#it's tied into how he sees the world and also very intimately shaped by his experiences in life

[navree]

anyway the only version of jason going non-lethal that makes sense is the version he brings up in #975 where he makes clear that he's going against his moral compass and his convictions on what he thinks is right explicitly so that he can maintain a connection with his family. none of this mealy mouthed 'jason realizes Killing Is Bad' thing (i'm of the opinion that jason's kinda the direct opposite of bruce in that where it would be too easy for the latter to start killing and not stop jason can kill and obviously has but the easier option for him is to just not do it and he does it because that's how his philosophy works) but jason admitting that he's taking the easy way out and being selfish at the expense of his own moral code so that he can still be a part of the batfamily. it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

[seelestia]

⟡ to set one's self aflame. (do it all for love.)

⎯ how protective are they of you? how do they protect you and how do they like being protected in return? { s for security ノordered by @phantovia! }

RESERVED FOR! ꒰ character ꒱. lyney ft. gn!reader. { 1.5k words wc }

FLAVOR! ꒰ genre ꒱. fluff & sprinkles of lore angst, established relationship.

TOPPINGS! ꒰ tags ꒱. lowkey a character study made poetic (???). mentions of self-destructive habits, also pls don't smile at lyney bcs he's weak in the knees for u.

BAKER’S NOTE! ꒰ thoughts ꒱. thanks for the req, yona! i got to appreciate this silly guy all over again thanks to u ‹3 ik ur acc is already archived so i hope this made for a nice tribute. pls take care of urself & have a good life ahead 🫂

© seelestia on tumblr, june 2024. please do not repost, plagiarize, translate, use for AI-related purposes or claim as your own.

lyney is protective to a concerning extent. the instinct of an older brother, maybe?

there is some sort of irony to be found in it all since the reason he protects to a 'concerning' extent is out of concern in the first place.

behind his show of brilliance, you consider yourself lucky enough to have witnessed a side to lyney that his audience wouldn't have guessed; that he is a worrier in every aspect of the word. whether for his family, for you, for his friends or for others he comes across that are plagued by misfortune - if all that worry were to come in the shape of dimes, he'd already have an abundance of them to share with the entire nation of fontaine.

but he has no choice, does he?

his background is not a clean slate nor is it a display of sunshine and rainbows resembling his magic shows. lyney's hands are tainted, covered by his gloves as a measly means of self-solace. he has to worry. associating himself deeply and intimately with another is a risk on its own - comparable to dragging someone else down into the murkier depths with him. he can never do that, never has the courage nor the heart to.

(but fortunately for him, you've always been braver than most.)

. . .isn't that why you offered your hand, your trust to him first? he swore to never let you down from that day on.

easier said than done, however.

the house of the hearth operates within the shadows but as for its foes? some also prefer to dwell in the dark and some move in broad daylight. no matter what it is, they all require the same precaution: for him to keep his guard up at all times. every child has been trained by “father” to know that but you're an innocent, tied to this precarious matter merely due to your connection with him.

(“i don't regret anything,” you told him but he didn't look into your eyes, conflicted. you couldn't tell if he believed you or not.)

how was your day? have you eaten? you look sad, did something happen? — all these little questions are a way for him to show that he cares, that you're important, that you're his responsibility and he'll be there for you.

bound by both guilt and love, lyney promises to keep you safe. from whatever kinds of threats there are; whether it be fools with nefarious schemes or even an insect you're too scared to touch, he'll keep you safe all the same. so please, don't hide from him if you're dealing with something. it's better to let him handle it. . . right, correction: the two of you can handle it together.

(truly, his desire to protect can both be his greatest strength and most formidable foe.)

the way lyney protects is through self-sacrifice, granting peace in exchange for destruction of the self.

since the very beginning, lyney has grown used to seeing the world through the lens of a protector.

he recalls the old times where he and lynette loitered the streets in ragged clothes and the only refuge he could provide her with was his hand. it mattered not if he was freezing cold from the rain. . . as long as his little sister was protected, comforted by whatever warmth he had left - it's alright. to do that wasn't an option then, it was a necessity.

to sacrifice himself is a habit. it's easy to adopt but not at all easy to discard.

in lyney's eyes, burdens often seem as if they would be lighter upon his shoulders than they are on another's - but this is only wishful thinking. only meant to convince himself that pain shall eventually lose its harsh bite the more he bears it. “well, has it?” if asked, he cannot give an answer. regardless, that alone is enough of a justification for him because he can't bear the thought of doing anything else; to stand idly by, to be utterly useless.

if he has the means to protect others, why wouldn't he do so? even if he wears himself down to the bone, he’d do it again. akin to a bright flame lit in a hearth, lyney envelopes those near him in a blanket of warmth - and if the blaze threatens to flicker, he'd simply ignite a piece of himself to prevent it from diminishing into futile cinders. he won't let it happen.

(but little does he know that even cinders still serve a purpose. they exist as proof, a sign that his sacrifice has never been in vain.)

in return, lyney feels protected by simply knowing that you're happy (and your acknowledgement of his efforts).

let's call it an innate principle that belongs to a magician; he wants to see smiles on the faces of others. “a smile weighs much lighter for your face to carry compared to a frown, no?” he joked to you once, tapping gently on the corner of his lips with a grin. it was said with a light heart, but you knew he meant it deep down.

(he always does so much, only to ask for so little in return.)

you were not so cruel that you couldn't even grant him that, so you smiled. genuine and grateful. “. . .thank you, lyney,” you said. he fell quiet then. had the wind been knocked out of his lungs or had the world stopped spinning? he thought he saw stars in your eyes, but that couldn't possibly be true. the sun glaring down at him from behind the clouds above remained unmoved.

not like it mattered, anyway. his poor heart was far too occupied with you to care about the answer. “o-oh? you're welcome. . .” lyney blinked, multiple times, dazedly.

gratitude is not a foreign concept to him; he often receives it from an audience member, a lonely elder he briefly chatted with, a fellow member from the house of the hearth — so, just what makes it different now? perhaps, it's because he knows that you've beared witness to his heart that lies deeper within.

that you see right through him, that you're thanking him for who he truly is, although he no longer has a definite image of “self” from the countless white lies piling at his feet like a tower. yet he finds comfort in it, in the way you hold his sullied hands so kindly. he isn't wearing gloves this time. strange, lyney had never imagined transparency to be a feeling so benevolent and cathartic.

no matter what thoughts are buzzing in his head or what ache tugs on his body, they can pester him as much as they'd like - with one swift recall of your smile, lyney feels as if he can banish them even if momentarily. they'll come back sooner or later, he knows, but is it cowardly of him to find solace in that brief respite?

when lynette taps on his cheek to wake him up in the morning, when freminet knocks on his door to deliver something, when other siblings flock around him to welcome him home, or when you come to visit him after a long day — those worries disappear — but even if he already knows that they will make their inevitable return. . . perhaps, everything will be okay.

(it has to be, he tells himself.)

“did something happen yesterday?”

your lunch with a certain feline girl in front of hotel bouffes d'ete kickstarts with a simple question. but the abruptness of it all wipes away the content look on your face and replaces it with a frown.

the tea in your cup reflects your reflection as much as it does your perplexity. lynette lifts her own teacup to her lips, composed while you're lost in thought, confused.

“lyney went home with a wide smile on his face yesterday,” she elaborates, humming either at the tea or at the current matter she's recalling. perhaps, even both but you aren't sure yet. “while this wouldn't be an odd occurrence, i thought there must've been a special occasion to warrant a smile that wide.”

ah. the realization dawns on you in gentle waves. he said something that prompted a smile out of you yesterday — the exchange of a kind “thank you” from your side and a flustered “you're welcome” from his — not that smiling is a rarity around him, hardly, the one thing magicians do best is attract smiles.

your gaze drifts down to stare at nothing in particular. fond memories filled with the face of a familiar magician swims before your eyes. “hm. . . it must've meant a lot more to him than i expected,” you mumble to yourself. in your eyes, you'd think the look on your face represents the paradigm of nostalgia but in lynette's eyes, you look like a madman smiling to yourself so intensely.

“not you too,” she lets out a resigned sigh, placing down her teacup. “smiling to yourself like that. . .” she shakes her head in a disappointed manner, “you and lyney must've been rubbing off on each other these days.”

“maybe a bit too much,” lynette adds, but there is a ghost of a smile on her face this time around.

you can only smile sheepishly.

— thank you for reading! reblogs with comments are most appreciated.

[littlesparklight]

Some general thoughts on the gods on Troy's side, and why they might be:

Aphrodite: Presumably out of affection for her son, Anchises, and Paris. Very potentially, wanting to assure the gift she's given Paris lasts as long as possible? But if this is a factor, hardly something she is beholden to in any way; it'd probably be more about her own pride in that case. But, given that she also helps protect Hektor's corpse, when he, at least, is no longer able to pay her back for such aid, her affection/aid to the Trojans aren't just for or because of those three.

Apollo: Thetis' warning/prophecy to her son that killing Tennes/a son of Apollo would mean Apollo would kill him (Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 28, Bibliotethe, Epitome 3.26), then we have Achilles killing Troilus in his sancuary, which would be reason enough on its own but Troilus can also be Apollo's son. There's Apollo so ardently protecting Hektor throughout the war, even/maybe especially after his death (Hektor is also in several sources Apollo's son). Also his relationship with Hecuba and how in Stesichorus he rescues her. (Could also put Kassandra and Helenos here.)

Part of his defense of Troy might be about "fate" and when it's the "proper time" for Troy to fall, but Apollo's ties to Troy/individuals attached to Troy are more deep-set than that. He is the one to punish Neoptolemos' sacrilege of killing Priam at Zeus' altar. Apollo is also rarely present during vase art scenes around the Judgment, potentially connecting to; Apollo specifically being the one to aid Paris (or in some variants, using Paris' shape) to kill Achilles. Real-world wise, the possibility of connecting Apaliuna(s)/Appaluwa as Wilusa/Troy's patron god to Apollo.

Ares: Unstable ally. Hard to say how consistently he is on either side; Athena says he "only yesterday" on the first day of fighting in the Iliad was loudly pledging to Hera and Athena that he'd help the Achaeans.

Perhaps he's been aiding the Trojans more or less secretly/openly throughout the war, as much because he supports whatever side he wishes on a whim as that Aphrodite (and Apollo?) has asked him to. Either way, certainly not as consistent nor out of any particular affection or feeling of protectiveness for the Trojans.

