesture to the sky above. He had been so preoccupied earlier by how he was going to get back home that he didn’t even notice the moons gleaming above. It was beautiful — or as beautiful as a hell dimension could be; not that Alfie had any experience with them.

His eyes fell back on Adam as he let out a disgruntled sigh. The palms of his hands ached as a result of the ice melting beneath his touch, but at least he still had his life. All things considered, it could have been much worse. Like being impaled with one of the Hunter’s menacing ice picks.

“Yeah, for now,” Alfie huffed. “Appreciate the whole… not killing me thing.” The same could have been said even in White Crest. Why Nell thought dating a Hunter was a good idea was beyond him, but at least she’d managed to keep the Ramirez family secret under wraps for this long. Still, Alfie didn’t trust Adam as far as he could throw him — which meant he didn’t trust him at all.

“You don’t happen to know how to get the hell out of here, do you?”

“Neat trick,” Adam observed with feigned casualness as he watched the snow melt at Alfie’s touch. “How’re you doin that? It’d definitely save on hand warmers.”

“No problem man,” the arctic soldier replied with a grin, meeting Alfie’s barbed sarcasm with the blunt force of supposed earnestness. Adam had learned that passive aggressiveness was best met by taking everything they said literally. It was one of those private little games the footballer liked to play under the guise of thuggish dull-wittedness.

“Sure thing dude.” Adam took a few steps back and pointed up...and up….and up behind Alfie.

Both men stood in the shadow of a mountainous glacier. From the center of the behemoth mass of ice rose Voorhees Clocktower, towering above the demon wastes as if it were the last visible landmark of White Crest remaining after the Earth succumbed to polar night. Whether the frozen clocktower were some kind of copy or somehow an extension of their world into this dimension Adam couldn’t really say.

“The exit of this nut-freezer locker is at the top of the clocktower,” Adam supplied.

Leave it to Adam to notice the ice turn to slush at Alfie’s touch. He knew he needed to be careful about what he said to the other man, but finding the balance between an acceptable excuse and being suspicious was a difficult thing to manage. For a moment, Alfie considered lying that he was a spellcaster. He knew enough about them to potentially fake it, but he also had a feeling that Adam knew just as much — if not more — about spellcasters than he did.

“Trust me, it’s not that great,” Alfie answered dismissively. Regulating his body temperature was a helluva lot more difficult when his skin screamed out in pain from the damage the snow inflicted. On the other hand, if he didn’t regain some kind of control over it, he’d have much bigger problems than rousing Adam’s suspicions.

Alfie’s jaw dropped when Adam drew his attention to the clock tower. No way in hell — no pun intended — was he going to make it up there on his own. Especially not if he had more than being mistaken for a demon to be worried about. He remembered the mention of “heat-drinker corpses” and swallowed hard. So much for being alive.

“I’m gonna take a wild guess and say there’s not a bridge or anything up there, huh?” Alfie quipped. Wishful thinking. “Say, Adam… You’re not busy by any chance, are ya? I could use a tour guide if—” His words were abruptly cut by a blood-curdling screech. Eyes wide, Alfie froze.

“What the hell was that?” sputtered Alfie; the words jumbling together and coming out almost incomprehensible.

“One those No-face-yetis,” surmised Adam, without much sign of surprise.

The ravine walls merely came up to the hips of the figure that stepped down into the gulch, tall enough to easily discern at a distance. It seemed both skeleton and insectoid, a vague humanoid shape whose exposed bones seemed as much chitinous  exoskeleton as they were ossein. As the Hunter had said, the ‘Yeti’ had no facial features of any kind, only a long toothless slit down the entire center length of its body that parted and closed in long rasping breaths. Its arms hung down nearly to its feet, all its cadaverously slender limbs tipped with long claws that seemed merely an extension of its chitinous bones. Dark hair clung to the patches not covered in exoskeleton, forming a black mane that rippled in the arctic wind.

“I named that one Jasper-Rasper,” Adam informed Alfie, as if this were the most important point as he frantically motioned for Leah’s nerd brother to run like hell.

“No-face-yetis,” Alfie repeated; testing out the words to see if that would help them make more sense. It didn’t. Seeing the beast in the flesh was just as surreal. But he had to admit, Adam’s description was upsettingly accurate.

Alfie was already worse for wear. There were blisters forming on his hands where he pushed himself off of the ice; his elbows, too, were inflamed from the contact during his fall. But he had no intentions of dying — especially not here.

“You gave it a pet name?” he asked incredulously, shooting the other man a look of disbelief. “I’m not sure if that helps,” Alfie quipped. Either way, he wasn’t about to stand around long enough to find out. The moment Adam gestured in the opposite direction of ‘Jasper-Rasper’, Alfie pivoted sharply. The soles of his shoes disagreed with the texture of the ground as he ran back down the ravine.

Just when he thought he was safely out of reach, the earth trembled beneath him. Bleary eyes did their level best to concentrate on the path ahead. The way was blocked. Not by one, but two menacing creatures, far smaller in stature than the burly yeti. Alfie’s heart leaped into his throat and he skidded to a halt. Curious heads rose from the center of precariously slumped shoulders. For a moment, they didn’t seem to notice him standing frozen in his tracks. A cloud of smoke formed as Alfie’s breath mixed with the frigid air. Suddenly, the figures bolted towards him.

Without thinking, Alfie allowed adrenaline to take control of him. His arms raised, palms facing the pair of demons charging down the ravine. Flames sprouted from his fingertips and spread to his wrists. Alfie braced himself, daring them to come any closer. He couldn’t rely on Adam to save him. He wouldn’t. He was going to get the hell out of here and pull his own weight doing so.

Apparently Alfie was a grouchy charmander, but death was approaching too quickly for Adam to question it.

“Uh oh, Mantis Dogs, watch out for the grabby claws, they’ll pull you under and rip you apart with the other legs.”

The ‘Mantis Dogs’ in question were demonic hexapods with a pair of raised forelimbs. Their bodies were covered in shaggy fur whose extremely pale shade of blue  blended in well with the glacial ice of the ravine. Although their six legs were vaguely canine, the bone spurs on the back of their limbs were long and hooked for snagging prey in a deadly grapple. Drool dripped from eager panting mouths surrounded by a ring of faceted sapphire eyes. Spined raptorial legs like those of a mantid extended from the lesser demon’s hairy shoulders, lunging out at Adam as the closest of the insectile canines came within grabbing range.

Conscious of the giant faceless approaching them from the rear, Adam dropped to his knees as the demon’s mantid claw thrashed at the thin air where his shoulders had been moments before. The Hunter swung one of his ice picks and lodged it in the demon’s side, carved a long furrow that seeped noxious white blood as the creature’s momentum sent it careening past him.

Alfie hated it here. He hated the cold. He hated the snow. He hated the various hell-beasts there were wandering around that wanted to kill him. Not to mention that there were evidently monsters running around that fed off heat and would surely suck him dry.

As Adam effortlessly tussled with one of the Mantis Dogs, Alfie concentrated on the other. Clearly, the flames weren’t keeping either of the creatures away. He flinched as the second Mantis Dog lurched forward with bared teeth. Reflexively, Alfie flicked his wrists and two orbs of fire hurdled towards the beast just as it launched itself into the air for its attack.

Alfie stumbled backwards with labored breaths, narrowly dodging the marred body whirring past. The world around him was a blur and his heart pounded in his chest. Putting out that much energy was draining enough in a normal environment. But here? With his hands and elbows already blistered by the ice water, he was already weaker than usual.

The screams of the hexapod intermingled with the ringing of his ears. Slowly, Alfie’s eyes focused on the scene unfurling before him; a thrashing heap of flame and fur as the creature screeched in agony. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he admitted. His eyes fell back on Adam before he glanced over his shoulder to the faceless yeti behind them.

“What now?” he asked shrilly.

“Into the caves Charmander,” Adam shouted as he buried an ice-pick hilt deep in one of the Mantis Dog’s forelimbs and twisted the weapon. There was a sickening crack as the mantid claw snapped, dangling from a few tendons as the insectile canine howled in agony.

But pain shuddered up through Adam’s leg as he drove the other pick deep into one of the Mantis-Dog’s pupil-less blue eyes and kicked the creature off him. He looked down to see one of the demon’s hooted leg spurs had gotten him on the thigh. It was just a graze, but with how sharp demonic claws were that’d been more than enough to slice a laceration down his leg and rip open his arctic gear to the cold.

Shit shit shit, not good.

But a huge shadow fell over the ravine and Adam didn’t have time to think about that. A rush of displaced air let the Hunter know what was coming without having to look up.

“Alfie heads up!” Adam ignored the agony in shooting up his leg as he sprinted towards Leah’s dumbass brother. With no time to explain, the footballer slammed into Alfie with a full bodied tackle, slamming him against the ravine’s ice wall.

Jasper the Rasper’s taloned hand slammed down where both men had been seconds before. The impact of the giant’s blow carved a deep fissure into the ravine’s floor. More jagged ruptures spiderwebbed outward from the broken crater and shuddering cracks wracked the ice walls. For a moment all Adam could see was Jasper’s silhouette looming against the sky of drifting icebergs. Even while kneeling down in the aftermath of pile-driving a hole in the ice, this No-Face Yeti was easily the size of a Harris Island mansion, a rolling hill of insectile chitin and black fur. Jasper’s body-length mouth yawned open sideways, each gasping breath turning the ravine into a wind tunnel.

“C’mon,” shouted Adam over the thunderous rasping. “We gotta head into the caves,” he claimed, pointing to gaps in the ice at the clocktower glacier’s base.

Before Alfie could even wrap his head around being called “Charmander”, a searing pain wracked his entire body. Adam was on top of him faster than he could force his legs to run. The ice burned cold against his skin as Alfie, wheezing, struggled to his feet. If he had to guess, one or more of his ribs were broken and he’d need several weeks to properly heal from the water damage. But it was better than the alternative. Dying wasn’t on his itinerary — granted, neither was being sucked into another dimension made to kill him.

This was the second near-death experience he’d had in the past few weeks; third in the last couple of months. But at least his life still made a little bit of sense then. At least back then he still had his friends. It was bullshit. All of it. "This is bullshit," Alfie thought aloud. Eddie. Nell. Dying in general. Dying in Ice Hell with no one but Adam there to know about it.

Rage boiled inside of him as Alfie staggered forward. For a moment, no amount of broken bones seemed to matter. Flames licked at his skin — patches missing where the ice bit into him. Fuck this dimension. Fuck this yeti-looking son of a bitch. He was losing control.

In one final blow, Alfie hurled a massive ball of fire towards the giant’s feet, immediately regretting it when he nearly collapsed onto Adam. Panting, he braced the Hunter’s shoulder, never minding his scorched clothes or Adam’s own mangled clothing. “C’mon,” he tried to encourage as his feet feebly carried him forward. His head was swimming. He was weaker now than moments before. “I’m not dying here. Clocktower, right?” He could make it. He had to.