Artemis: "For, in her pity, holy Artemis is angry at the winged hounds of her father, for they sacrifice a wretched timorous thing, together with her young, before she has brought them forth. An abomination to her is the eagles' feast." (Agamemnon, Aeschylus, line 135) ; this is about the eagles and hare omen, which replaces (or in addition to, as this seems to have happened in Mycenae) the snake and sparrows one. Artemis is put forth as unhappy with Troy's (future) fall/the war.

And, it's of course very easy to see the demand for Iphigenia in reparation for Agamemnon's hubris in a similar way, that if he/the army, wants to go off and kill/enslave innocents elsewhere, he/they has to start at home. She may also be helping her brother, and there is the Skamandrios, son of Strophios, who she herself taught to hunt in the Iliad. She has independent connections to Troy, and could be one of the more focused on Trojan deities along with her brother and their mother.

Leto: We have nothing, aside from the fact that she is on the Trojan side with her children in Book 21. But real-world-wise, there's also that Leto was an important goddess on the coast, and in Lycia connected to a Lycian mother goddess. So one could probably make inference for the in-universe reason being as much her siding with her children as that Troy is honouring her (maybe particularly so), along with the rest of the countries on the coast.

Xanthos: intimately woven together with Troy's royal family, as he's married a couple daughters into the line and his (only?) son's daughter married Dardanos.

Zeus: He's technically/actually neutral, a driving force to keep the war going as it "needs to". He's therefore on Troy's side more through the sentiment(s) he expresses or is assigned to him rather than in action.

Particularly so if one turns to the "he planned the war" variants - but these are never about Troy, or Paris, but rather about something much larger than any fault any individual Trojan or Troy has a whole as made themselves guilty of. [Though individual mortals in the Iliad, and in later sources, both tragedies and lyric, will imply that it's Zeus as god of xenia that ensures his working towards Troy's destruction, rather than any plan that has little to do with Troy.]

For his connections to and being for Troy, have Proclus' summary of the Kypria for example, where the plan mentioned at the end is to "relieve the Trojans" specifically, and that phrasing turns Achilles' anger and Zeus acting to fulfil his demands not about Achilles' honour, but about aiding Troy. In Pindar's Paean 6 (fragmentary), Zeus is said to "not dare to change fate [the destruction of Troy]", easily to implicate that he otherwise might, because he would wish to. More important, perhaps, is his statement that Troy is his most favoured city, and how Hera offers up three of her favoured cities for Zeus' one, how he wishes to save Hektor, and the description in the Iliad (by Poseidon) that Dardanos was the/one of the sons [by mortal women, though Elektra couldn't have been that] that he loves the most.

[nellasbookplanet]

Actually loving how the different critical role campaigns exist in relation to themselves, each other, and the world at large, and how their different narrative structures ripple outward.

Campaign 1 was story driven. Not to say the characters weren’t deeply important and dynamic, but their growths were largely driven through and by the plot. They were on a mission and grew along with that mission, and as a mission driven archetypically heroic party they also left very few loose threads by the end.

Campaign 2, meanwhile, was more insular and character driven. Where Vox Machina traveled all over the world and planes outside the main setting of Tal'Dorei, the Mighty Nein largely stayed in Wildemount, allowing for a more intimate and political look at it’s cultures. Instead of story and characters revolving around plot, plot revolves around character. We only got to see Yasha’s tribe in the epilogue, because her growth didn’t require facing them. We didn’t face Uk’otoa, because Fjord’s arc culminated in embracing the Wildmother, not in facing his former patron. Similarly, while the entire Assembly was an antagonistic force, only Trent was dealt with directly, because he was the only one directly tied into one of the pc's arcs.

The larger world building let us know about Molaesmyr and Ludinus, about the Luxon, even about Ruidus to some extent, but the Mighty Nein weren’t a typically heroic party here to save the world and solve every mystery, but a group of broken people finding it in themselves to heal, and to end their journey ready to face greater threats in the future. They were still getting the Assembly and Uk'toa, they just weren’t doing it in the main narrative, because they were irrelevant to the growth of the characters. Of course, that also left a lot of threads hanging, which brings us to campaign 3.

By now, it seems pretty clear that campaign 3 is another plot driven story rather than the more meandering, character driven narrative of c2. That leaves the cast free to pick up on the many larger mysteries in world building left in the wake of the last campaign. What is the nature of the Luxon? Of Ruidus? Of Aeor and the aeormatons? Half the party was just plopped down not far from the ruins of Molaesmyr, Ludinus' former home - will they go there? One of them is tied to the Luxon and dunamancy, another to Ruidus and Predathos - will we get to know the true nature of these entities?

Much like c1, the characters of this campaign are driven and shaped by events rather than shaping their own events. The difference is, c1 began as a blank slate, whereas c3 has history. Powerful allies and enemies alike are tied to former campaigns because such is the nature of the world. Mysteries left to solve were introduced earlier but approached only now because this is a campaign whose narrative and characters are served by approaching them. The world is dynamic. Alive. One story merges into the next, and new heroes are born on the shoulders of the last, ready to be shaped by their own narrative.

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Ok, your post about the Celtic burial with the adorably-repaired Greek lion cauldron came across my dash, and I just have to ask - is your URL on this blog an intentional Guy Kay reference? And if so, do you have good Guy Kay blogs recs? He’s my favorite author of all time and I feel like he’s desperately underrepresented on my dash.

Yes, it absolutely is! And the short answer is, alas, I do not know any good GGK blogs.

Beyond this Dark House is my favourite poem, found when I was living in Calgary, breaking my heart. There was a boy I'd once driven from Edmonton to Saskatoon in four hours flat just to see who didn't love me enough, or in the way I wanted, and also I wasn't ready to be loved, which was its own kind of tragedy.

So it caught me with its prairie soul, the knowledge of the richness of life and also that things die out here and take a long long time to fade, all

The shortest night wheels past this window, stars dropping behind the trees.

Somewhere there are bonfires for St John, somewhere fires for the summer king.

It's so late. For this, for everything, for being still awake beside a window

And then the lines I took for my blog:

Beyond this dark house a train is running away into the night plain. We've all had dreams break fantasies we shaped.

I dragged the boy I was in love with and a few other friends to GGK's book tour pit stop in Calgary, where I was savagely disappointed by how badly he read a sample of Ysabel. Displayed no talent for vocal performance at all. Read almost as if he didn't know how the sentences would end, in a bad way. But you know what, we're human. Everyone's allowed to have flaws.

So the answer about GGK blogs is... I don't seek them out, and don't particularly want to be fannish about them on Tumblr. Some books are like that; some I want to shout about like I've been doing about Tamsyn Muir's Nona the Ninth on @with-my-murder-flute for the last two weeks, and some I just want to take back to my secret cave and devour them where other people can't see.

I love The Fionavar Tapestry with my entire soul, but not my entire brain, and that's uncomfortable. It's a discomfort I'm especially not up to addressing on Tumblr, because like... I don't love how tied he is to a paradigm of queerness being weighed down by heteronormativity, so that queerness is salacious and risqué or just societally sidelined and we don't address the pain that causes because everyone just takes that for granted. But I also think in some senses it's a more accurate reflection of the past than modern queer-positive fantasy, and it's important and useful to keep around reminders of what the world before gay liberation was like. I will candidly admit that I don't actually want to praise him unconditionally and hold him up as an author I would recommend to everybody. He's problematic, you know? I think a lot of his books are him trying to approach a concept, and only capturing it in wisps, and that's especially true when he tries to write about sex and gender relations.

But, the thought of sitting through Tumblr discourse about how he's homophobic and bad gay representation/not homophobic at all and very important and validating actually? Gag me with a spoon. I hate doing that about media I'm enthused with but have no personal stake in, so doing it with something I love so intimately, with pieces of my soul poured into the honeycomb of its matrix, would be torture. When I was fourteen, The Summer Tree convinced me that I'd have a life outside the depression that was crushing me like a stone. It showed me how to imagine a future for myself. I really don't want that tangled up in Tumblr wrangles.

Oh, I do have a fic rec: the late legionseagle wrote The Road Goes Ever On and On, a non-Ysabel-compliant story about a Toronto cop who can't get past the old cold missing persons case of Jennifer Lowell.

And several times a winter, especially when the icicles start to melt, I look up and chant to myself,

Too much of Greece can sear the soul. I am a northern man. Where I come from the sky is wide and far away and March is mired in snow.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Hi! This is for the prompts: LWJ and WWX get together at Cloud Recesses but it’s a secret. When it does come out tho, probably due to WWX mischief some how. JC comes to the conclusion that LWJ has managed to ‘defile WWXs honor’ and now JC has no choice but to fight on behalf of his big brother, who clearly has been wronged.

Honor, Defended - ao3

Untamed

1

“What are they doing,” Jiang Cheng said, voice strangled, eyes staring.

Nie Huaisang stood up on his toes and squinted over his new friend’s shoulder. “Fighting?”

It looked like fighting.

“No.”

Not fighting? In that case, at least by Nie sect standards, that meant –

“Flirting?”

Jiang Cheng growled, which meant Nie Huaisang’s guess was right. “I’m going to kill the rotten bastard in white! I bet he waited until Wei Wuxian was alone just for this. How dare he take advantage of my – of Wei Wuxian!”

“I mean, I don’t know about that? They seem about tied,” Nie Huaisang said, making a mental note – not that many people could match up against Lan Wangji, especially when he was in a you-are-breaking-the-rules sort of snit. “Each one’s giving as good as the other gets, if you know what I mean…I’m talking about fighting!” He added hastily, seeing Jiang Cheng’s expression. “Just the fighting! And hey, maybe the Lan sect doesn’t flirt through fighting?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jiang Cheng said. “All cultivation sects flirt through fighting.”

Damnit, Nie Huaisang thought to himself with a sigh. That means I’m going to have to train with saber after all if I’m going to get somewhere here, doesn’t it? Well, at least da-ge will be pleased…

“Are you going to interrupt?” he asked, hiding his face behind his fan. “If fighting is flirting…”

As expected, Jiang Cheng choked. “Not all fighting is flirting!” he hissed. “But that most certainly is!”

Nie Huaisang didn’t understand fighting, so he just shrugged.

“Why don’t you confront him later?” he suggested, but Jiang Cheng shook his head, his features already settling into a mulish expression that had no right to look as attractive as it was. “All right, I see I can’t convince you. Good luck defending your brother’s honor, then?”

-

2

“If Lan Wangji doesn’t stop flirting with Wei Wuxian in class, I’m going to do something violent,” Jiang Cheng said.

“Okay, now I know you’re delusional,” Nie Huaisang said. “But still very pretty. Oh, I’m torn…actually no, I think I’m fine. I mean, what cultivator do I know that isn’t a bit delusional?”

“Can you stop talking nonsense and focus on how we’re going to split them up?” Jiang Cheng demanded irritably. Really, it was no wonder that Nie Huaisang’s best attempts at flirting were going nowhere. Jiang Cheng was thick.

In many appealing ways. Mm.

Damn his bad taste.

“Well, I think first you have to start by reversing your statement until it resembles the truth a bit more,” Nie Huaisang said, trying to be practical. “It’s Wei-xiong that’s flirting with Lan-er-gongzi, not the other way around.”

“He’s just like that!”

“A giant flirt, you mean?”

“Sociable,” Jiang Cheng insisted with the sort of blindly loyal stubbornness that was sadly very, very appealing to those surnamed Nie. Mouthwatering, even.

“Right,” Nie Huaisang said, dabbing at his mouth with his sleeve to make sure he wasn’t drooling. “I see. All right, I’ll help you. I’ll even promise to find a way to break them up for good, guaranteed – but first you have to meet one condition.”

Jiang Cheng arched his eyebrows, looking unwillingly intrigued. “Name it.”

“You have to come up with one way in which Lan-er-gongzi has been flirting with Wei Wuxian that isn’t ‘he existed being pretty in his general direction’.”

Jiang Cheng opened his mouth.

Nie Huaisang waited.

“…maybe he should consider being less pretty,” Jiang Cheng grumbled.

Nie Huaisang patted him on the shoulder, then left his hand on his shoulder because why not.

“We’ve all thought that about him over the years,” he said. “Better luck next time.”

3

“You’re supposed to be helping me preserve my brother’s honor!” Jiang Cheng hissed at Nie Huaisang, who had made absolutely no promises of that sort without giant loopholes that he could walk right out of. “Not – encouragingthis!”

“I didn’t! I just helped Wei-gongzi play a tiny little prank –”

“With pornography!”

“Tasteful erotic art,” Nie Huaisang corrected.

“With cutsleeve pornography!”

“Cutsleeve tasteful erotic art.”

“Nie Huaisang! You’re missing the point!”

“Am I?” Nie Huaisang asked thoughtfully, tapping his fan against his lips. “I don’t know, I’m not sure I am. Can you explain what the point is again?”

Jiang Cheng threw his hands up into the air. “Listen, it was bad enough when Wei Wuxian got thrown out of Teacher Lan’s classes and had to go copy rules in the Library Pavilion for a month; that’s disgraceful and loses face for our sect, but at least his personal honor was preserved –”

Bad scholarship was, in fact, not an impediment to having personal honor. Nie Huaisang knew this fact forwards, backwards, and intimately.

“But then Teacher Lan fell for Lan Wangji’s tricks and decided to assign him to supervise copying –”

“Lan-er-gongzi has tricks? That’s news to me.”

“…well, either way, they got cooped up there in that room, together, alone, for – for weeks!”

“Hasn’t Lan-er-gongzi been using the muting spell on Wei-xiong most of that time?”

“No, eventually Wei Wuxian learned his lesson and now he shuts himself up whenever he sees him starting up the spell, he complains to me and shijie about it constantly every night,” Jiang Cheng said, grumbling. “Stop interrupting me!”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Anyway, if that wasn’t enough, you’re now encouragingthis debacle by setting up a prank that involves Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and cutsleeve pornography.”

“I did,” Nie Huaisang agreed. “And it’s tasteful erotic art, Jiang-xiong.”

“Why do you keep insisting on that?” Jiang Cheng snapped. “Isn’t it the same thing?”

“No,” Nie Huaisang said patiently. “Because I also have pornography, and it’s a lot less tasteful.”

Jiang Cheng stopped, utterly distracted from his previous rant. “...you do?”

“Mm. Want to see?”

-

4

“Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, wait for me, I want to talk to you – I need you! See, for whatever reason, I can’t find Jiang Cheng anywhere. Can you help me look –”

Nie Huaisang shut his window before Jiang Cheng could overhear and get distracted.

They were busy.

-

5

“All right,” Nie Huaisang said. “I admit it, you’re right.”

Jiang Cheng looked at him. “…you do?”

“I do.”

“Right about…what?”

“About the flirting, and Lan Wangji having tricks,” Nie Huaisang said, nodding wisely. “See, the Lan sect take their rules about their forehead ribbons very seriously. It’s parents, children, and lovers only. So if you ran into Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji entangled on the path near the back mountain, both of them soaking wet, with Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon wrapped around their wrists…why, that’s practically an elopement!”

Jiang Cheng, predictably, turned purple. “He eloped with my – I’m going to kill him!”

“Have fun with that,” Nie Huaisang said happily, and watched as Jiang Cheng drew his sword and charged, shouting something.

Wei Wuxian attempted to defend their conduct, except apparently their conduct involved finding the ghost of a Lan sect ancestor –

“Did you bow?” Nie Huaisang asked, very unhelpfully. “Both of you? So you’d say you’ve made your bows to the older generation? Have you bowed to heaven and earth yet, too?”

Lan Wangji gave him a death glare, but maybe he should have thought of that before writing to Nie Huaisang’s brother disclosing details about Nie Huaisang’s love life.

“I’m going to kill you!” Jiang Cheng roared.

Nie Huaisang smiled over his fan at Lan Wangji and gave a jaunty little wave.

-

+1

A few days earlier

“Wait, so, you’re actually together?” Nie Huaisang asked, and Lan Wangji nodded. They were having tea together the way they always did at the middle of the week, a tradition started long ago when their brothers were visiting and being utterly intolerable. Even their long-standing fight with each other would be put aside for mid-week tea. “Well done!”

Lan Wangji’s ears turned a little red. “Mm.” After a few moments, he added, “Mm.”

“No, no, I don’t think you need to worry,” Nie Huaisang said. “He may seem flighty, but he’s very loyal…the Jiang sect might object, though. They can be a bit tetchy about these things.”

Arched eyebrows.

“What do you mean, how would I know? Have you somehow missedthat I’ve been trying to snag Jiang Cheng all summer? There are more things in this world than Wei Wuxian’s waistline, shapely as it may be.”

Eyes narrowing.

“…don’t you dare tell my brother!”

A smirk, not that anyone else – excluding Lan Xichen – would know.

“I don’t care about your ‘appropriate conduct’! If you tell my brother that I’m dating instead of studying, I’ll find a way to make your life miserable, too! Just you wait!”

[shslfanficreader]

Submissive Rantaro x afab Reader

NS//FW Alphabet

Requests are open!

Word Count: 3000+

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Rantaro would want to take care of you so bad, but at the same time he’s a babey and would also love for you to take care of him.

If he’s taking care of you he’d clean you up, maybe even lick you clean before getting a washcloth and wiping you over, and then he’d get water for both of you.

If you’re taking care of him he’d be so out of it and relaxed, just letting you do what you need and watching while you did all of it. He might whine as you wipe him over if he’s really sensitive or overstimulated, and it would be adorable. He’d thank you for every little thing and just act so in love in general. 

Either way, he will want cuddles and will be so happy and relaxed if you give them to him. He’d love to rest his head on your chest or be the little spoon.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He loves your thighs so much, loves to kiss and bite at them, but loves having them wrapped around his head even more. 

He would be enthralled with your body so much, and he’d love it no matter what size or shape you are, and if you were insecure he’d make sure to show that he loves you and what you look like no matter what.

He likes his hands. They’ve always been useful to him on his adventures and he’s found that they’re even more useful at pleasuring you. The best thing about them is that he can feel you all over with them, he just glides his hands over your skin and grasps you and it’s all so amazing. You taking his hand and putting his fingers in your mouth makes him so turned on and he’d be in awe of you. Not to mention he can rub at your clit, feel how wet you are and feel you clench and your muscles spasm when he crooks them inside of you.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

He 100% has a breeding kink. Not as in “you must be pregnant and have my children” type of kink, but he just. Loves the concept. There’s some risk in it but you’re always careful, and he loves coming in you, marking you as his from the inside out. And he can’t help but want to watch it leak out of you, maybe even eat it out of you. He loves when you ask him to come inside of you, and it’s not like he can say no to you anyway. That being said, you want him to use a condom? That’s not an issue at all!

He’d also love to cum on you. Anywhere. Your tummy, back, ass, boobs, face, even over your pussy. Anywhere you’ll let him. He just thinks it looks so pretty.

Oh, and if you're blowing him and you swallow? Holy fuccccck.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

If he’s going to be away from you for a long period of time, say on an adventure of something, he might steal a pair of your underwear to take with him so he can think about you even more when he’s having “alone time.”

He’d whine and moan so prettily as he holds them and jerks himself off, maybe even accidentally coming on them, and he feels so guilty about it, so dirty, but he just wants you so bad.

He’d wash them a couple of times and try to sneakily place them back in your drawer, hoping you didn’t notice.

He accidentally lost a pair once too. He never told you. He hoped you just thought they’d been misplaced.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Rantaro had experience, but not a massive amount. Like, he knew what he was doing, but he was also always learning and trying new things, and that was definitely not a bad thing in his book.

He looks much more like a playboy than he actually is.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Missionary and riding. Yes.

Missionary because he can look at you and put his face right next to yours, have his ear close to your lips and listen to you moan for him. Missionary is his favourite position if you’re pegging him too.

He likes riding because you can set the pace and take control, use him how you want to. The view is a nice added bonus.

He’s a fan of any position that gets your thighs wrapped around his head too.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

He’s very sweet in the moment, probably on the more serious side, but not against being goofy and having fun with you. When he’s feeling subby he usually just feels like being intimate with you and is a bit more romantic than normal. He’s just a needy boy.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

I’m not going to say whether I think it’s green or not, okay? (But probably, yeah.)

But!

He keeps things relatively natural. He doesn’t shave or anything like that, but he might trim a bit to keep things neat.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…) 

Oh, sub Rantaro is most definitely romantic. He likes to be sweet towards you and keep things nice and intimate. He definitely feels a lot more like you’re making love instead of fucking when he’s submitting to you sometimes.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

Sometimes when you’re not around and he really needs you he’ll hump and rub against your pillow until he comes. He feels bad about it after. He always washes it before you need to use it again and usually pretends he spilled something on it. Hmmm, something…

He’s really sensitive on the underside of the head of his dick, so he pays special attention to that area when he jacks off, twisting his wrist as it reaches his tip with each stroke.