Jasper the Rasper’s thunderous gasps echoed after Adam as he led the way towards the caves. The Mantis Dogs had regrouped and gave chase across the shattered obstacle course of the ravine. Pain shot up Adam’s leg as he vaulted over toppled  ice shelves and fissures. He tried to make sure Alfie followed after him, though it was hard to concentrate on anything as the No-Face Yeti wrenched itself free of the ice and began moving with a strange rolling after the tiny thing that'd burned it.

Adam ducked into a vertical crevice in the ice, beckoning Alfie in as he slashed at the pursuing Mantis Dogs with his picks.

“I’m going to die in here, aren’t I?” Alfie asked once he was (somewhat) safely tucked away in the ice behind Adam. He was trembling from head to toe; his battered side screamed its pain while his ice-kissed skin told its own blistering tale. If the monsters of this dimension didn’t kill him, it wouldn’t take much for the Hunter to piece together what he was and finish the job himself. By now, the other man had seen enough of Alfie’s powers to have some inclination, and his skin burning from the slush of ice wasn’t doing him any favors. He briefly wondered if it would be better this way. At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about the curse awaiting him in the real world. “Don’t… don’t answer that,” he feebly amended.

When his eyes fell on Adam’s leg, Alfie’s stomach sank. He could fix that. At the very least, saving Adam might bring Nell back. “You’re looking for her, aren’t you?” Alfie asked, not bothering to elaborate. “I’m… I don’t think I can be of much use in here anymore, but I can try. Just… tell me what I need to do. What can I do?”

“Nah your sister would kill me if I let you die here, like...its super rare that fire chickens get to live with their kind or something like that,” Adam assured as he backed further into the cave system, keeping an eye on the wounded Mantis Dogs prowling around just outside the cavern’s entrance.

Alfie’s correct surmise drew a sidelong look from Adam followed by a nod. “Yeah, I’m trying to track the thing that took her,” the Hunter confirmed. “It’s a longshot but ….” He took off his googled helmet and ran a hand through sweaty brown hair. “Fuck its all I’ve got.”

Adam took a moment to consider Alfie’s offer, looked up towards where the cavern systems led up to the frozen clocktower and out to where demonic canines and a titanic yeti were raising hell. “First we need to get you out up to the Portal in the clocktower.”

Adam reached beneath his environment suit and undershirt, to pulled out a key on a length of cord. Comprised of scarlet coral, the key filled the cavern with a red bioluminescence that gleamed off the slick ice walls. “Our clues to whats going on a giant velvet worm that can go through dimensions, these keys, and the portals. I’m gonna keep looking for Nell but it won’t mean much if we don’t figure out how to seal the rifts.”

Adam placed the coral key back around his neck and tucked it underneath his clothing. “Honestly? Thats where folks back home could use the most help.”

Fire chickens. Oh, so Adam already knew. Alfie wasn’t sure whether he was more relieved or concerned, but ultimately decided that he was grateful. At least he didn’t have to keep worrying about slipping up in front of the Hunter. Leave it to Leah to inadvertently save the day.

As Alfie trailed close behind Adam, a frown formed on his face. After the uncomfortable conversation with Luce about Nell’s disappearance, Alfie thought it was best to back off entirely, but it didn’t stop him from worrying. Nell had been his best friend for years, after all. They may have had their own separate lives now, but he would never stop caring for her. “What exactly happened, anyway?” he ventured to ask. “I mean… What took her? Why?”

His eyes followed Adam’s gaze, falling on the clocktower that seemed all too far away at this point. If the other man had kept him alive this long, then Alfie just had to trust he knew what he was doing. Even still, he couldn’t stop thinking about Nell. What horrors was she facing where she was? Was she even still alive? It wasn’t fair that Adam would save him first.

Alfie scoffed at the idea of him being able to help close any godforsaken rifts. Until now, everyone had made it clear enough that things were under control. But weeks had passed since then and Nell still wasn’t home. It seemed hopeless. At least, that’s how Alfie saw it. “Yeah, I’ll— I’ll talk to Leah about it, then.” It was becoming a recurring theme these days.

“But what about those things?” Alfie practically shrieked, gesturing to the hellscape presently waiting for them. “How the fuck am I— are we supposed to get through that?”

“We were on our goodbye-it's-armageddon date when this portal opened up and evil alien gribblies everywhere,” Adam explained before lunging forward to swing an ice pick down at the clawed forelimb of a Mantis Dog that’d gotten to close inside the cave entrance. “We fought them and got the civilians to safety but a giant Hell Worm grabbed Nell when she was trying to close the portal.”

Adam nodded to one of the safety lines stacked to the wall that he’d set up earlier to spelunk his way up through the tunnel system. “I’ve set up lines that we can us to pull ourselves up to the clocktower. We’ll have to make it past Grabby Gabby, but it’s probably the fastest way home.”

Alfie’s brow raised at the mention of an armageddon date — a goodbye one at that. It was almost as if they were expecting to get themselves killed. But what did he know? If given the chance, Alfie would probably take the opportunity to spend time with someone he loved in the midst of the world crumbling, too. “A giant Hell Worm,” he tittered, running his palm down the length of his face. Knowing the nitty-gritty details of Nell’s disappearance didn’t make him feel any better. If anything, he felt worse.

“That sounds… dangerous,” Alfie remarked once Adam took the opportunity to explain his emergency route to safety. He felt drained enough as it was and heaving himself up the side of a cliff made out of frozen water didn’t sound ideal. What other choice did he have at this point? “After you, I guess.”

Adam produced a flashlight and affixed it to his helmet. He offered a carabiner to Alfie so that he might latch himself onto the safety line before beginning to climb hand over hand up the slick incline. He led the way up ice shelves and hacked his way through the perpetual forests of icicles that formed strange silent forests in the tunnels. The expeditioners’ reflections were cast in dim distortions through the caves, and Adam occasionally raised a hand for a halt and flicked off the light as much larger shapes momentarily drifted across the ice, or even directly through it in some cases.

“So, have you and Leah always been together? Did you like, rule Rome or something back in the day,” Adam asked as he washed a massive many-limbed shape swim through the ice below them as if where a whale drifting in the ocean.

Hooking himself onto the line behind Adam, Alfie cautiously trailed behind him. As much as he tried to mirror Adam’s every move, he couldn’t help but envision a tragic death for the both of them when his eyes wandered for too long. His knees buckled underneath him, threatening to make his fears become a reality before Adam spoke up.

“Not always, no,” Alfie mindlessly replied. His eyes shot back up to Adam on the line ahead of him once he realized he’d said too much. As far as Alfie was aware, Leah wasn’t privy to this sort of information herself. “I mean… we’ve been around each other for as long as I can remember, but unless one of our parents has something to hide, I think it’s safe to say we’re not fully related.” Alfie wasn’t sure if this was making things better or worse for his case.

“Like you said before, it’s pretty rare for… people like us to stick together.” Despite the fact that Adam knew, Alfie still couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘phoenix’ in front of him. “Definitely didn’t rule ancient Rome together, though. I don’t think either of us have been around that long.” As grateful as Alfie was for the distracting conversation, he wasn’t particularly keen on discussing the nitty-gritty details of his heritage. Partially because most of what he did know was from stolen property, but also because it only begged more questions about why he was fated to die sooner than the rest of his family.

“I am much disappoint,” pronounced Adam with false solemnity, “I was all ready to here the secret history of Emperor Phoeligula….Chickligula?...Spartunix?”

The spelunkers no longer how to crouch as they passed into a cave that abruptly expanded into a vaulted ceiling of  stalactites that glittered like crystal chandeliers in the lamplight.  The cavern’s sweeping floor was riven by jagged fissures tens of feet in width with the spider-webbing cracks of impact that expanded outward from the far side. It was as if something massive had exploded into this part of the glacier but time and relentless arctic conditions had frozen it over. At the far end of the cavern was an ornate door set in worked stone, a mirrored entrance to Voorhees Clocktower

“Well here we are….gotta see if Grabby Gaby is up.”

For a moment, Alfie stared at Adam incredulously before murmuring a soft, “Uhhh…” But as he heaved himself onto more solid ground, he chose to drop the subject altogether. “Trust me, if I remember anything like that, I’ll hit you up,” he stated instead.

With a quick look around, Alfie shirked away. He’d been so eager to get out of this hellscape the moment he arrived, yet even with the exit in sight, something felt off. The first time Adam mentioned ‘Grabby Gabby’, Alfie falsely assumed that it was yet another affectionate nickname for one of the beasts he’d already been introduced to. Now he was much less certain. “Let me guess,” he said, taking a few uncertain steps forward. “Gabby isn’t as social as Jasper? But still has a tendency to not let any houseguests leave?”

“Pretty much” Adam looked at the fissures for a time before turning back to Alfie. “Do you have any fireballs left in you?”

Great, Alfie thought. That was reassuring. “Maybe one or two,” he reluctantly replied. His palms turned upwards as he gave Adam a shrug. Better to save his energy for when it counted most. “Just tell me when.”

Adam motioned for Alfie to follow after re-bandaging his leg with some cloth from his bag, trying to staunch the wound enough to make the run.

Adam wove a precarious path among the ice fissures as black tentacles exploded upward. Each of the sinuous limbs were covered by electric blue fern-like structures instead that splayed out into delicate coils. The tentacles snaking after Adam, their bioluminescent fern hairs incandescently beautiful in the darkness. Soon they seemed to be running through a rubbery forest of black trees with glowing frond branches.

“If you have any fire left that’d be great,” shouted Adam as he sliced open tentacles with scything swings of his picks.

As soon as Adam kicked it into gear, hulking into the face of danger, Alfie followed suit. But nothing had prepared him for the mass of tendrils awaiting them. Had it not been for Adam’s exhortation, he would have frozen amongst the beast’s tentacles and met his fate. “Yeah, yep… workin’ on it!” he called back. Mustering whatever energy he had left in him, Alfie willed his hands to spark.

Alfie narrowly dodged a glittering pillar of black that whirred past him, just before releasing a fiery orb, striking further down the monster’s tentacle. There wasn’t much time for him to recoup. With the clock-tower well within his sights, he had to push himself. He might not be able to save Nell, but he could at least live another day to see her, and help get Adam to safety in the process.

Another ball of fire shot from the palm of his hand as he weaved through it, jumping over the beast’s appendages as needed. “What’s the situation over there?” Alfie croaked, trying his level best to keep his voice free of desperation.

“Go go go! She’s a c’moning oh shit!

Adam carved a path of blue blood through the forest of tentacles, ducking away from the impacts of Alfie’s fireballs before charging though the withered stumps to those closer to the door. But the cavern kept filled with more and more undulating coils and glowing cilia ferns as Grabby Gabby’s true horrific body began to emerge from the depths of the fissures.

“Don't look back, just go!”

Adam desperately beckoned Alfie through the door as tendrils slithered greedily after. He slammed it shut just as the cavern filled with a sound like the wind screaming as it was cut into pieces.

[olivemeister]

OKAY NEO THOUGHTS NOW THAT I’VE BEATEN IT AND HAD TIME TO MARINATE. no spoilers for another day bc i haven’t finished it yet, but i did go “no, why shan’t i? i have the internet” and watched the secret endings on youtube so those and the secret reports will be discussed. yeah. so here’s some thoughts. i’m going to talk a lot about the more contentious things, i think. and again i haven’t finished another day so nothing to do with that, but of course major ending spoilers for the main scenario.

these are my opinions both as a writer and a media consumer, so there’s kinda two levels here. it is very freeform “as i think of it” structurally so my sincerest apologies if it’s all over the place. i am trying to keep specific topics confined rather than splattering the same plot point/whatever all through the post, but it’s not like i’m posting a peer-revied academic essay here. it’s also fucking enormous and i would say sorry but that would be a lie.

the majority of the game, i actually really enjoyed. the localization was excellent and i can’t praise it enough. i know people threw fits over the “horrible overstep” of... teenagers using slang. but did you know, in real life, teenagers use slang? even in japan, there’s slang? wild but true! the dialogue was great, and while i can’t say much re: the jp cast since i played in english, the newcomers for the english cast were spectacular. i actually think the newcomers were, in some cases, stronger than the returning cast. even in characters where i didn’t like the voice (nagi had to grow on me, i admit it), they were a fantastic match for the character’s personality.

the emotional beats re: character deaths, typically, landed the way i think the writers wanted; kanon’s death in week 3 had me devastated even though i could see it coming a mile away. i think that’s a testament to the best parts of the writing; as soon as i understood how the current game was being run, i knew it was fairly inevitable that every other team would eventually lose. odds would be that, barring something like someone changing teams or a team merger, the majority of the other teams would be completely wiped out. i knew far in advance that kanon would likely not make it to the end of the story, but it still fucked me up when it finally happened not just because i cared about kanon, but also because of how much the other characters cared about her. some character deaths affected me far less, of course. i think kanon was the epitome of “this hit exactly as hard as the writers wanted it to”, but i do feel they fell short with others. ayano’s lack of development really hurt my ability to be saddened by her death, especially when it was so clear that she set up her own possession as a trap for shoka. it undermined things for shoka in general, because while she was devastated to lose ayano, the game did a poor job at making their relationship tangible and meaningful. i felt worse (not necessarily sadder, just worse) about motoi’s death, and i didn’t like motoi. speaking of him...

the biggest issue i have with the game is a chronic square enix issue. kubo is the Man Pulling The Strings, whatever, this is fine. the problem is that he, minamimoto, motoi, and arguably susukichi are the only characters in the game with dark skin. they are all morally grey at best. i don’t think i need to elaborate on why this is an issue. we’re not going to pretend that racism and colorism don’t exist in japan. i’m just going to say that all of the dark-skinned characters are either totally evil, excessively violent, and/or morally dubious. this is my biggest qualm, but i don’t feel it needs more elaboration. yes, i know motoi turns it around in the end. yes, i know susukichi ultimately changes sides as well, and he’s ultimately portrayed as sympathetic. minamimoto is........ his own beast. but the fact remains that we don’t get a single major character who’s darker and unambiguously heroic.

second big issue is that while i understand the decision to keep shiki off camera until the very end for emotional impact, i feel like this was to the detriment of the story and to the detriment of said impact. she was mentioned, sure, and she was briefly seen from the shoulders down in a cutscene long before her introduction, but i feel that this was ultimately for the worse. her absence in the plot made her a borderline non-entity that can easily leave the audience going “why should i care about this?” on what’s supposed to be a huge emotional cathartic moment. yes, people should know this is a sequel and neku and shiki’s friendship was a crucial part of the original game, and much of the endgame of neo makes no sense if you’re unfamiliar with the original, but their interactions in the ending felt incredibly shallow. and i think this is because of how little shiki appears and how isolated she is from her other friends. eri is unseen and unmentioned. she doesn’t interact with rhyme. she hardly interacts with beat, using him as a translator at best. her other relationships are just... stagnant at best, ignored at worst, and despite having had just as vital of a role in the first game as beat did, she does nothing of import onscreen. her only narrative actions are “fix mr mew (mentioned but not seen)” and “be sad about neku”. so, functionally...

for some reason (we know why) the story decided that the only thing that was important to shiki was seeing neku. but by holding off on this reveal of her, we lost the impact that their meeting could have had. because the game refused to show her it didn’t show how much his absence was affecting her, which leaves their reunion feeling incredibly hollow. shiki was gone for upwards of 90% of the game. if not for the first game, this reunion would mean nothing; the narrative does a terrible job of reminding the audience that neku and shiki have a strong relationship and i don’t know if it’s that they expected the first game to have done the heavy lifting, or they thought that what neo gave us was good rather than “good enough”. imo this was an enormous failure and i wish we had gotten more for her both as part of the plot and as a character.

this was an issue present with rhyme as well imo, though to a lesser degree. i think they should have given up the ghost much sooner on confirming that the shadowed figure was rhyme; it was obvious by the time they showed us her silhouette, so i don’t know why the narrative held off on showing her. they didn’t have to introduce her to rindo (or give her the name splash screen) yet, but people who played the first game and are paying attention know it’s rhyme, so why bother hiding her? most of what rhyme accomplishes in this game is off-camera as well, but she has double the screen time that shiki gets.

the shiki thing is another symptom of a common squeenix problem these days, which is poorly-handled implied romantic interests. and i think that was also present with how the end of the game treated shoka. rindo and shoka as an implied romance in general did not bother me; more than a lot of squeenix protags, and perhaps primarily because of the excellent job the english cast did, i actually was unbothered by the suggestion of budding romantic feelings because it felt genuine. they actually felt like a pair of teenagers who were starting to be interested in each other, trying to play it cool and prioritize. this, and shoka’s characterization in general, is really helped by the reveal of swallow’s identity; it retroactively heightens her closeness to rindo specifically and offers enormous insight into her decision to help the team covertly. however, i think this budding implied romance was severely undermined by having other characters comment on it, especially because it felt so out of place timing-wise whenever someone commented. it was never warranted; there are times where they seem to be... not flirting, but not doing a good job of pretending there isn’t an interest. this is not when comments come. the comments come when they are having a totally normal interaction that does not suggest any non-platonic feelings whatsoever.

up until the final day, i had fairly ambivalent feelings about the idea of them as the designated hetero pairing. i felt it was a vast improvement from recent shoehorned romances in squeenix properties. the ending made things much more contentious to me, specifically how shoka is vanished by joshua. the audience should at least have the suspicion that he’s reviving her, but the circumstances surrounding it are the problem more than joshua being a deus ex machina. it’s not the first time joshua was a troll re: reviving someone, but the context of why shoka’s revival is necessary is, well... unnecessary.

they barely foreshadow the shinjuku rules re: reapers, and i will freely admit it’s not remotely ooc for shoka to hide something like that until she can’t any more. but they seem to be just a contrived excuse for shoka to be taken away... and from the framing of it, not from the player, but from rindo. which, i don’t know that i need elaborate on why i wasn’t fond of that. and i won’t lie - i know everybody beefed it in those cutscenes, including beat and neku. but when the dissonance noise grabbed shoka it gave me the exact same vibe as the demon tide grabbing kairi in kh3, and i don’t think i need to elaborate more on why that would put a bad taste in my mouth and make me fearful for shoka’s future treatment in the game. i was worried that the narrative was going to yank her away from rindo like a prize being snatched from him, and it did! while i do also think it’s ic for joshua to fuck around the way he did when reviving her, it also seems contrived and brings up a major question.

if shoka is still playing by shinjuku rules, why does shibuya’s composer have the ability to overturn her erasure? yes, i know, shinjuku is gone, but its composer is still active. surely joshua having the authority to do what he did indicates that on a cosmic bureaucracy level, shoka is a shibuya reaper. the secret reports offer a potential that joshua exploited a loophole by waiting until the second after the shinjuku rules resulted in shoka’s soul being dissolved in order to snatch it up, so perhaps the explanation is that her erasure meant she was technically no longer a shinjuku reaper and no longer beholden to its rules. but that doesn’t answer a different question that honestly bothers me more than the admittedly sorta insignificant question of whether or not joshua overstepped in reviving shoka.

shinjuku’s game has ended because shinjuku has ended; why are its rules still in play for former shinjuku reapers? i am aware that shiba is the conductor “legally” and he has made changes to shibuya’s game, but they’re careful to specify that the “ex-reapers are erased at the end of the game” rules are from shinjuku and do not apply to shibuya reapers. is she considered by the higher plane to be joshua’s underling and not hazuki’s? the secret reports confirm that the transfer of personnel from the destroyed shinjuku to shibuya was authorized by the acting conductor (uzuki) and this is standard procedure, everything was done properly. so “legally” the formerly-shinjuku reapers are shibuya reapers, right? hanekoma notes in particular that it’s a culture clash leading to the shinjuku reapers being designated as such and that they’re only nominally shinjuku reapers. why are a defunct game’s rules still active?

the biggest issue is that shoka’s threat of erasure was unnecessary from a narrative perspective, especially given how quickly it’s introduced and resolved. what was the point of putting this in the story if five minutes later the issue is just dealt with, no effort, minimal tension, by a (narratively speaking, don’t come after me joshua fans) minor character who doesn’t even appear until after the plot is resolved? i honestly wonder if it was just the writers deciding joshua needed to do something so that his appearance in the ending wasn’t just shallow fanservice for people who wanted to see the original gang. joshua’s lack of action is also presumably going to be contentious with fans; i’ve read the secret reports, and i don’t feel that they sufficiently justify why he doesn’t make any moves to protect his city despite being positioned both in his own dialogue and the secret reports as someone opposing shibuya’s purification. i will talk about this a little later re: kubo’s motivations though.

i also think it’s kind of stupid that joshua sets up “find her and you win” and then... rindo doesn’t do anything in that regard. he just bumps into her in the scramble. i know i already said i hate the idea of her being a prize to be won in a game but if they’re going to set it up, why make it pointless in that regard? it feels so unnecessary. joshua portrays shoka’s revival/return as something to be earned, and unlike the ending of twewy there’s no recognition that he was actually just fucking with them.

this is similar to my mixed feelings about kubo’s defeat. on one hand, i wanted to smash his face in personally, i have hated him the entire game. on the other hand, having him jesus beamed and rewritten out of existence without any warning or chance to resist was fucking hilarious and i actually laughed out loud. my speculation as to why he didn’t get a boss fight is that developers worried about people having trouble suspending disbelief over the party being able to defeat an angel. ultimately i think the only way this could have been done was to have it be a boss battle where your victory doesn’t matter, like the week 1 fight with susukichi, and have hazuki curbstomp kubo in the post-battle cutscenes. ultimately, i feel like this was a lesser of two evils; i don’t think the “you lose in the cutscene” approach would have necessarily been significantly better than what we got, i recognize that “the battle didn’t matter and you lose in the cutscene after” is a contentious game trope. and i would understand people struggling to accept the cast defeating a being from a higher plane without intervention from said higher plane. the only benefit would be the catharsis of getting to slap kubo around, which admittedly i kind of miss. having him as a secret boss was an option i guess but i think it would bring more questions than it was worth.