He also likes fucking himself, with his fingers and with toys, but he much prefers it when you do it. When he fingers himself he likes crooking his fingers and massaging his prostate. Pre-cum leach’s out of his cock almost the entire time he does it, it feels so good.

He likes fleshlights, dildos, butt plugs, vibrators, all that good stuff, but one toy he didn’t think he’d like as much as he does is wand vibrators. Like. Good god. That sensitive spot on the underside of his tip? Yeah, he just holds a wand vibrator there and it’s so good and makes him come so hard and so fast that it drives him crazy.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Bondage, praise, overstimulation, and edging, all the way.

He loves both tying you up and being tied up, but has a slight preference for being tied up when he’s feeling submissive. You being in control is so hot to him, and if he’s tied up you can do whatever you want. He’d never admit it but he loves it when you tease him when he’s bound. It just makes everything feel so much more intense. He loves being teased by having your fingers inside him, his cock in your mouth, a toy against or inside him, and especially by you fucking yourself onto him but just not giving him quite enough. He sometimes likes to be blindfolded too.

Does he like praising you or being praised himself more? The world may never know. 

He wants to do everything he possibly can to make you feel good and loved, but tell him he’s doing good and he’s gone.

When it comes to you he much prefers overstimulation than edging. He wants to pleasure you over and over until you can’t take anymore, and then he’ll still keep going if you’ll let him. 

He loves both overstim and edging when it comes to himself. He'll get so overwhelmed if you overstimulate him, sometimes he'd start crying, not because he wanted you to stop or it hurt, but because it was just so much, his face would be flushed red and wet with tears and sweat. He'd look like a wreck in the best way. 

When you edge him he begs a lot. His pleas of "please, please, please, I need it," would be so pretty and he would buck his hips up trying to get any friction and stimulation. He loves being edged and teased but he'll get desperate and needy faster than he likes. He wants to hold out and be good for you but once he's been edged a few times he just feels like he needs to come, so he can't help but beg.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

The best place is always a bed. You have privacy, can lock the doors, feel safe, and have everything you could possibly need.

But Rantaro does love sex in a lot of places. He loves sex on the couch, especially when you ride him, and in the shower or up against a wall. Anywhere you need him, he'll be there. 

He isn't the biggest fan of public sex, just because trying to hide can be a bit of an inconvenience. Not that the risk isn't hot. But there's also still like. The actual risk aspect, and he'd rather not get arrested. He's more inclined to want public sex if he's in a more neutral or dominant mood. There's something about being submissive that makes him want to be alone, in the privacy of his own home, secure.

He doesn't mind car sex, as long as it isn't like, on a freeway or anywhere crowded. He actually loves when you're together and suddenly you want to pull over because you want him and you just can't wait.

One place he's learned to love having sex is in tents. He has to stay in tents a lot when he's adventuring, so they've become a sort of second home to him. It gives the illusion of privacy being alone and intimate and still feels comfortable and homey but there's still a little bit of risk when it comes to getting caught because tents don't have locks or soundproofing. He loves having you alone with him in a tent.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Oh, the most mundane things turn him on. You could be reaching up and your shirt could ride up, or you could compliment him and it would go straight to his pants. 

And you wearing his clothes? No matter how poorly they fit, you're wearing. His. Clothes. How was the poor boy expected to see that and go on unaffected?

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Rantaro would be down to try most things, but wouldn't be into hurting you or having you hurt him too much. Like, spanking? Fine! Biting? Yes, please! Scratches and bruises? God, they look so pretty. But he'd never want to do something too intense or violent. He wanted to turn pain to pleasure, not seriously injure you for the sake of sex.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Hoo, boy, Rantaro loves getting oral. He loves having your mouth on his cock or your tongue in his ass. You look so pretty and feel so good with your mouth around him, and when you eat him out he's putty in your hands. He loves that you feel safe enough with him to do something considered so dirty.

But what he loves even more is giving you oral.

This boy is a giver, especially when he feels submissive. He wants to make you feel as good as possible, and he has a wicked mouth that he knows how to use. He licks around and into you but makes sure to suck at and play with your clit more so, because that’s when your hips buck into his mouth and your hands find his hair.

He loves eating ass. This is a fact. He loves feeling your muscle contract around his tongue, and he loves being used in any dirty way you want.

What better way to submit to someone than to have them ride your face?

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

Rantaro prefers being slow when he's subby and emotional, because in that case he wants to be intimate with you, and he likes being slow and sensual for that type of thing. Of course, the closer either of you get to coming the faster and harder he'll go.

But when he's feeling subby purely for the sake of submitting? Ride that boy fast and rough until he cries. Better yet, order him to fuck you hard until you come. If he comes before you? Oh well...

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

He prefers sex, especially if he's subbing. It's hard for him to deal with being in that headspace for a quick fuck, for you to just go about your days after. No, he wants to take his time with you.

That being said, if you're both in the mood and don't have much time. A quickie's better than nothing. Hell, it's still a magical experience, he'd just like that magic to last a little longer.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

Oh yeah, Rantaro is absolutely game to experiment and take risks. He’ll try most things, but most definitely has hard limits that he doesn’t want to cross.

Let’s just say road head sounds like a great idea until you come and almost crash into a pole with your pants down.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

It depends. If you’re overstimming him every round, then he can’t go for as many. It gets really overwhelming for him. 

Oh, he can last, but not if you’re purposefully doing everything you can to make him come fast and over and over.

If he’s setting the pace and fucking you though, he can keep going for a long time. Of course, if you want him to go harder, faster, he will, but he might come a bit faster too, as anyone would.

But even if he’s overstimulated and can’t take any more that doesn’t mean his mouth and hands don’t still work, and that boy will do whatever you need until you’re satisfied. Say you have trouble coming from penetration, or coming in general. He will do everything in his power to get you there. If you can’t, he’ll be disappointed, but only because he thinks you deserve all the pleasure he can give you.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

He most definitely owns toys, both for himself and for you. 

He likes using them on himself when he’s all alone and when he’s with you. If you want him to put on a show, of course he will. If you’re the one to use the toys on him it always feels so much more intense for him, probably because he’s not expecting what you do and just because it’s you in general.

He likes watching you use toys on yourself too, or using them on you himself. One of his favourite things to do is to fuck you with a vibrator whilst he sucks on your clit.

He owns both the basics and a few other bits and pieces that don’t get used as often but are still a lot of fun.

A few of the things he has are vibrators and dildos and butt plugs of all different sizes and colours, even a fleshlight. He has some rope and handcuffs and a paddle too.

A couple of his favourites are a prostate massager and a remote control vibrator that was a lot of fun if not a little bit embarrassing.

He also just had. So much lube. It’s everywhere. In the bedroom, the bathroom, his car, his travel bags, your car, the living room, even the kitchen. Who keeps lube in the kitchen? It’s bound to lead to something disastrous some day.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

When he’s feeling submissive he doesn’t tease as much as usual. Hell, he doesn’t really tease at all, he wants to be a good boy and do everything you could possibly want. He’s a service sub. 

He loves being teased himself though. Make him use that pretty voice to beg you to give him “just a little more please.”

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

He’s not overly loud but he does whine and moan a lot. He whimpers and begs a lot too, especially when you edge him. 

He talks a lot too, but not necessarily dirty talk. It’s more like he doesn’t even know he’s speaking and incoherent babbling starts coming out of his mouth, but you can always hear a lot of things like “you feel so good,” “please,” and “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

Two words: morning sex. Just imagine it. Rantaro wakes up first. He cuddles into you and he’s already half hard from a dream he was having. He still feels sleep soft and he has an insane case of bed head. He’s snuggled up to your back and slowly starts to grind up against you, he knows you wouldn’t mind. Once you wake up he doesn’t stop. As he gets closer he asks if he can fuck you. If you let him he’ll gently slide inside of you and fuck you slow and deep until he’s moaning and groaning at your ear.

If you say no, he’ll ask if he can fuck your thighs. He’d thrust back and forth, loving the pressure and wrapping a hand around you and holding on to your tummy or rubbing your clit, until he comes in between your legs and you come too, if you’ll let him make you.

If you say no to that too, he’ll take care of himself, fucking up into his own hand until he comes over his tummy.

He also loves waking you up by eating you out. His head under the covers, mouth gliding over and sucking on you. He loves when you wake up and you finally put your hands in his hair.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

He’s about average girth and slightly above average in length. Honestly, he has such a nice cock, and he definitely knows how to use it. It isn’t massive, which he actually likes. He wouldn’t want to hurt you or intimidate you too much.

His cock always turns a pretty red when he’s close, and he doesn’t really like that, but the colour does look so pretty when it’s against your skin.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

His sex drive in general is a bit higher than average. When he’s submissive he always wants sex more because it’s a way for him to let go and feel intimate with you. You can tell he wants sex if he wants to cuddle and he puts his head in the crook of your neck to nuzzle there and moans fall from his lips. He also pushes his body against yours and just wants to be as close to you as possible.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He doesn’t always fall asleep, sometimes he’s content to just lay with you and maybe watch some tv. If he does fall asleep, it’s always after you’re both done with your aftercare and he knows you’ve been well taken care of.

Tags: @mius-imagination

[dontmindmyshadowhunting]

The London Shadow Market - Centurions on a mission (Fan Fic)

This is a one-shot Tynush fan fic.

London Shadow Market. Centurions Tiberius Blackthorn and Anush Joshi are on mission for the Scholomance, tied to the First Heir, and Ty gets a bit overprotective.

It's a bit angsty and though there is mention of sex, there is no sex scene/smut.

Big thanks to @amchara who beta-read the fic (and notably helped with her thorough knowledge of London) and who also sparked the idea, since we discussed how there could never be enough of overprotective Blackthorns fic.

****

It was long past midnight and the London Shadow Market’s lights were fading one after the other. Fenwick was wrapping up for the night, muttering about what an awful evening it had been. Only a dozen customers buying baubles. Overpriced, but still. Long gone were the days where he could earn in an evening what now took him a month to scrounge. The new Inquisitor, Diego Rosales, was knowledgeable, relentless, and incorruptible. It didn’t help that the new Unseelie King also frowned on his barely-to-not-legal-at-all side businesses. The most profitable ones, as it happened. He still had the favour of the Seelie Queen, but even she, in her eagerness to make peace with King Kieran, was not as frequent a client as she used to be.