kubo’s motivation is also just bizarre; i understand that it’s given as him getting overzealous after carrying out his orders to purify shinjuku, but why? i feel like this could have easily been fixed/rationalized by “shinjuku’s surviving reapers fled to shibuya, leading kubo to consider shibuya to be an extension of shinjuku”, but that’s solely speculation. i do not know why kubo decided to also start an inversion in shibuya. they didn’t give me enough information. his conflict with joshua is inexplicable and almost entirely offscreen via the secret reports. i do not feel like i have a grasp on why the plot of the game even happened. hazuki’s involvement is iffy; i can’t say whether he initially approved of kubo’s overstep and changed his mind, or if he just took his time collecting his errant underling. the secret reports suggest the former, and hanekoma noting that the contentious nature of the previous game’s events gives a speculative explanation for why no action was taken if hazuki was actually making moves against shibuya rather than kubo being out of line. hazuki could damn well have been lying, there’s a precedent for composers being full of shit and telling bold-faced lies to protagonists, though in the previous game these lies were all eventually uncovered. this leaves me to believe that ultimately, hazuki’s statements regarding kubo acting outside of his given authority were mostly honest. but what i don’t understand is why joshua took such a hands-off approach.

yes, he says he figured the main cast had it under control and would have stepped in had things gotten worse, but this appearance and statement comes long after rindo fails and shibuya is destroyed in multiple timelines. why did he not step in in the first timeline? i can speculate, but the game and secret reports do not do a great job in explaining why the proxy vs. proxy game even happened in the first place. kubo is hazuki’s underling, which makes joshua higher in the pecking order than kubo. if hazuki was capable of exorcising kubo instantaneously, why didn’t joshua just flick him off the board like a flea before he even got started trying to cause an inversion in shibuya? in the epilogue of a new day joshua is seen in conversation with hanekoma, who’s taking shinjuku’s inversion seriously, which seems at odds with how easily his fellow composer ends the problem.

retroactively, i guess i could rationalize this as him realizing that either shinjuku’s composer must be responsible for said inversion or that potentially shinjuku’s composer has been compromised in some way. and i can rationalize him failing to immediately jesus beam kubo as well - it’s possible that, as kubo was initially acting under the orders of another composer (assuming hazuki is still technically “legally” one/at the bureaucratic level of one), joshua’s hands were somewhat tied re: what actions he could take without potential consequences. it could be that joshua would get in big trouble if he took disciplinary action against another composer’s underling, but 1. the legal transfer of personnel should mean kubo is joshua’s underling, not hazuki’s, see the shoka problem 2. hazuki’s status as a composer is questionable given that his territory is now purified and its game is defunct 3. given that kubo was acting outside of his original composer’s turf and outside of his initial orders (purify shinjuku) at this point i feel like that isn’t likely. it could be that he was trying to avoid a conflict with hazuki himself. it may be that he considered it hazuki’s responsibility to retrieve kubo, but that’s at odds with him choosing a proxy to combat kubo’s and his claims that he totally would have done something, really, he swears. they don’t give us much info at all as to why joshua entered a game with kubo in the first place. i have reason to believe that something’s fishy in the secret reports, and i would like to see the japanese text, which i’ll mention again in a few paragraphs.

i know the absence of shibuya’s composer is partially, and perhaps primarily, “there wouldn’t be a plot if joshua fixed it”. but it really feels like they just kinda tucked joshua in the corner and hoped fans wouldn’t be like “hey where is shibuya’s composer and why is no one mentioning them?” that part is probably for the same reason we don’t see shiki until the very ending, teasing the audience by holding off on revealing him until the last second, but it’s jarring to me that shiki is mentioned but neither neku, beat, nor any of the reapers (!) think “we should contact the composer”. even if just to say “we can’t contact the composer, he is unreachable”! i guess it’s to avoid people remembering how significant joshua is and thinking too hard about it, because joshua is simply too powerful of a character to be running around freely. the plot falls apart when you have a character who’s so strong and, in his own words, kind of omnipotent, who could trivialize the conflict in an instant if he took action.

i feel like they surely could have given a more explicit reason for him to not be involved in the story, even if it’s a reason like “he’s in trouble with the higher plane”. which could have easily been set up! hanekoma is clear in his reports that shibuya’s impurification is highly contentious in the higher plane; people are big mad about it, potentially people higher in the chain of command than a composer. this could have been easily utilized as an explanation for why joshua is hands-off; he’s on a shit list and needs to step carefully as a result. but it’s just not addressed. hanekoma is unreachable according to his reports, and he notes that people are trying to contact him for help. are we just to assume that people have looked for joshua to ask for help in the past but it was so long ago that it isn’t even worth mentioning now to the newcomers? according to other reports, the higher ups are pissed with joshua about his game with kitaniji and are turning a blind eye to what’s happening with kubo in shibuya as a result. but this doesn’t explain why the members of the shibuya UG never discuss the composer. hanekoma’s reports have him confused as to joshua’s lack of action as well; he knows the context of what’s going on in shibuya but doesn’t understand why joshua is staying silent.

that said! the fact that hazuki’s motive for the destruction of shinjuku is never stated does not bother me too much. he’s placed in a position very parallel to joshua in the first game, and he even says he felt like he was following in josh’s footsteps. when you add his seemingly-genuine inability to understand why people care about shibuya, i feel there’s enough evidence to... not dismiss, but nudge this aside as “He Too is a misanthropic bastard”; shinjuku’s destruction is a parallel to the intended destruction of shibuya in the first game. hazuki just carried on where joshua had a change of heart. the secret reports complicate this; it might be that someone fucked up in transcribing, but the reports i read online state that shibuya’s composer, i.e. joshua, was responsible for the destruction of shinjuku due to a game with kubo. this does not make sense given everything else, including hazuki’s own statements and later reports, so i’m setting that aside for the moment as either an uncaught mistake either in translation or transcription online (most likely) or hanekoma not knowing the actual truth until receiving the post-purification shinjuku reports. hanekoma also suggests that hazuki’s goal was also the purification of shibuya, but as he’s not shibuya’s composer this is certainly not his jurisdiction so i’m curious as to what exactly happened there.

EDIT: i’ve been informed by a helpful anon that this is not a mistranslation, the japanese secret reports do state that it was a game involving joshua that resulted in shinjuku’s inversion. with that in mind, i have figured out how to rationalize this and it solves a lot of problems: if it was a proxy game between joshua and kubo, then joshua must have been the opposition to shinjuku’s inversion. though you could argue that joshua is responsible for the end result, he didn’t destroy shinjuku; his proxy lost, probably because kubo’s had the support of shinjuku’s composer. kubo’s overconfidence in running rampant in shibuya is now explicable and he may have been trying to rub it in that joshua lost.

if hazuki was still backing kubo post-shinjuku, this could explain why hazuki felt he could make decisions about shibuya’s fate and wander around it; joshua had already overstepped onto his turf to meddle in purification, so he was returning the favor. at this point in time, i figure that joshua’s proxy was either tsugumi’s brother (shinjuku’s conductor) or coco (she’s noted to have inexplicable powers for a rank-and-file reaper, but joshua’s opposition to her killing of neku throws this into question), and if we truly had a scrapped “shinjuku’s final game” plot then joshua’s proxy could also have been neku. kubo’s proxy was presumably shiba. this actually answers a few questions that i couldn’t rationalize when i assumed joshua was uninvolved (why would shinjuku’s composer be running a game against kubo when they wanted the same thing?), so i’m gonna chalk it up as an absolute win.

i think hishima as a character was... sort of nothing. he was just there. yeah, it was kinda funny how he dressed shiba down, but i don’t know that the plot needed him. his role in the endgame could have easily been given to tsugumi without much fuss, and i feel tsugumi deserved a much bigger part in the narrative given how much she was hyped up by solo and final remix. she was so prominent and anticipated that the fans called her hype-chan for years before we had a name for her. this could also be folded into the problem with hiding shiki until the very end; it feels like we missed a whole sequence with both of these characters simply because the narrative refused to show us shiki. instead, we’re told that shiki showed up and fixed mr. mew, and somehow this freed tsugumi. i think the fact that they don’t even give a flashback of this crucial event after shiki’s proper introduction is just a questionable decision. the story tells us that tsugumi’s release from the plushie is of the utmost importance and shiba can’t be swayed without her, setting it up as a vital event, but it happens offscreen with no real interaction with the main cast. it also only happens after multiple failed loops, even though rindo’s interference is what prevents the meeting between coco and shiki to repair the plushie. i don’t understand this from a logistical standpoint; if coco isn’t pulled to escort rhyme, she must have met with shiki and released tsugumi in timely manner, but tsugumi does not appear until after you replay to get coco back to her original schedule. you could wave it off as “she didn’t get there fast enough”, but i can’t accept that as a reason given the circumstances; it’s not like she would have to look hard to find shiba. this one’s flawed writing; i know in a meta sense why she didn’t appear, it was to build tension etc etc, but in-universe it’s a plot hole.

coco being so absent from the plot is also somewhat conspicuous. i wonder what reception of her was like in japan and if that influenced her lack of presence in the story. i honestly don’t even know if she was received well by the english audience, all i know is that i did not like her at all in final remix. not from an “i don’t like the villain because they’re doing bad things” perspective, from an “i don’t find this character compelling and i think they’re annoying” perspective. also curious as to whether or not her speech patterns changed in the japanese dialogue since final remix; i found her far less jarring and obnoxious in neo and i think it’s enormously because she stopped talking verbally in internet shorthand. overall, coco’s retool was imo a change for the better, but she’s barely there for me to appreciate how much of an improvement she was. it feels like there’s an entire narrative we were set up for by a new day, yet it’s almost completely missing. the ending of a new day laid out this framework for neku and minamimoto to be forced allies in an unseen future game. i had mixed feelings about this conceptually, but the narrative setup was fairly transparent. not only does this not happen, coco’s motivation in a new day and what ultimately happened were so lacking to me.

i feel like something got lost and we were originally going to actually see and perhaps play the shinjuku game that ended in disaster instead of just getting a summation and brief flashbacks of the survivors fleeing. this kinda ties in with my complaints about how hyped tsugumi was by solo and final remix, and then she turned out to have a very small (albeit crucial, via her trailer ability) and mostly unseen role in neo’s story. retroactively we learn that rindo’s visions are from tsugumi, but this is something she does entirely off-screen. all of coco’s scheming was for nothing, because joshua was a deus ex machina and whisked neku away the second he died. this feels to me like cut content or rewrites; there’s a whole game’s worth of story that just happened off-camera and we got to hear a little bit about it. it wasn’t enough, imo. i think doing it as a midquel is still possible, but it’s a hard sell to create a video game with a downer ending and we know shinjuku’s fate is already set in stone... even though a new day ended on the tragic cliffhanger of neku’s death, it’s a little different since it’s coming as an optional postgame sequel hook after victory rather than the entire narrative you fought through ending in failure. i suppose it could be done with a Distant Epilogue now that we know shiba and most of his surviving reapers will return to rebuild shinjuku. ultimately i really think that if not for the concern about neku overshadowing the new cast, shinjuku’s purification could and should have been the prologue to neo. it would be a tough balancing act, but i do think it could have been done right and it would have done a lot for narrative tension with his absence if we had a prologue following him that ends in a cliffhanger re: shinjuku’s purification. neku’s role in the story was done decently i think re: how big said role was, but a lot of circumstances surrounding his absence, legendary status, and reappearance leave much to be desired.