So, when he heard the bell ring announcing that a customer had just crossed the threshold of his magically enhanced oversized tent, Fenwick immediately perked up. His cheerful mood was of short duration.

Two dark-haired figures had stepped into his dimly lit tent, one at least a head taller than the other, but both with a graceful warrior stance that betrayed what they were despite the obscurity.

Shadowhunters. And not any kind. The worst kind if you asked him. Those who knew much more about the Fair Folk than the fey had ever cared to reveal. They even kept secrets from the other Nephilim. That’s how world-altering their knowledge was. Centurions. And they were in their black uniforms, their silvery pins gleaming in the light of the candles scattered around the tent, not even bothering to conceal their identity.

Fenwick was torn between bolting out – on the off chance that he managed to outrun them – to lay low in one of his numerous hideouts (for a few decades at least) and standing his ground, trying to weasel his way out of this uncomfortable situation. What made up his decision was the weariness that gripped him at the mere idea of running. The centuries he had strolled around the Earth made him feel like an overstretched rubber band.

“Well met, Sons of the Angel!” He said, forcing a cheerful tone.

“Well, met,” the smaller, wheatish-skinned one answered. He had a warm, lyrical voice. As he took a few steps forward inside the tent, Fenwick tried very hard not to flinch. Up close, he had a very handsome face, high cheekbones framing his narrow and delicate nose. Strong thick eyebrows made a perfect arc over his big almond-shaped brown eyes. His bright yet calm demeanour compelled you to trust him. But Fenwick knew better.

The taller one didn’t greet him. He was already strolling lazily around the tent, scanning the shelves. He was standing with his back to Fenwick, so that all that Fenwick could see of him was black hair and a dark uniform, a circle of thorns etched across the back of his jacket.

“What brings you to my humble shop?”

The question had been directed at the politest of the two, but he didn’t seem to hear, entirely focused on stealing covert glances at his fellow Centurion. His expression was wistful, almost reverent.

Fenwick considered it. He knew how lonely they got sometimes, hidden between harsh grounds and cold stones in the Carpathian Mountains. Some were known to suffer depression, if not mental illness. He used to interact frequently with them, in the past, until the Scholomance was closed in 1872, with the signing of the First Accords. He sold them information, and sometimes a good time.

“You are in luck, Centurions. I have several pretty mermaids who have just joined Fenwick’s lair. At least two of them have a kink for strong Nephilim such as yourselves.” After all, King Kieran had started a trend… “We also have the usual nixies, pixies, goblins, hobgoblins, brownies, and even a djinn for those who have more… particular tastes. Everything happens on Seelie territory and is strictly legal of course. I have the paperwork.”

The light brown skinned Centurion looked like he was trying very hard not to burst out laughing. He coughed a little to hide it before swiftly saying, “Nothing of the sort.”

“We heard you were selling. We are buying.” The taller one spoke for the first time. He had a deep voice, with a rich timber to it. As he glanced over his shoulder, the candles’ light played along his face, revealing his striking features. Fenwick stifled a gasp. His merchant’s mind was already calculating what he could earn with such a possession. Faerie lords – even princes – would pay handsomely – a fortune – to enjoy the boy’s company.

“What is it that you care to acquire from old Fenwick?” he said in a honey voice. “Certainly not a love potion. Someone who looks like you must never be in need of it.” The Centurion’s expression remained impassive, yet Fenwick thought he saw a shadow flicker across his eyes. “Your pretty face is so much like a faerie’s. I almost took you for one of our kind.”

The other Centurion cleared his throat loudly, and when he had caught Fenwick’s attention, shot him a glare, his deep brown eyes cold as ice. A warning. Fenwick knew in that instant that if he ever wanted to get his hands on the pretty Nephilim, he would have to go through his companion first.

“What we want…” he said in a clipped tone, “cannot be touched, tasted, or inhaled.”

“Information, then,” Fenwick replied automatically upon hearing the code. A chill went up his spine. Did they know? Only one way to find out. “And what type of information do you seek?”

“You know exactly which one. Please do not waste any more precious minutes of our mortal lives. Name your price.”

Fenwick told him. The Centurion approached Fenwick’s counter and, without a word, retrieved a pouch from inside his jacket - Fenwick recognized it as fey craftsmanship of the finest sort and, though it did not bear the Unseelie Court’s sigil, had most certainly come from it - and started counting bills. His curiosity got the better of him.

“What do you want with the First Heir?” He blurted. “I didn’t know it was the Scholomance’s job to look for him. Other Nephilim – if not as skilled – have already been assigned to the task.”

“We have the money. Our business with him is our own,” he replied dismissively.

Fenwick glanced at the other tall Centurion, who had remained silent during the exchange. He had retrieved a crystal orb from one of the shelves and was turning it over in his long pale fingers.

“Careful with that! It’s fragile! And expensive. If you break it, you pay it.”

“Twenty-one,” he replied.

“Pray tell?”

“The number of laws you have broken with the content of these shelves. I am not talking about the items you keep in your back store.”

“Tiberius,” his companion warned, before forcing a smile to Fenwick’s benefit. “Here’s the money. Give us the information and we’ll be on our way.”

Fenwick’s gaze zeroed on the bills spread over his counter. He did the usual checks, doing as best as he could to hide his excitement.

“Okay,” he drawled, when they had come out to be the real deal. He gave them the First Heir’s address. The Centurion’s lips twitched but his face remained otherwise blank. He acknowledged with a stiff nod and whirled around.

“I can give you one more information. Free of charge.”

The Centurion paused and glanced over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised in question.

“The First Heir. He has power beyond your wildest imagination. Even mighty warriors such as yourselves will have a hard time capturing him. But he has a family that he loves dearly and would be willing to die for. If you take his little sister hostage, you can obtain whatever you want from him.”

Fenwick startled at the sound of glass shattering. He glanced over to find that the tall, silent, Nephilim – Tiberius, his companion had called him – had closed his long fingers on the orb, with apparently enough pressure and force that it had broken into multiple shards. He was now watching with remote interest as blood escaped from his clenched fist and started running like crimson strings over his knuckles and wrist. He didn’t look the least bit concerned by the sight.

“Hey! You will pay for this!” Fenwick said, taking consolation in the fact that, as expensive as the item was, they probably had the money.

“That’s funny,” Tiberius said in a tone that suggested it wasn’t at all. “I was about to say the exact same thing.”

He hadn’t seen him coming, but from one moment to the next, the Nephilim was in Fenwick’s face, a dagger pressed against the fey’s throat.

Fenwick thought he looked more animal than human as he cocked his head, his gray eyes feral. “Earlier you said that I look like a fey. Well, there is at least one trait that I share with the Fair Folk. I. Don’t. Lie. So, trust me when I tell you this. If you so much as harm a hair on that little girl’s head, my pretty face will be the last thing you’ll ever see. The same goes for any other member of her family. I will hunt you down, scour each one of your rabbit holes and I don’t care if it takes every single second I have left of my mortal life.”

“Tiberius,” the other Centurion crooned. “Tiberius. We are done here. Let’s go home.” Fenwick realized with a jolt of surprise that he had moved soundlessly to rest his hand on Tiberius’ shoulder and was rubbing it, tracing small circles around the joint. It was such an intimate gesture that Fenwick wondered if he had misread earlier when he had thought to witness unrequited love.

Tiberius blinked a few times, then started whispering urgently under his breath. Fenwick couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. It sounded like random words. The Centurion finally narrowed his gaze at Fenwick and mouthed “I don’t lie” one last time before he whirled and both Nephilim disappeared in a blur of dark fabric, out of the tent and into the night, as swiftly as they had come. Fenwick, frozen in terror, hoped with all his immortal’s heart that all of it had only been a bad dream.

***

Anush exhaled the cold and moist London air, his breath coming in frosty white puffs, as he drew an Iratze on the back of Ty’s hand. It had become so frequent lately that he sometimes caught himself wishing Centurions were allowed to be parabatai so that his runes were more effective, but discarded the idea as soon as it crossed his mind. He would not have been allowed to feel the way he did about Ty. And parabatai definitely did not do the things they did.

“I can’t believe he lived during the time of Berlioz. Do you think he met him? If so, I would have a thousand more questions to ask him.”

Ty didn’t answer. He was lost in thought, stroking his heron-shaped pendant with his free hand, his face pale as the moon tilted upwards toward the night sky as if he was counting the stars.

“Hey,’ Anush said softly. “It was the wrong address. So that’s one more snitch to strike off our list.”

“He had the right country, though. That’s a first. They’re closing in.”

“That’s okay, Ty. We will be one step ahead, as always.”

Anush had probably not been convincing enough, as Ty suddenly tensed, his breathing coming in short, shallow gasps, and his hand, still resting in Anush’s palm, started shaking. Anush closed his fingers around Ty’s and murmured soothing words that he knew his fellow Centurion liked, as he gently rubbed his shoulder with his free hand. “Whisper, glass, twin, secret, stars, cloud, castle, crystal, Christopher…”

Ty’s shoulders relaxed slightly. He closed his eyes and took a deep shuddering breath.

“Hey,” Anush whispered. “It’s going to be fine. We will do double shifts. Starting tomorrow. Who needs sleep anyway?”

Ty sighed, relief plain on his marble face. His eyelashes fanned out over his sharp cheekbones and Anush resisted the urge to kiss them. “Thank you. For sticking with me through all this. I know it’s not easy.”

“I didn’t have better plans anyway,” Anush shrugged it off.

Ty opened his eyes and turned his sharp gaze on Anush, still not looking him in the eye but somewhere around his chin. Close enough.

“You know what I mean.”

He knew exactly what Ty meant. The reasons for Ty’s obsession with the First Heir was a subject they never broached. But it was there, like a third presence in their relationship. If you could call what they had a relationship. It was, for Anush at least. He would go to hell and back for Ty, and so would Ty for him. But that didn’t mean he loved him. That’s just how loyal and selfless Ty was.

Anush would always remember the day Ty and him had volunteered to handle the top secret missions tied to the First Heir. Ty had adamantly refused Anush’s involvement, but of course, it was not entirely up to him. Anush was very stubborn. They had both sat in Jia Penhallow’s office and she had asked Ty to leave them alone afterwards. She had looked into Anush’s eyes and had spoken to him earnestly. “These are very dangerous missions, Anush. The most dangerous missions we currently have at the Scholomance. You are a brilliant Centurion, but are you sure you want to do this? I know Tiberius has… personal reasons for volunteering, but what about you?” He had swallowed hard. “Anywhere Tiberius goes, I go.” Her dark eyes had softened. “Anush. Have you really thought this through? I know how much you care about Tiberius but… has he told you why he has chosen to do this?” “I am not Tiberius-smart, but I am not stupid,” he had replied. “The First Heir. He’s in love with him.” The deep sadness and understanding in her eyes had almost made him cry and he had dug his nails into his palms, his jaw working as he withheld tears. “It doesn’t matter,’ he had said through clenched teeth. “Whatever happens, I will be there for him. In any capacity I can.” And it was plain from her expression that she knew he was not only talking about their missions for the Scholomance.