frankly, i just don’t like how much they glossed over neku’s three year absence. we’re given a vague explanation of what he was doing, but it isn’t actually an explanation. definitely again feels like a plot rewrite situation; there’s this huge blank space of neku doing nothing because there used to be a story that we were going to play through and it got scrapped for whatever reason. overall i feel neku’s characterization was very odd and perhaps a little inconsistent in this game; he didn’t have much of a personality at all, which i struggle to reconcile with the original game. we don’t see how he reconciled with coco, it’s just dismissed entirely as “no we’re good now”. how are we good? why did you forgive her for playing murder games instead of just explaining shit? i know he forgave joshua for his gatekeep gaslight girlboss behavior in the first game, but we had context as to why he made that decision. also what the fuck was keeping him from coming back to shibuya, i don’t feel like that was sufficiently explained either? for someone who was so hyped up by the narrative, i was a little let down by how insignificant neku ended up being to the plot as a whole. and again, his personality seemed very watered down and neutral despite the seriousness of the situation. why was he so mellow? the circumstances of his return i did really like, because... well, we’ll talk about character relationships i guess.

i already summed up my feelings on rindo and shoka and i think i’ll leave them on the note of “unnecessary elements dampened my potential for overt enthusiasm, but overall i feel neutral-positive about the suggestion of romantic interest” which is a lot more than i can say about a lot of (semi-)official pairings. on a broader and more platonic scale? generally i have positive feelings about the new cast and their interactions; i feel like their development is more understated than neku’s in the first game, his character arc is very in your face and the neo cast is not nearly as overt, but you can see the difference in how the team interacts across the three weeks. rindo and fret’s established friendship, not to be dismissive of it, does exactly what it needs to. i mean this in a completely positive way. it’s an established friendship, they feel like friends, and they serve initially as anchors to one another in the beginning of the game as a “you’re the only person i know in this chaos” setup. this contrasts neku in the first game in an excellent way because of how it highlights their biggest character flaws, which i’ll talk about later; it’s important to rindo’s fatal flaw that he has someone to fall back and rely on in the beginning of the game in the same way that it’s crucial for neku’s development that he’s surrounded by strangers who he must learn to trust and rely on in order to survive. rindo and fret can lean on each other in the beginning of the game, and as people who have known each other for some time, are able to recognize and appreciate each others’ positive changes.

i do love the development of nagi’s friendship with fret, particularly how it’s sometimes but not always remarked on when she shelves her initial aloof attitude with him. i prefer when a narrative is more subtle on that kind of thing; pointing it out every once in a while is okay, but i don’t want it shoved down my throat via dialogue that characters are developing an emotional bond. we can see that nagi is slowly becoming more receptive to fret and less likely to dismiss or disparage him. it seems like their initial relationship is that of two people who have opposite struggles; nagi is notably closed off in the beginning, but fret immediately approaches her with an unearned and offputting level of familiarity. their slow and understated (more noticeable with nagi than fret) development towards accepting each other as friends is mutually beneficial to them even outside of the context of their personal relationship; nagi opens up a little with everyone, not just fret. placing two people with very different perspectives on how to interact with new people in close proximity helped both of them grow. i’m sure other people have different perspectives, but i do not feel like they were being teased as a pairing which i enormously appreciate, i am tired of “pair the spares” shit. (minor note: i also appreciate how while fret’s crush on kanon was very overt and strong, she was also fairly clear that she considered him a kid and his feelings were never going to be reciprocated because of that age gap. i know, the bar is low, but thank god.)

i love how, despite nagi now having been confirmed as older than beat, as soon as beat joins the narrative he takes this hard stance of “i’m the one who’s already been in this hellscape so it’s my responsibility to help the newbies”. he really embodies the big brother role so well in this game; he knows a little more about what’s going on, this isn’t his first rodeo even if it’s not exactly the same, so he considers himself to have an obligation to protect the others. he serves as sort of a physical and emotional rock for the team from the second he joins, becoming an excellent support for them both as a combatant and an older brother figure. he has experience in being both of these things, and i think beat’s writing is some of the best in the game.

despite his position as a former player who’s back in the UG, he meshes with the newbies perfectly. he doesn’t overshadow the rest of the team despite having more lived (ha) experience in the reaper’s game, he doesn’t feel like he’s on a different level from them or anything like that. he fits in while serving an important unique role that he can only fill because of his prior time in the UG. it’s completely understandable and reasonable why rindo remains the team leader despite beat’s presence. he’s had a three year gap since his last game and doesn’t even understand how he returned to the UG. he’s not a fish out of water, he knows the UG and the game. but he’s really truly gotta shake the dust off, and he’s trying to figure out what happened to him in the first place because he knows he shouldn’t be in the UG at all. he didn’t have a huge bump in intelligence since the first game, but it’s hard to dismiss him as a complete idiot. he has both large and small perceptive moments where another narrative might have chosen to keep him as the dumb muscle. in fact, his firm convictions serve an important role for the others - beat knows he didn’t die and can’t be convinced otherwise, and his confidence that he’s a living player is part of how rindo and gang realize they also aren’t dead. he’s clearly not simply a comic relief character. another story might have positioned him as more of a mentor figure, but he plays to his strengths and serves to ground the team instead. beat is honestly a highlight of this ensemble cast to me. i’m unsure as to how much of that is simply because he was one of my favorites from the first game, but i really truly love beat in this game.

shoka and neku’s late introductions to the team mean they have far less “we are now firmly allies and friends” interactions with the rest of the ensemble for unavoidable reasons. i will say that the excellent casting and localization for the english version, particularly shoka, has done a lot to mitigate that issue; yes, the plot doesn’t develop her relationships with the team as a whole as thoroughly as some of the others, but the combat interactions with her are so genuine that i found myself shocked when writing this because, well, those combat lines did so much legwork making her role in the party seem earned and cohesive. i had such a strong sense of her place in the team that just isn’t reflected in the cutscenes, and i find that very interesting but i’m unsure as to whether it’s good or bad; i think it’s incredible that the combat dialogue did such a good job fostering this air of “we are a unit” for these characters and it really is a testament to the skill of these actors, but i do wish it was more prevalent in the cutscenes itself. beat’s established relationship with neku and their relaxed nature with one another does a lot to ease neku’s entry into the group; he has an “in” with a firmly established member and a well-written dynamic with him that helps him out here.

as a nekubeat appreciator i feel very fed and i hope there’s an uptick in interest for the pairing following neo. i love how beat, who throughout the game is constantly forgetting who people from 3 years ago are (doesn’t recognize his former superior bc she’s wearing a suit now and can’t even remember her name), immediately recognizes coco despite her changing her entire aesthetic specifically because he’s so angry with her for killing neku. he’s ready to throw down the second he sees her, which gives this feeling of “he’s been waiting for this moment for 3 years”. because the narrative never addresses beat’s change in style, particularly that he wears his hair like neku now, i choose to believe it’s because the last time he saw neku was immediately after coco shot and killed him. it could be that this shit’s been haunting him ever since neku died. my city now, if you don’t talk about it in the game i make shit up. both their cutscene interactions and combat quotes do an excellent job of maintaining the sense that these two have been close friends for a long time and distance hasn’t changed that. they fall right back into old ways with one another immediately.

even outside of the context of me being a nekubeat shipper, their relationship and continued partnership (UG game context partnership) feels very genuine. neku and joshua call each other partner, but it rings hollow. i’m sure it’s partially the lack of screentime that makes it so they don’t feel like partners any more than neku and shiki do, but the game doesn’t even try to push closeness the way it does for shiki - more on that in a minute. beat is the only one of neku’s partners that seems to have retained the same strength in their bond with him despite the three years; shiki and joshua are super absent in the plot, which really undermines their relationships with neku. i’ve already talked about my problems with shiki’s lack of focus and how i feel it harms her relationship with neku, but as for neku’s relationship with joshua, i think neo has taken an interesting approach that i feel will have a mixed reception.

it actually feels like neku and joshua ended this game on worse terms than the first one even though joshua was a far more benevolent figure this time around. neku is very clear about wanting to return to the RG despite this meaning he will have no access to the UG (outside of potentially text-based communication since rhyme paved the way for RG residents to bust into the RNS and... however it was that shoka’s fanGO account worked, since she and rindo were fanGO friends long before his entry to the UG) and doesn’t show any hesitation or reluctance in stating this desire. he seems quite content with not having joshua be a part of his life, as opposed to the first game’s ending where he extends an open offer to joshua to join his friend group. i understand how this would (and will) let a lot of people down, but i actually think it’s for the best. i have no real opinion on neku’s capacity for forgiving joshua after the first game, good or bad, but i think putting distance between them in this game is the correct move.

i take this viewpoint especially given that after the first game, joshua did in fact choose this distance - neku invited him in, and he did not take the offer. it was his decision to not join neku’s group in the first game’s ending and he continued to remain separate from it in the three year gap; he may have masqueraded as a fellow player and peer in age, but joshua is not and has never been an actual peer to neku, shiki, and beat. his life experiences are so different from theirs that i would struggle to suspend disbelief that they have enough in common to maintain a close friendship. he intervened when neku was killed by coco and placed him in a safe area and gave moral support in the ending, and i think this is the most we should expect of a reforming (not reformed but in-progress) misanthrope like joshua. he’s an enigmatic figure sure and largely benevolent if inactive in this game, but he isn’t a good person and he clearly considers himself to be on a different level from neku and his peers. hanekoma notes that joshua’s somewhat reluctant to continue to remain separate from neku’s group, but i think the narrative places him both objectively and in his own mind as someone who is just... from a different world. joshua chose distance, he chose to cut contact, and this is the consequence of that decision. i think that’s a good lesson to teach; it may not be a given, but it’s natural that sometimes a friendship you ignore will fade. it doesn’t necessarily mean the time you spent didn’t matter, but you shouldn’t be shocked if a plant you don’t water wilts away.

i feel like that wasn’t the intended takeaway, that it was just questionable writing that i’m reading too deep into, but that’s how i feel about the situation.

i’m also incredibly grateful that hazuki was introduced as an age-appropriate option for joshua and i hope they’ll draw attention as a bastard boyfriends ship, both because i think it’s very funny and because i have opinions about shipping joshua with the teens. i know it’s contentious and i’m not going too deep into it, so what i’m going to say is this. the secret reports state in plain objective text that joshua downtuning his vibes aged him down and his true appearance is older. neither the narrative nor supplementary info state anything about how old josh was when he died or how long he’s been a reaper/the composer (reapers ageing is ??? as well, we don’t know if it’s not a thing or if it’s optional or what). however, it is firmly canon that he is older than 15. if that canon upsets you then that’s your problem to either work through or ignore indefinitely. suffice to say, joshua and hazuki do not have the schrodinger’s pedophile issue and i wholly support and strongly encourage that over the alternative for this reason and again because i find it funny and think they deserve each other. i hate to say hazuki is a healthy choice for joshua because i think both of them are just walking messes, but they are actual peers on the same tier of the higher plane pecking order and more importantly the disaster they could be as a couple has infinite potential.

on the girls side of things, i am still mad about eri’s absence not just because it’s a relationship shiki had that just got ignored. i know the story wants us to believe that neku and shiki have something but shiki and eri had more. i’m sorry writers you made a more compelling f/f ship by accident in the first game and i am not invested in the one you weakly suggested between neku and shiki here. if you made shiki have more of a role in neo maybe i’d feel differently, or maybe you would have screwed it up worse. we’ll never know. i think it’s a shame that they couldn’t make me care about neku and shiki as a pairing, but it is what it is.

i was briefly worried that the game would try to suggest something between kaie and rhyme because sometimes people lose their minds when a boy and girl stand next to each other, but i was quickly set at ease with that one. they felt like two people who are starting to straddle that line of acquaintance/friend in a believable way despite how little interaction between them we see, and i appreciate that. i was also briefly worried that fret would develop a crush on rhyme based on his initial reaction at being introduced to her, but again quickly dismissed. can you tell i’m a little gun shy about strangled “him boy her girl” romances in fiction these days? yeah. i’ve been let down too much recently by bad writing.

i think all of the party members could have benefited from more development with one another outside of combat lines - i would like to see more interaction between nagi and shoka, or neku and fret, etc - but that would come at the expense of the narrative’s pacing. i think it could have been done by tweaking certain details, but ultimately i can accept this as a sacrifice made in the interest of keeping the narrative from getting bloated.

i wanna talk briefly about the new main cast a little.

rindo’s ups and downs re: development are much more subtle than neku’s were, but with the secret reports in mind i feel his arc is actually pretty excellent. i think we could have done with a little less of fret pointing out rindo’s increased confidence and how he becomes more assertive, i think the audience is smart enough to notice that on their own. but i’m a huge fan of how the narrative quietly places rindo in this position of a leader who fears that responsibility, but nonetheless has to grow and accept it. hanekoma’s reports may spell it out in plain text postgame, but the narrative already told us in our own way that rindo’s development stalled when someone else entered the cast who could take over for him and this is demonstrative of a(n understandable) lack of maturity and failure to grow. neku’s fatal flaw was his rejection of others, and so he was forced by the narrative into a position where he had to learn to trust them; rindo’s is that he relies too much on them and the narrative forces him to stand on his own.

while i think this is a little muddled (he was right in some instances to not make hard solo decisions; thinking specifically of ayano, it was absolutely the right call to ease shoka into this inevitable loss rather than forcing her into the situation unilaterally) and i wish we saw more consequences of his initial waffling behavior, rindo’s indecisiveness is an actual flaw that i think a lot of people can relate to and i think it contrasts him wonderfully with neku without being heavy-handed. rindo working through it from “relying on others to make choices for him -> still valuing the input of others but not wholly dependent on them -> capable of making difficult calls without anyone else to support him” was subdued and while it had realistic hitches in the form of other characters who he could consider authority figures, it was steady and imo very good. he’s a teenager coming into his own, stepping out of this world where others in his life - motoi as an0ther, shoka as swallow, presumably his parents, teachers, etc - have made the big, scary decisions for him or guided him through them, and into a place where there aren’t these people to guide him. he’s surrounded by people who either don’t know anything more than he does, or don’t care about his best interests; he’s clashing and changing and it forces him to grasp and accept his own autonomy rather than falling back and relying on someone else to fix things when it’s too frightening or difficult.

we can talk cultural differences re: the level of autonomy and responsibility that’s right for teenagers but i’m not really interested in drawing hard lines there. this is a coming of age story; as he approaches maturity, rindo is learning how to be an adult. i think that’s a classic and important narrative concept and it’s done well here.

fret, interestingly, is imo a case where the subtlety didn’t work out. to me, there wasn’t a huge distinction between flippant “telling you what i think you want to hear” fret and “genuine” fret. his initial interactions with kanon don’t seem different from their last conversation; maybe he comes off as less initally honest in the jp version, or maybe this one was a writing fumble. maybe it’s just me, and other people don’t feel the same way! he seems to be a far more static character in a strange way; the narrative tells us that he’s developing via other characters’ dialogue, but it doesn’t seem to support that. to me it’s a failure of “show, don’t tell” - i don’t take a hard stance on “show, don’t tell” as some kind of holy rule of writing, there are plenty of situations in a narrative where telling is perfectly acceptable and i think rigid adherence to showing and not telling can result in a bloated narrative, but in this case i feel like that’s where the narrative failed. it failed to support fret’s development outside of other people telling him he’s changed. i like fret, but i feel like in this ensemble cast fret and nagi kinda serve more as nominal protagonists and are more strong supporting characters than true leads.

as for nagi, i love how, despite it being low-hanging fruit, not only are there no real digs at nagi for being a vocal fangirl of a visual novel dating sim, it actually ties perfectly into her character as someone who understands people. dating sims are about people and relationships. how people interact, the importance of conveying your feelings, the consequences of bad communication; that’s what nagi is obsessed with. and rather than this being a detriment and making her avoid others, it ends up priming her to have healthy friendships because her gaming taught her to value knowing other people. it takes her time to actually open up, but rather than the video games closing her off to others they actually set her up to be an excellent friend. elestra in general could have been a subject of enormous mockery, but instead it’s viewed in a very neutral way and is given the implication of universal appeal by fret picking it up in the epilogue. nagi’s not in the spotlight for most of the game, but the payoff of her monologue to fret about being human was immense and was one of the best bits of dialogue in the entire game to me. it’s not going to be as iconic as hanekoma’s “open up your world” and “enjoy the moment”, but i truly think it’s one of the only parts of neo’s dialogue that approaches its level.

shoka is a character that i think is better on the replay, and i say this as someone who was very fond of shoka the first time around. i thought she had a lot of personality in her mannerisms alone, and i firmly appreciate how she wasn’t a one-note tsundere character. she had some of those minor elements, but subdued and with a reasonable context - she’s hot and cold with rindo and his team because she’s supposed to be working this rigged game to erase them, but she’s already rindo’s friend in a different context and is struggling to reconcile these two parts of her life. knowing her motivation as swallow gives so much retroactive depth to her actions; she was circumventing the game itself not just because she was exhausted by it or unease with shiba like some of the other turncoat reapers, but because rindo was her friend from before the story even began.

i will say that i didn’t actually fully call swallow being shoka simply because at first i had the impression that it would be rhyme (before rhyme’s role in the story became clearer), and admittedly by the time the climax hit the mystery of who swallow was had kind of dropped out of my mind completely, but i think it does a lot to develop shoka. whether this development being retroactive is strictly good or bad as an issue is subjective; neo is a game that has a built-in chapter select, so replaying the game and rewatching the cutscenes with the full narrative context is incredibly easy. however, for a lot of players, if you’re replaying the game it’s with a specific goal of getting something you missed earlier in-game, so you’re rushing through those cutscenes trying to get to that completionist bit. i think a line could have been walked re: giving more of a hint that shoka was swallow before the very end without fully giving it away, but i definitely think the rewatch value is more subjective and based on how you specifically play the game. if you’re here looking to watch all the cutscenes again now that you know everything, shoka being swallow is a huge treat regarding changing the context of her behavior - if you’re fast-forwarding trying to find a pig, it’s totally wasted.

i would have liked to see more of shoka’s backstory and interaction with the other shinjuku reapers for sure, and i wonder if this is another thing along the lines of “we were supposed to see more of shinjuku’s final game than we did”; if we’d gotten more of shinjuku, we certainly would have seen more of its reapers. i talked briefly about how i feel like ayano’s death didn’t hit the way i think it was intended to, but if the game had let us see more of her as a shinjuku reaper i feel like the entire plot would have benefited. it would have benefited shiba as well honestly; they tried to have him as a repentant “now i shall fix what i destroyed” character at the very end, but i don’t feel like they did a good enough job portraying that he had changed and he was brainwashed so it fell flat. if we’d seen more of shiba as the compassionate leader who deserved the loyalty of his reapers that they say he was, the contrast would have done a lot to help define the tragedy of his backstory. overall i think this is another “we lost a chunk of the plot in rewrites or something” issue, which i admit is not based in anything like interviews. it’s just my speculation because it feels like something that was supposed to be here got left behind - i can’t say if i’m right, or why it happened if so. it just feels to me like the shinjuku reapers besides shoka went fairly undeveloped not because of writing/lack of screentime alone but because we lost big pieces of shinjuku content entirely. it’s insane that we only learn in the secret reports how tsugumi became trapped in the mr. mew plush to begin with; to me, this screams “we had to cut something”, and the more i think about it the more convinced i am that we were originally meant to see more of shinjuku’s inversion. hell, the secret reports just flippantly inform us that tsugumi’s brother was shinjuku’s conductor and he’s why she survived - but he goes unnamed and unseen, mentioned only in a piece of postgame content that many players may never unlock.

shinjuku’s final game is just left as this incredible story that was never told, with a cast who we barely see. again, it doesn’t bother me that they never explained to us why hazuki purified shinjuku. but i do wish we could have connected with its reapers to see how they reacted to its impending fate; who was on kubo’s side, who was trying to protect shinjuku? who knew what was happening, and who was just swept up in the chaos? how did the purification affect them emotionally after their escape to shibuya? just from the secret reports we see that tsugumi’s brother is this tragic hero of another story, the conductor opposing the executor and fighting to save his city before ultimately sacrificing himself to keep his sister alive. this is enough content that it could have easily been a standalone, but it wasn’t. i think that’s a damn shame. i’m sure there are people who are already chomping at the bit to write about shinjuku’s tragic final game and it’ll make a stunning fanfic in the right hands, but this is a big gap for fanfiction authors to be filling in.

this was mostly a narrative thoughts dump, but i wanna say just a couple of things about the combat: overall i liked it! i was significantly overleveled for the vast majority of the game partially because i was having fun with the combat, i feel gameplay was very intrinsically motivating. because of how the food system worked, being overleveled didn’t mean too much since it only affects HP, but i also was eating constantly so i was in fact just OP for much of the game. so i suppose, take my gameplay commentary with a grain of salt because i was busted quickly. if i hadn’t been such a powerhouse from early on, i expect my gameplay experience would have been much different.

my biggest complaint: there were some significant issues in enemy design related to battles being timed and the timer having consequences. some enemies were a reasonable/intuitive pain, say, elephants being bullet sponges and chameleons having an invisibility mechanic. these things made them challenging, but in a sensible way. like, of course a big honkin’ elephant has a ton of HP. i think that chameleons in particular could have been tweaked; you have to be very close to them when they’re invisible in order to lock on, and i think this could distance could have been extended a bit to minimize frustration. likewise, it felt like party members that get grabbed by a t.rex were trapped for ages; i feel this could have been tweaked as well. i know a lot of people had issues with wolves for this same reason, but their comparative frailty and my pin choices meant that i quickly overcame wolves and they became a minor nuisance at best until endgame introduced a beefier wolf. even then, i found t.rex noise to be much more of an issue because of their sturdier nature and higher damage output. these are minor gripes; i didn’t like seeing these enemies, but i didn’t hate seeing them. no, here’s what i hate: rhinos and pufferfish.