As he now looked into Tiberius’ gray eyes, at his beautiful features that were nothing compared to his gentle and unique heart, Anush felt a deep rush of love mixed with longing. Ty would never be his. He already belonged to someone else. But Anush would give Tiberius any part of him that he wanted.

He took a deep breath before he answered.

“I do. I am not giving you a choice anyway. You’re stuck with me.” Always.

Ty looked down, as if he couldn’t bear the weight of Anush’s gaze on him.

“I didn’t thank you for… earlier. I almost lost it back there.”

“Don’t mention it,” Anush replied. “That’s what I am here for. At least he took your threat seriously.”

“As he should.”

Ty was still playing with the pendant tied around his neck. Anush brought his free hand on top of Ty’s, intertwining their fingers.

“I love your hands,” he whispered to Ty. “I wouldn’t want them to get soiled.” He tiptoed to bring his lips closer to Ty’s ear, almost brushing. “Especially now that I have experienced their full potential.”

Ty turned his face away but not before Anush saw his cheeks flush and the corner of his mouth quirk. Anush loved how he was still shy about these things.

He looked at the dark cobbled street before them.

“Fenwick’s minions must already be on their way.”

Ty cocked his head. “Coming from the west. They’re a mile or two ahead of us. Judging by their pace, they should be upon us in about five minutes.”

Anush nodded. Ty sometimes knew things – as if he had an invisible spy everywhere they went – and Anush had stopped questioning it. If Ty had wanted to share, he would have. Anush would not press him.

“Tactic?”

“Split. Confuse. Divide and conquer.”

“Good. I need the exercise. You take north by the river, I take south and we meet up west?”

Ty nodded, already veering in the opposite direction, two swords drawn.

“Meet you at Blackthorn Hall,” Anush cried out to him, as he started walking backwards. “First one there gets the biggest room.”

“Dream on,” he thought he heard Ty reply. He tried to catch one last glimpse of him for good luck but he had already been swallowed by the night.

***

Tiberius got there first. But he let Anush pick his favourite bedroom. All bedrooms in Blackthorn Hall were decorated with different themes, that one had a landscape - the view from the LA Institute’s rooftop, Ty had explained - painted over an entire wall, opposite the huge canopy bed. Anush found it quite soothing.

“Fenwick sent an army,” he said as he drew several Iratzes on Ty’s back. He whistled. “You must have scared the shit out of him.” They had managed to get rid of the last of Fenwick’s minions by drowning them in the Thames. Ty had a few fey allies lurking underneath the surface. Creatures he had helped escape from captivity.

When he was finished, Tiberius rose from the bed and Anush watched as he stored the bandages and gauze in a small cabinet in a corner of the room. He was naked from the waist up and Anush’s gaze lingered on his fellow Centurion’s lean and muscular back, a canvas way too beautiful for black Runes and faded scars that were now so familiar he could draw them from memory. His dark curls were still wet from the dive into the river.

Anush crossed his arms behind his head and settled comfortably against the headboard.

“Ty?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck me.”

Tiberius stilled, his bare shoulders hunched.

“What, now?”

“Yes now. I want you.”

Ty slowly closed the cabinet’s door and turned to look at Anush, his gray eyes unreadable.

“Anush… My brother Julian is here. His bedroom is a few meters down the corridor.“

“So? It’s not as if he doesn’t know what we are up to. You're so lucky he’s smart and open-minded. The coolest. I wish my parents were the same. If they knew the things we did, they would probably drag me to Naraka themselves.”

“Anush…” Ty said softly. “You know it wouldn’t make any difference if you were a girl… I would say the same thing.”

“We won’t make any noise!”

Tiberius raised a dark eyebrow. Anush let out a deep sigh.

“Yeah, I know. It’s not my fault if you turn into this beast I barely recognize under the bed sheets.”

“I don’t hear you complaining.”

“Oh the noises I make are definitely not me complaining. Mister Hyde can have a ride anytime.”

Ty gave him one of his rare wicked smiles… The ones that always got Anush’s heart rate into high gear. He put his shirt back on and moved soundlessly to the door.

“Ty,” Anush called.

Tiberius paused, his hand on the doorknob.

“Yeah?”

“Stay for the night. No noisy and sweaty sex. Just…lie down next to me.”

“Anush,” Ty breathed, his look apologetic. And Anush braced himself for what would come next. The blow to his chest. Because he already knew what Ty would say. “Anush. You know I can’t sleep that way.”

“Yeah, no problem, I understand. Raziel knows we definitely need the rest.” Anush tried to reply in a light tone but the pitch of his voice rose awkwardly at the end. “It’s okay. Good night Ty.”

“Good night, Anush.”

[peaches-writes]

full circle

description: even if you’ve only known him for eight years, if you think about it, you’ve actually been with minho for most of his entire life. member: minho / lee know genre: fluff, historical au, vampire au, time traveler au, college au, neighbour au, best friends to lovers au, fem reader, this is a longer and revised version of reliable source word count: 10k warnings: explicit language, mentions of animal murder, war, death, blood, alcohol note: yay a third entry to the seven hundred and one universe! oc from seven hundred and one universe is named shiyeon here while the oc from kart rider is named soojung! + this prolly has a lot of plot holes & is just generally mediocre but whatever it’s fiction lmao + @skzwriternet​

present: February 13, 2020

Even before he saw you on the other side of his apartment door at 9 PM with all of your work materials and equipment, Minho already knew full well that this day was coming. He’s always known most days are coming. He‘s just more excited for this in particular than the rest, given its inevitability that he‘s lived through for almost 600 years of his total 900 years as a vampire. Tonight, as evidenced by the Google Docs displayed on your open laptop, is the night you’d travel to the past for your doctorate thesis and meet his past self for the first time. 

He just didn’t expect this in particular to be on the day right before Valentine’s Day, when he and his two other housemates have decided to make a complete mess out of the kitchen with all of the chocolate they’ve been trying to make.

“Hi, sorry for bothering you at this hour but I was thinking—ew, what’s that smell?” You instinctively and bluntly ask first, sniffing the air escaping his side of the door. Minho could smell it too, strongly at that, and the older vampire could only purse his lips and widen his eyes at you. “Are you guys—please don’t tell me you’re actually cooking humans this ti—“

At that, he immediately shakes his head and breaks out into a nervous laugh, pulling the door closer to his body and effectively hiding Jisung scrambling around for the exhaust (and maybe the fire extinguisher too, for some reason) before you could peer over his shoulder. “No, no! It’s just Jisung and Jeongin—well, it’s mostly Jeongin then he dragged Jisung in on it—they’re making Valentine’s Day chocolates for...some people.”

You could sense the slight bluff in his tone (supported further by the little heart-shaped candy on his cheek) and that at least one of those ‘some people’ he could possibly be referring to is one of your friends, Nari, whom Jeongin has not-so-discreetly been pining over since your second year of college, but you easily let it slide. In the eight years you’ve known the vampires who live and own your apartment complex, after all, you’ve definitely walked in on much wilder things than a couple of questionably burnt chocolates (chocolates aren’t even cooked, as far as you’re concerned!). “Um, okay, sure, I’ll trust you with that.” You squint your eyes at him. “Anyway, can I come in? I need your help with something.” 

Minho exhales a small sigh of relief which he turns into a smile for you before looking over his shoulder once to make sure that the coast is clear then opening the door wide once again. “Yeah, come on in.” He concludes next, picking up your backpack on the floor and your heavy laptop in your hands as you cross the threshold. “But it’s really messy in the common area right now so we’ll have to stay in my room, if that’s okay with you.” 

You’ve never been in his room, not even when you first became friends in your first year of college eight years ago or on game nights when he always asks for help taking out his Play Station sets. All of Jisung and Jeongin’s jokes of his serial killer tendencies when you’re not around could be true for all you know and it’s the only thing going through your head as you wordlessly follow him inside his apartment, pondering on the thought.

In response, Minho bites down a laugh between his teeth next to you as he accidentally reads your thoughts and when you catch him in the act, you make sure to elbow him with your freer arm, careful of your drafts binder. “Ya, stop reading my thoughts without permission, you asshole!” You scold him in a sharp hiss right as you pass Jisung and Jeongin in the open doorway leading to the kitchen. You greet the two courteously and even make a salute to the fallen chocolates, to which Minho laughs even more at and the two boys groan in protest. “Well, shit, it really is...bad.”

“I know, poor people who’ll get that tomorrow.” Minho shrugs.

“You could say Nari, it’s fine, I won’t tell.” You shrug back with a laugh, taking this time to take the candy off of his cheek and walking past him and the other two boys with a parting wave before Jeongin could even process that you caught up to him and his crush so easily.

Minho, meanwhile, clears his throat awkwardly and follows you, in a poor attempt to hide his immediate flustered expression. Some of the chocolates were actually for you but he won’t tell you that too, of course.

Especially not when you arrive in his room not long after, nodding in approval at its cleanliness that clearly contrasts the current state of his kitchen and, by a slight extension, living room. “Glad you to know you don’t murder people in your room, Min. See? We get closer as friends would every day.”

“I’ve been on blood bag and animal diet since we met, you brat. Don’t tease like that.” Minho rolls his eyes, prompting you to laugh.

“So, where do I work, then?” You ask after, turning to Minho on your side and accidentally brushing your shoulders together.

He gestures to his work table in response, naturally placing his other hand on your back and guiding you towards it. He really hopes you’d be oblivious to the way he’s growing more flustered this time. He doesn’t let you in his room for a reason, after all (that being it’s too intimate in his opinion). “You can use my desk.” He instructs you after, following you and pulling an extra chair for himself once you’ve reached his desk. Placing your backpack next to his work bag then your laptop on top of the table, he then asks, “So, are you travelling now or later?”

He already knew you’d do it sometime now, he really just wanted to ask to keep the conversation going. He even has your hanbok ready—bought from Changbin’s wife’s shop last month.