to me, these are the most annoying enemies in the entire game outside of maybe a handful of bosses. i feel they were poorly thought out in general. the tendency for rhinos to put themselves against the arena walls and the delay on pufferfish exploding after their HP hits zero do not mesh well with that battle timer. i find myself very frustrated by these enemies because it feels like i’m being punished not for a lack of skill or bad decisions choosing weak pins, but simply bad luck. very few pins can circumvent the rhino’s front guard and the hitbox for their guard feels enormous, so i can’t imagine i’m the only player having difficulty herding them out of corners to actually damage them or get beat drops. there’s a postgame dive with a big noise rhino, and it was my worst experience with the entire game because it just kept backing into a corner. i quit that dive multiple times because of how much time i wasted with the rhino; i changed my pins like crazy trying to take advantage of elemental weaknesses or use pins that could circumvent the guard. but it wasn’t about what pins i was using, it was just bad luck with hitboxes. when i finally got the gold rank on that dive it wasn’t that i did anything significantly different, the rhino just didn’t park its ass in the corner that time.

as far as i know, and i hope i’m missing something that someone can enlighten me on, there is no way to prevent pufferfish from inflating and exploding outside of a killer remix. i have not discovered any way to make them explode faster. the amount of time it takes for them to blow up seems to vary not by species but by individual, i’m not sure if it’s being triggered by proximity to a party member or what but i know sometimes one of those little shits will inflate and chase me across the entire arena before finally exploding. in a chain battle, that wasted time adds up. the pufferfish issue could have been severely mitigated, if not entirely fixed, if the gap between HP hitting zero and explosion was just the time it took for them to inflate. that would have basically eliminated my needless frustration with them. but instead i just... don’t know how to make them pop faster.

in normal combat, your post-battle score is primarily just bragging rights/making yourself feel good to have gotten a good grade. but when it comes to dives, where the timer directly decides how many of the finite friendship points you get, the appearance of a rhino or pufferfish specifically is something i approached with dread and disappointment. i already mentioned the postgame dive giant rhino specifically being a nightmare, but this was a reoccurring element for me through the entire game with just normal rhinos. i know rhinos are a returning enemy and kept their front-guard schtick, but the shift to a 3D environment has made them a much more (imo needlessly) difficult opponent.

regarding the pin system itself, i was enormously disappointed to learn how the multi-pin input worked. it turns out that you can only have multiple pins using a single input no matter how many multi-pin wields you unlock; gone were my dreams of having 2 Y-input pins and two ZL input pins (i played on switch). the inability to multi-pin wield uber pins regardless of how many uber slots you have filled is also a huge bummer. i feel like in the postgame i should be able to be an absolute god of destruction, but this didn’t pan out.

this seems to be a switch issue, but autosave was the MVP of the game because i had a few cutscenes crash or freeze (the one with kubo’s reveal seems to be a common source of a crash on the switch version as it fails to load the 3D cutscene); this was annoying and needs fixing, but it was slightly mitigated by autosave kicking in immediately after boss battles. i was crushed thinking i was gonna have to go through the shiba fight again after kubo crashed my game, so the relief i felt upon loading up again and going right into the cutscene was immense. don’t get me wrong: cutscene freezes and particularly crashes are a big problem that a game like this shouldn’t have launched with, but at the very least i didn’t lose my progress on that crash. related, i appreciate the ability to speed through cutscenes you’ve already seen, but i do wish we had the option to skip them entirely because that would have saved me from the freezes that i had to manually close the game and lose progress for.

a more minor complaint that i admittedly am unsure as to how to fix (maybe utilizing the d-pad instead of having it be camera/target select alongside the right stick?) is that i do not seem to have much control over which character my camera centers on in combat. typically selecting the pin that’s equipped to them will focus the camera to them, but every once in a while i’ll be locked to someone whose pin is rebooting while my other party members are actively attacking on the complete opposite end of the arena. i have no idea why this happens. if i’m missing something please let me know. the static nature of the overworld camera took some adjusting to, at first i was offput but i got used to it quickly. if camera was fixed position in combat it would have been a nightmare, but it being fixed in the overworld isn’t the same beast.

this has gotten obscenely long, so props and condolences to everyone who has made it this far. i wanna end on a high note because i want to reiterate something: i have so many criticisms here and that’s actually praise. i enjoyed so much of this game that i’m critical of where it fell short specifically because it’s such a strong contrast to how much i felt it did right. the main story was pretty strong in general, though some character interactions were lacking. the plot itself i didn’t talk a lot about because i thought it was good. there wasn’t much to say, they did a good job! the dissonance noise being created from deleted timelines was great, i loved that. i don’t feel like predictability makes a narrative bad, so it’s not like i was upset when it turned out replay was (gasp) part of a dastardly scheme. for me, foreshadowing is an excellent thing even if sometimes i wish it was handled a little differently.

i vastly prefer this game’s vague sequel hook with minamimoto over how final remix ended a new day; that sequel hook i hated and it had me so worried about neo. thankfully a lot of my fears didn’t come true, and i am very happy overall with the game we got. if another game is greenlit, i would hope it progresses with a mostly new cast; as long as we stay in shibuya some supporting characters can and should be staples imo, like kariya and uzuki, and i hope to see more of what’s being set up with minamimoto even if not necessarily with him as a protagonist. but overall i think twewy’s worldbuilding lends itself much more to a rotating cast if it develops into a full franchise; that’s just the nature of the UG, and i would like to see further installments taking advantage of that and allowing characters to have a complete arc and then retire from the narrative naturally.

i’ve got some pigs to erase and some bosses to slap the pins out of, which i’m sure will take me some time. another day certainly has a secret boss and/or time trial boss rush, so i’ll take a look at that sucker soon as well. i’m looking forward to continuing my playthrough, and i expect to sink quite a few more hours into this game. i really truly enjoyed neo despite my qualms, and i’m leaving the main storyline behind for postgame stuff with almost entirely positive feelings and a hopeful stance on the potential future of the series. i know this was a long-ass post, which is why it’s beneath a readmore, but to anyone who cared enough about my thoughts to keep reading the whole thing... thanks for the time you spent, hope you got something positive out of it!

[solynaceawrites]

Subhuman

Fandom: Devil May Cry Characters: Dante, fem!Reader Tags: Smut, PWP, Porn No Plot, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Masturbation, Monster Sex Rating: Explicit Summary: The first time you have sex with Dante after he returns from the underworld, you learn just what it means to be his mate. Note: This came about after an interesting conversation in a server about Dante’s dick when he’s using SDT. Specifically, how it’s shaped. It’s also my first true foray into what I would call monster-fucking fics, so, uh . . . I hope you enjoy?

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The first time you’d seen Dante’s Sin Devil Trigger, you’d been trying to haul Nero’s dumb ass out of Urizen’s throne room. Your first thought had been, what the fuck, followed quite quickly by, that’s a nice ass, and you’d done your best to shove both of those to the side, as being stuck in the middle of a demonic tree was not the best time to be ogling your lover. The second had been a glimpse from the distance as he dove into the underworld, just a streak of burning orange across the sky and into the ground. You’d been more than pissed that he’d left, especially without so much as a good-bye, and you’d made that known to Morrison when he gave you the deed to the Devil May Cry. “He better not come back,” you’d said irritably, “unless he wants me to shoot him.”

But Dante’s disappearance, particularly after seeing that new form of his, left you with a rather particular problem. You’d told him once that you loved all of him; that love had extended into your sex life, and it’d been becoming more frequent for the dick he fucked you with to be scaled instead of flesh, for the hands that dug into your hips to be tipped with claws fit to tear through steel. You didn’t have much of an interest in finding someone else to date—Dante had truly been one of a kind—and there were times when the nice, normal dildo you kept tucked away in your bedside table just didn’t cut the trick. 

It wasn’t that you didn’t like them. They’d always worked fine whenever Dante had to take an overnight job. It was the fact that thinking about Dante led to you remembering his easy grin and the way he felt curled around you at night, making the pain of his being gone much more apparent. The easiest option was to think about his other form; that one hadn’t made you coffee, or kissed the top of your head in passing, or told you how much it loved you. The problem with that was it was a bit disorienting thinking about a demonic dick while using a human one. So, you’d found a website that hosted an . . . unusual assortment, and selected one you thought was probably the closest match to a cock you’d never gotten to see.

You’d gotten one you could actually use, since some of the sizes they offered were a bit much.

The day it arrived, you’d closed the shop and gone to the room you used to share with Dante. The dildo, a model with a name you forgot almost as soon as you read it, was mouthwatering. Thick and ribbed and the size of your forearm, with a girth you couldn’t fully fit your fingers around, and you’d been careful as you used it for the first time. A lot of lubrication and plenty of time to let your body adjust around each inch, and you’d been so full that you’d come as soon as the base brushed your mound.

It was a particular favorite after that. You had a rather extensive collection of toys, from vibrators to dildos to other assorted odds and ends, and any time you’d been missing Dante’s demon cock, you’d pulled it out. Sometimes, if you were particularly riled up, you’d use a vibrator against your clit, and those were the times when you were so shaky-legged afterwards that you needed a day to recover fully.

That’s not to say you didn’t just miss Dante, because you did. The best you slept was with one of his shirts clutched to your chest, and you’d always leave a few slices of pizza untouched whenever you ordered in case he showed up and was hungry. Of course, leave it to him to pick the worst timing to come back home: you, taking a well-deserved shower that you weren’t expecting to be interrupted by the devil hunter, and if he’d gotten smacked between the eyes with a shampoo bottle, he more than deserved it. 

Two weeks short of a year since he’d left, Dante had been back. You’d yelled at him, cried more than you ever had before, and he absorbed it all, his grin turning to a sheepish smile and then outright guilt the longer you laid into him. Part of you felt bad for it. He’d probably been expecting something out of the movies, where you ran into his arms and kissed him senseless, like you had when you’d been reunited in the tree. But he hadn’t chosen to leave you behind then, and the hurt you felt not only at his leaving but at his sauntering back in had quashed that little protest. And when he’d tried to make it up to you the way he always did, you told him he could either keep his hands to himself or sleep on the couch.

Life hadn’t exactly gone back to normal in the following month—there was a lot to talk about, and you did, and he listened—but just having him back was a good enough start as far as you were concerned.

“Dante,” you call. When he doesn’t answer, you pull your head from the fridge, frowning at the empty seat behind his desk. You need his help deciding what to do for dinner and, unless he wants an anchovy-pickle-mayonnaise sandwich, the two of you are going to have to get something delivered. “Dante!”

“Bedroom!” he shouts back.

You take the climb the stairs and head into the bedroom, intending to ask him if he wants lo mein or pizza, only to freeze when you see him sitting on the bed, cradling that damned dildo in his palms. “Uh . . .?”