But, to you, he seems to have miscalculated the situation a little bit as a realization dawns on you while you’re taking out the portable time travel machine from your backpack. It’s actually just a watch but your professors insist on keeping them in really fancy boxes. “I can do it now if it’s oka—wait, I haven’t even told you that part yet! How do you know I’m not just going to hoard your wi-fi?” You exclaim mid-thought, your mouth falling agape and forming an ‘o’ shape in surprise. You know he wasn’t reading your mind just now because, usually, Minho would announce his presence obnoxiously loud in your head or make the face he did a while back but he didn’t this time. “So you’re going to agree to my request? Is that it?”

Eyes equally wide in his mistake, Minho falls back in his chair and ends up fumbling around with his words. “Well—no, I mean, you always only need my help when you’re about to time travel so—!” He tries his best to cover up which only elicits a victorious smile from you. “Ugh, fine, you got me!”

“So, you’ll help me? I mean, past you, technically.” You ask again for confirmation, sitting down on your own chair this time as you fully take out the portable machine and place it on your lap. “I have to tell you, though, that I need to travel to three other periods for my thesis this time. Is that okay?” 

Minho props his elbow on the arm rest and nods against his knuckles. “You already know the answer to that, I think.” 

You chuckle at this. If eight years of knowing him has taught you anything, it’s to pay attention to the smallest details. He’s clairvoyant, after all, and you need to up him at his own game every now and then somehow. “Then, I’ll also need the proper attire. Haseul said that she can’t take in commissions at the moment so I couldn’t—“

“In the closet, furthest right.” Minho gestures to the walk-in closet behind him in defeat. “You can use that for all the times you’ll go, too.” 

“Have I told you that you’re my bestest friend in the world today? Even more than Nari, and she’s a witch, might I add!” You dramatically announce with a grin, handing him the machine’s box before standing up and making a beeline to the double doors on the other side of his bed. When you follow his instructions and find a pink and blue hanbok along with a floral hairpin on the very end of his closet, you then take it out and head to the open bathroom across the room. “Oh, wow, you even got my size right! You must’ve been preparing for this for a long time, huh?”

He really has—but, again, Minho is too stubborn to admit it to your face. “Just tell me if it’s uncomfortable or something.” He simply replies to you instead before you could close the door and change. Once he hears you acknowledge him with a hum before clicking the door to a lock, he then quickly prepares the time travel watch for you (by the way he remembers you doing it in front of him countless of times while you were cramming for a school requirement with him) then places it next to your laptop in exchange for his phone to message the rest of his friends.

minho [9:13 PM]: its happening

chan [9:14 PM]: you’re confessing?

hyunjin [9:14 PM]: hey that’s great! good for you hyung!!!

minho [9:16 PM]: no! y/n’s making the travel to 1388!

changbin [9:18 PM]: chan u know not to get ur hopes up w minho alr we all know he’s hopeless

minho [9:21 PM]: just bc ur alr married u brat

Changbin was still typing out a reply in the groupchat when you came out of the bathroom in your hanbok, laughing behind your hand when Minho looks up and momentarily gapes at you. “Why are you looking at me like that, weirdo?” You furrow your brows as you approach, smacking his arm before sitting down on his bed right behind him with a slight struggle. Peering over his shoulder, you smile appreciatively at noticing the time machine already set up. “And I see you’ve set up the machine without breaking anything this time! Progress!”

Minho scoffs, swiveling his wheeled chair to face you properly before gesturing to the hairpin in your hands. “You don’t like the hairpin?”

"I don’t know why you’re making me wear a hairpin that looks like a wedding heirloom.” You frown. Not to mention, from it’s material, you could tell that it’s new as well, meaning it was designed this way on purpose. “Won’t it attract too much attention?” 

Minho doesn’t know why you eventually came to him in the past wearing the hairpin too. He thought his future self was being ridiculous then (and he still does in the moment). “I don’t know, either,” He tells you truthfully this time, standing up from his chair to place it on your tightly-made bun. “But you did come wearing it eventually so just go with the flow, I guess? I don’t know, what do your sci-fi movies say?” 

You scoff at him, puffing out the heat rising up to your cheeks at the proximity. He could read your mind if he wants to but he doesn’t seem to be in the moment, even when his lips are gently fanning air into your ear as he fixes the hairpin with utmost care. “I guess I’ll just have to follow your instincts, then.” You sigh in defeat. “I can’t miss a detail, even if it’s weird.” 

“Right. I was there in the moment before you right now.” He smiles cheekily before sitting back down on his chair, passing you your time travel box after. “Ready to go?” 

You nod, fixing your collar one last time before receiving the machine from his hands. “You haven’t met me in the 1388, right?” 

“The first time you met me in the past was in the 1910s for that graduate thesis of yours and the oldest version of me that you’ve met so far was the one from the the 1740s.” Minho corrects, recalling your fourth year thesis some eight years ago. “But the first time I met you in my history was for this doctorate.” 

Your eyes light up at this. “Really? You’re meeting me for the first time now?” 

“Yeah. Why?” 

“We’ll have differing first impressions after this!” You point out to which he snickers. “Also, I haven’t met this version of you, you might be a snob in 1388 and think I’m weird or something.” 

Minho personally doesn’t think his first impression of you will ever change, no matter when you’ll meet in time. He’ll always think positively of you. “I was already turned for a long time, then. I haven’t met Chan and the others but I’ve seen and heard of weirder things than a time traveler.” He assures you. “Now, go, so I can help Jisung and Jeongin in the kitchen.” 

Rolling your eyes, you then set the date to January 1388 (you notice Minho’s already set the location while you were in the bathroom) before bidding a temporary goodbye to him, disappearing into thin air with the watch on your wrist right after. “I’ll be back before you know it!” 

In the blink of an eye, you’re already in a flea market somewhere in Seoul (then named Hanseong, you made sure to remember that well out of all of your history and anthropology notes). 

past: January 1388

You easily find 1388 Minho wandering around the flea market, a crowd of court men and women following him religiously as he examines the crops, livestock, and flowers being sold in stalls. The sight makes you scoff in disbelief, even more when you approach and see how he ignores each and every one of them up close. 

You know Minho isn’t the one of royal blood in his current coven of vampires (that’s Hyunjin—you know it well from the amount of times you’ve pestered him in your other time travels while he was sulking over his present day fiancée) but he has mentioned in passing once about being popular in the palace court, a socialite of his time if you will. 

But then, who could blame him? He’s just that handsome and charming.  

“Minho...Lee Minho...” You try calling for him in the crowd but to no avail, the slight embarrassment of following the crowd creeping up to you. It reminds you a bit of when you first saw him in your timeline, your first year of college and his fourth year (because Chan keeps insisting that he goes to university every now and then to pass the time) when all kinds of students would also follow him around at the campus library. It’s annoying, regardless of wherever you are in the world timeline. “Excuse me, Lee Minho!” 

He only turns to you when you raise your voice, an eyebrow momentarily raised until your eyes meet and a look seemingly of recognition crosses his features. 

You became friends with him as an older vampire but why is he more intimidating as a younger one? It’s probably the rest of the crowd’s eyes being on you because of your sudden interruption. Either way, you forcibly gulp down your nervousness and call for him again. “Lee Minho?” 

“Yes?” 

“C-Can I—Can I talk to you for a moment?” You gesture for him to follow you, his piercing gaze making your hands shake a bit. This is probably what Chan meant when he said Minho was a bit scary when he first met him in the 1400s. 

Minho follows you, anyway, which alleviates and heightens your nervousness at the same time. The crowd would’ve followed if not for him glaring at them not to right before you turned to the main entrance of the flea market where a few people were loitering around at. He feels like he knows you from somewhere which, if you knew about, you’d tell him that that’s impossible since, chronologically, you haven’t met him before this. 

Once you’re away from the majority of the market crowd, only then do you turn to properly face him and his expectant eyes. He’s still looks the same as he does in the present, just more curious, seeing as you’re a stranger for now. It’s comforting, somehow, so much so that it relaxes you and eventually makes you laugh as well. 

“What’s so funny?” He asks you without any hint of malice once you uncontrollably burst into giggles, prompting you to lift your hand up to your mouth. Already developing his clairvoyant abilities at this time period, he could easily tell by the unfamiliar terms in your thoughts and the way you hold yourself up that you were different—far more different than everyone around you. “And who are you?” 

You wave your other hand dismissively, taking a step back to recuperate. You end up giggling a few more times before you could manage to take a deep breath and exhale slowly by turning your eyes away from Minho momentarily. “I’m sorry, I’m Y/N and I—sorry! It’s just so...it’s a bit weird!” 

“Definitely.” Though your answer is unsatisfactory, the boy nods anyway. “And how do you know my name?”  

“I know you from the futur—wait, you can tell that it’s a bit weird too?” You raise an eyebrow and fold your arms over your chest. “It’s…sometime in the 1300s—“

“Thirteen eighty-eight.”

“Right.” You nodded at his correction with a dry scoff, piquing his interest further. “It’s only 1388 and you’re already this good of a clairvoyant?”

Minho was instinctively taken aback with you. His present self forgot to tell you that clairvoyance doesn’t have an established name in this time yet. “How did you—? What? Huh, well…the hanbok—the hanbok’s a bit of a giveaway too, I guess. It looks different from what the court women usually wear.” 

You then briefly glanced down at your hanbok, a pout resting on your features when you look back up at Minho again. “Really? But you—I mean, my source told me that this was accurate.” Come to think of it, you didn’t really check the attire thoroughly since you really needed to travel immediately to cram your paper. You’ll have to give 2020 Minho an earful about this later. “Ah, guess it’s my fault for not double-checking. I was in a bit of a rush to come here.” 

Minho from 1388, however, shakes his head at you in disapproval then briefly begins pointing out the different design patterns that looked foreign to him. “And this hairpin,” He pointed your hair accessory last, from what you can remember at present. There’s an unreadable expression in his face, one you’re too flustered to interpret as amusement. “This looks like a wedding heirloom but…a bit futuristic for my time, if that makes sense. I don’t suppose you wanted to come here disguised as someone’s wife, right? That’d attract more attention to you.”

And with that, you almost immediately deflate right in front of him with a defeated sigh and he smirks teasingly in return. To the passersby at the flea market, people could’ve easily mistaken the two of you for a quarreling married couple. “So that’s how it is.” You surrender easily, your arms loosening. “I guess even at this time you’re clairvoyant and smart. How annoying.”