Dante grins at you, and you try not to flush under his heavy gaze. Sex has been off the table while the two of you work through the hurt his leaving caused, and, with him around, you’d taken to carrying the dildo into the bathroom with you whenever you needed some relief. You must have tossed it onto the bed after your afternoon shower, probably intending to put it up after you got dressed only to forget, and while you don’t think he’s angry, he certainly seems bemused. “Nice toy,” is all he says.

“Uh.”

“Color’s especially interesting. In fact, I’d say it looks pretty damn similar to mine.” He taps the rubber before dragging his finger along a prominent ridge. “Even this. I’d known you missed me this badly, I’d have bent you over the desk as soon as I walked in the door.”

“What do you mean, if you’d known?” Your voice is harsher than you intend from your mortification, and Dante blinks as you stalk forward to yank it from his hands. “Did you think I was having parties while you were in the underworld?” It’s not fair to say, and you know it’s not, but there’s a vicious satisfaction when he frowns. You toss the dildo onto the bed and fold your arms. “I missed you like hell. I’ve told you how hard those months without you were. So, if I wanted to buy a dildo that reminded me of your dick to help with that, it’s none of your business, and you can forget bending me over anything while you’re at it!”

He doesn’t argue, which helps your irritation a little. “Sorry, doll. It just caught me off guard. Though . . .” The way he tilts his head reminds you so much of a big dog that it’s ridiculous, especially with his shaggy hair. “You know you can have the real thing, right?”

“Maybe I like it better,” you retort.

You know the challenge you’re laying at his feet, and a thrill goes up your spine when his smile takes on a predatory edge as he stands. “Is that right? Maybe we should test it, just to be sure.” Dante peels his shirt over his head and your mouth goes dry at the sight of his chest, broad and covered with fine silver hairs. This was why you’d wanted to wait on sex for a while. The moment he lays on the charm, your anger goes right out of the window, which isn’t always the best thing when there’s an issue to solve. For now, though, you decide that it’s fine, and you lean against the wall and cock a brow. Come and get me.

There’s a flash of heat that has you wincing. When you open your eyes, it’s to see the horns and claws and fangs you’ve dreamed of since the first sighting in the tree, and you hold your breath as Dante prowls towards you, his claws ticking against the hardwood floor. He crowds you against the wall and peers down at you. Dante’s already a good head taller than you when he’s human; now, you have to crane your head back to look at his chin, and he kneels to be eye-level with you, his maw parting so his tongue can slide over your cheek. The rough surface of it has goosebumps breaking out along your arms as you think of what it’s going to feel like rubbing over your clit, and when it slides over your lips you part them to suck it into your mouth. 

Dante growls, his breath fire-hot where it fans along your cheek. You almost don’t notice him cutting through your clothing until cold air caresses your skin; with a gasp, you draw back, and his hand grips your waist to pull you up so his face is level with your chest. “Pretty,” he rumbles, the sound thick and foreign and full of gravel, and you grasp at his horns when he curls that ridged tongue around your breast. The tip flicks your nipple, making you squirm from the prickles of pleasure it causes, and, with a laugh that’s ash and smoke, he rubs over it firmly.

And, gods above, you’re probably going to finish from that alone.

It’s heaven: rough and slick and warm, his saliva thick as it coats your flesh, making the friction so much silkier. You tug at his horns a futile attempt for more, though what more is, you don’t know. Not like he can do much else with his teeth the size of daggers, but his touch has awoken something greedy within you that clamors urgently for attention. When he shifts to give the same attention to your other breast, you nearly sob, and your nipples are peaked and stiff and tender by the time he’s through. 

His  hands cup your rear and lift you, yelping, so that your sex is in front of his mouth. The claws on his wings hook your wrists to pull your arms above your head as he braces your knees over his shoulders, and you can’t stop the whimper you let out when those teeth graze your mound. There’s a low rumbling from his chest as he breathes you in, and then you watch as his fangs part as his tongue slides between your folds. 

“Oh, fuck,” you whine. “Dante . . .”

He licks you exactly how you like—his tongue thick and flat and rubbing firmly from your ass to your clit—but the texture is something else entirely, and you’d be rocking desperately against him if he weren’t holding you still. He slips it within your weeping sex, and you nearly scream when it folds on itself so he can lash the tip against your quivering pearl; it hadn’t seem so long at first, but now you understand why he’s got difficulty talking in this form. Not that you care if he speaks or not. As long as he keeps fucking you like he is, he can stay quiet. Every time his tongue flexes within you, you keen, and his answering pants send heated air along your labia and thighs, only heightening the pleasure that you’re already drowning in. You come in no time at all, but he doesn’t stop. Dante keeps right on working your body until a second orgasm follows hard and fast on the heels of the first, leaving your back bowing as you cry out his name.

Your legs are too weak by the time it fades for you to stand. Dante carries you easily over to the bed, lowering you back down so your head doesn’t smack into the fan, nuzzling your stomach and crooning sweetly against your skin. You don’t know what he’s doing, but something about the sound relaxes you so you’re limp when he deposits you on the mattress. Then you catch sight of his cock, and you lift yourself into a sitting position, your eyes wide.

The damn thing is huge. Dante already is, but this form of his adds length and girth, and it glows the same fiery orange as his eyes and the cracks in his armor. The top of it is covered with darker plates that taper off as they wrap around the vibrant underside, and those plates are covered with tiny, ridged bumps; the shaft of it flares twice, thickening in the middle, and the flared tip that you remember has some sort of swirl that narrows it at the slit and has it widening into protrusions where it meets the shaft. At the base you can see what you assume are his balls, held tight to the shaft, and there’s a small part where it meets his pelvis that looks perfect for stimulating your clit. You think, is that even going to fit? Then, I’ll make it fit.

There’s fluid dripping from the tip that you have the most insane urge to taste. It’s thick, a bit darker than normal, and you lean forward to drag your tongue over the slit. Dante hisses a warped version of your name as you lap at the head, gathering as much of the precum as you can before swallowing. It tastes sharp and rich, with a faintly spiced undertone, and it leaves a tingling trail from your lips down to your stomach. You’re not entirely sure, but you’re pretty certain that it’s an aphrodisiac of some kind, maybe meant to either get his partner in the mood or make it easier for him to get that monster between his legs inside of them. Or both. 

Either way, you’re going to combust if he doesn’t fuck you soon.

But how to make it work? Humming, you shift onto your hands and knees, but it still doesn’t quite line up right. “Dante, I think—hey!”

The bed creaks warningly as he settles between your legs. His thighs press you nearly wider than is comfortable, and the heat of his body blasts against your back when he leans over you, one of his clawed hands bracing next to your own. You study the armor plating at his wrist for a moment, but the feeling of his head nudging insistently at your opening has you digging your fingers into the quilt, a breathless, “Please,” falling from your lips.

 Slowly, he pushes it within your opening. Your mouth hangs open in a groan as it stretches you; there’s no pain, just the same tingling you’d felt when you swallowed his precum, and you realize that your assumption was right. Still, as he carefully thrusts deeper, you’re not sure how much of it you’re going to be able to take, a thought that’s reinforced when the head of him is fully inside and your walls squeeze around it. He’s barely gotten started and you feel fuller than you ever had in your life, and when he presses forward so your lips open around the first flare of his shaft, you cry out, your legs trembling. The second flare sliding leisurely into your sex has you coming for the third time, all of this little ridges you’d noticed and the ribbing along the sides more than enough to have your head spinning. By the time his hips are flush to your rear and his sac is nestled snugly against your clit, you’re boneless in his grasp, and you understand, through the haze, one very clear fact.

Dante is going to ruin you.

He moves slowly, carefully, letting you adjust to his size as he pants hotly against your shoulder, and you mewl every time he rocks his hips. You’re honestly not certain how much more you can handle; each tentative thrust has those flares and ridges stretching your cunt, presses the head of him against something within you that adds a faint dash of pain to the overwhelming pleasure. His teeth prick your skin and you gasp, scrabbling for purchase against the sheets as his hips pick up the pace until you’re rocking over the mattress, rocked forward by every powerful roll of his hips. The sound of his body driving into yours fills the room along with your desperate cries, and all of it only seems to spur him on. The heat radiating from him ramps up as his claws tear through the quilt, and his fangs become better acquainted with your shoulders and the back of your neck, each mark he leaves drawing a moan from your throat.

Dante reaches beneath you to cup your stomach, keeping you lifted as he fucks you senseless. He growls something that sounds like, “Mine,” when he presses you up, and you nearly scream at the new angle, the new depth. Forget tomorrow or the next day, you’re going to need at least a week before you can go out in the field again. 

“Dante,” you whimper, “Dante, baby, please—”

He grunts and draws out, leaving you breathless. Then he takes hold of your hips and flips you onto your back before sheathing himself within you again, and this time you do scream as that protrusion you’d noticed earlier bears down on your clit as he fills you. Every time he moves, it presses and grinds against your pearl, lending a desperate edge to the coil tightening in your stomach. Dimly you’re aware of his face drawing closer, and you don’t hesitate to open your mouth when his tongue nudges at your lips, sucking on his flesh eagerly. You’re close, so close, and when he thrusts roughly enough to nearly knock you into the headboard as his tongue grazes the back of your throat, you fall apart, consumed by him. 

Wave upon wave of bliss wracks your body, which bows under and squeezes around his. And he doesn’t let up, rutting into you with growls and rasping groans that have your blood on fire until you’re dizzy and light-headed and your ears ring from the force of it all. You don’t know how much longer he works his body within yours, teetering on the brink of blackness, but you feel his tongue leave your mouth so he can sink his teeth into the flesh where your shoulder meets your neck, and the pain of that is blurred and diluted by the pleasure that comes when the first scorching wave of his seed fills you. On and on he comes, so that it smears along your thighs and pools on the sheets beneath you, so that you wonder if it’s ever going to end.

But end it does. With a lick over the wound he’s left, he draws out, and there’s a faint noise as he does so. More of his seed flows out, still hot enough to nearly be scalding, and you whine at the sensation of being so full and yet so empty at the same time. The sound of his footfalls shifts as he crosses the room from talons to bare feet; when he returns, he’s human again, and he kisses you gently as he lifts you from the bed. “Sorry, darlin’,” he murmurs. “It’s been so long, and I . . . Well. Guess I made a mess, huh?”

“A good one,” you mumble.

Dante chuckles and sets you down in the bathroom, and you watch sleepily as he fills a tub with warm water and your favorite bath foam. “You relax. I’m gonna go change the sheets.”

You nod, and he helps you into the bath, where you sink into the warmth with a groan. There’s a dull ache already forming between your thighs, and your shoulder is going to hurt like hell tomorrow if you don’t do something about it, but you’re far too tired right now to work even the simplest of healing spells. Besides, you think, he’d left that there as a reminder of his love for you, so you’re not exactly complaining. Dante comes back right as the water is getting cool enough that you want to get out, and he dries you off with a fluffy towel before once more picking you up and carrying you back into the bedroom.

You’re half-asleep by the time your head hits the pillows, though you manage to hold on long enough for him to turn off the lights and join you, his weight warm and familiar at your back. “Dante?” 

“Hm?”

“Welcome home.”

He pauses, his arm tightening around your waist as he buries his face in your hair. “I’m back, sweetheart. And I’m not goin’ anywhere.”