His smirk grows even more triumphantly at this. “So, why did you come here?” He asks next. He figures out halfway through your rambles that it’s probably better to go along with you than to insist on his own questions, at least until you’ve organized your thoughts a little bit better. 

You ponder on the question for a moment, shifting your weight between the balls of your feet to pass the time. When you do answer, you explain, “Well, it’s a little crazy but my source has said that you’ll be okay with it so...believe it or not, I’m from the future and doing my doctorate thesis on a dynasty that’s about to establish itself around this time.” When 1388 Minho doesn’t immediately and visibly freak out as he would on your worst case scenario, you take this as your cue to continue. “You’re still alive in my time but I can’t tell you what our relationship is or it’ll be spoilers! All I can say is that you’ve helped me passed a lot of my major requirements in school and if you’re okay with it, you can help me with this one too!” 

The Minho in front of you thinks that you probably know him very well to know that he’s not easily spooked with anything out of the ordinary, not even by someone who claims to be from the future and is doing an academic paper about the past. You did mention knowing his personal history, as well, which effectively gained you his trust. He just hopes you’re not married or something in the future as the hairpin seems to be trying to imply or else he’d consider this first meeting of yours a bit chaotic for his liking. “Sure. Where do you have to be right now?” 

Really? It’s that easy? Is all you can think about, much to Minho’s curiosity when he reads your thoughts. “O-Oh, well, um...if you can take me to the palace courts, that would be...cool, I mean nice.” 

And so, Minho from 1388 ends up showing you around the palace courts for the next six months that follows (but, really, it’s just merely six minutes in the present time), even introducing you to people whom you ended up entrusting with your data-gathering. You almost mentioned Hyunjin and his fiancé, Shiyeon, on more than one occasion, remembering how the vampire would be with Seungmin already by this time while the immortal witch would be travelling around Korea, but opted not to instead when you also remember that no one from this time period really liked talking about the previous fire that killed most of Hyunjin’s family. 

Besides, you didn’t want to mess up the timeline and have Minho meet Hyunjin before he could meet Chan, even when he would ask you about it right before you left. 

“How am I in the future, by the way? Am I allowed to ask that?” Minho asks you curiously as you hold out your watch in front of him. It was starting to get annoying, having to hide it in your bell sleeves all the time. “And what am I doing by then?” 

“I can’t say anything specific that’s important.” You scrunch up your nose disapprovingly to which Minho only glares at you in response. “Just trust me, you’re sort of happy with where you are in my present day. You don’t have to worry about it now, it’s still 600 years away, anyway.” 

Minho mistakenly interprets that as the two of you being married in the future. He doesn’t have feelings for you in this time period but he takes your word not to worry about it until it’s happened. 

Besides, you seem kind. He’ll see something in you eventually. 

“When will I see you again, then?” 

“Um...around 1418, probably?” You answer with a hint of uncertainty as you faintly recall your thesis’ outline. You needed to see King Sejeong’s court next. “You’ll still be here, right?” 

Minho initially had plans on moving to a nearby province but he nods, anyway, thinking that that could wait for a few more years. “Yeah.” 

And with that, you’re gone again. 

present: February 13, 2020 

When you get back to the present day, it’s only 9:35 PM, almost six minutes since you left, but Minho’s already in the kitchen, helping Jisung and Jeongin clean up their mess. 

“Back already?” Minho asks with a blood bag between his teeth when he catches sight of you by the open doorway as he wipes the kitchen island clean, immediately noticing the grin you wear on your face. “What did you think?” 

“You were much chiller then!” You exclaim, ducking past Jeongin and Jisung to sit down right across Minho on the countertop. “I mean, you were a bit scary at first with the whole glaring thing you got going on but you were very calm and collected, then, like you weren’t even phased about me being from the future!” 

Of course he would be at that time, he was literally there when it happened (and also because he’s always had a feeling even from before that you’d meet but that’s also on his long list of things he won’t tell you). Instead, you see him quirk an eyebrow, throwing the rag towel in his hand to the side to pick up his phone and resume his Kart Rider. “Weirdoes vibe with weirdoes, I guess.” He shrugs, chuckling when you protest at this. “Anyway, you got what you need, right?”

You nod happily with a hum, propping an elbow up on the now clean counter and resting your cheek on your palm. “I have enough to write about later when you’re done cleaning.” 

“Ya, Y/N, if you’re gonna stick around at least help us clean the kitchen!” Jisung complains as he drags a wet mop across the floor behind you. 

“And why would I do that? I didn’t even help you make the chocolates!” 

“Because Minho’s been making cho—” Before Jisung could finish his sentence, however, Minho throws his rag towel towards the younger vampire, aiming it directly to his face. “Ya!” 

You shake your head in disbelief, turning to Minho again after. “Anyway, I have to fix my notes for a bit and you need to tell me where else I went for this paper!” 

Also because you were kinda cute back then, you think to yourself more as an after-thought, not really expecting for Minho to accidentally hear it.   

Now, Minho knows why he made you wear the hairpin. Is it normal to be jealous of one’s past self? 

present: February 16, 2020 

Minho offers you a whole bag of your favorite mini Toblerones the next time that you knock on his door to work on your thesis. The Valentine’s Day homemade chocolates were a fail even when Felix was eventually brought in last-minute (then you just had to disappear for a whole day with Nari and Shiyeon, too), so he rushed to the nearest convenience store to buy you the Toblerones as soon as you told him that you’ll come over again to pester him with his Internet connection and ask him more about your work. 

Maybe this is really it, the one you were talking about in his past. 

“You’re being nice to me with all this chocolate.” You squint your eyes with a piece of the chocolate in between your teeth suspiciously across the dining table as you work, head buried in papers to revise and dusty reference books. Your professor has you on travel limit as everyone else, only allowing you up to four actual visits to the past, hence the mountainous stacks of library books and journals you’ve borrowed from both the campus library and Changbin’s personal collection. “What do you need? Ya, I’m talking to you.” 

Minho, busy in his own academic work on his laptop, only peeks up at you belatedly when he’s reaching out for his blood bag buried underneath all of your papers. “What?” 

“What are the chocolates for?” You ask straightforwardly this time, picking up another mini Toblerone off the yellow bag. “Last time you bought me something from the convenience store was when you ate the squirrel I was feeding in the back garden.” 

Minho only shrugs as nonchalantly as he could, though he can’t help but feel a little flustered as evidenced by the way his eyes briefly widen. The squirrel incident was a long time ago and yet you still won’t let it go. “Can’t I be nice?” He simply asks back in answer to which you scoff at. He laughs along with you, anyway. “Jeongin bought it then gave me the extra, probably to give to you since I can’t really eat it.” 

You wanted to tell him that Nari actually shared the chocolates Jeongin gave her and they were definitely not Toblerones but you let it slide again. For some reason, it’s funny seeing Minho try to cover up something right in front of your face and thinking that he’s doing a good job at it. He’s trained you to see past his bullshit for the past 8 years, he should really know better. “Um...right.” You nod teasingly. “I’m gonna pretend you’re not looking very suspicious right now.” 

Minho could clearly tell that you’re doubting him even without reading you but he does nothing more to it. He’s too deep in his bullshit already and you both know that. 

Truth is, he was just fulfilling something you mentioned in your second visit to him (and probably as a way to give you something on Valentine’s Day even if it’s two days late). 

“Anyway, when are you making the travel again?” 

“Right after I finish summarizing this book.” 

And it happens to come full circle today, too. What luck does your best friend have. 

past: August 1418 

You jump between days in a span of six years this time (which is approximately an hour and twelve minutes back in the present time) with the help of Minho, Chan, and Changbin from 1418 helping you by preparing an entire closet of clothes and coming up with a very detailed background story of how you were a distant relative of Chan’s from the province in the case that someone asked about you. The other two boys were more than happy to welcome you despite how foreign time travel was to them in this time period because, apparently, you’re all Minho’s ever talked about since they met. 

“It’s nice knowing that Minho didn’t fever dreamed you up or something.” Changbin joked to you once towards the end of the six years of your data-gathering, to which he received a full apple shoved in his mouth from Minho. In this time period, his wife, Haseul, was still in that sleeping curse you still don’t understand fully at present, carefully laid in a tomb somewhere in the capital. Fortunately, you managed to avoid telling him that she wakes up seven centuries later (and that they get married) throughout your entire stay and avoided spoilers. “Vampires who’ve lived long like us tend to do that sometimes. Heck, even Chan does that lots of times these days, telling us about this immortal person he’s been looking for a while now. I guess it’s the human brain’s natural response to having a lot of memories.” 

“Minho remembers me just fine in the present, though.” You shrug as you re-write your interview notes, to which Minho mumbles a ‘Really?’ at. When you nod at him, he immediately rolls his eyes up in thought. You want to tell them that the person Chan’s been looking for at this time’s also real (and that he and said person, Eunhye, even live together now), too, but you decide against it later on for spoiler reasons again. “You have really good memory in the present, you even bought me Toblerones today.” 

“What are those?” 

A realization dawns on you right there and then, a small smile forming on your lips to which Minho quirks an eyebrow at and Changbin immediately asks you about. “You’ll find out soon enough. Just know that they’re my favorite.” You simply answer, standing up from the front porch of the inn you’ve been staying at and dusting the dirt off of your new hanbok. You remind yourself to ask Minho and Changbin about where these are at present later on. “Anyway, I’m off! I need to interview a few court people then I’ll be off your hairs again soon!” 

When it’s time for you to leave again, Minho’s still pestering you about what Toblerones are. 

“Come on, tell me!” He protests, going as far as holding your wrist where your watch is before you could escape. “Y/N!” 

You only grin up at him mischievously, gently swatting his hand away. “February 16, 2020! Also, make me ramen and coffee when I get back to the other side, please! I’d really like that!” 

present: February 16, 2020 

A steaming bowl of ramen and a warm cup of miraculously decently-brewed coffee are on the kitchen countertop by the time you come back, just as you asked him six hundred years in the past. What you didn’t expect, however, was the way your notes and references have also been organized neatly on the table while you were away and Minho dozing off on the nearby sofa in the open living room (he really likes genuine sleep lately which you’re yet to ask him as to why). You make sure to check that he really is sleeping by pinching his nose (and getting no response which is his usual indication of actual sleep) before placing the blanket he has reserved for you in his apartment over his hunched over body. 

“You don’t really need it,” You whisper tiredly, tucking the blanket close to his neck. His skin is naturally cold, as any normal vampire’s, but you’ve slowly grown accustomed to it over the years. “but how else am I going to say thank you for remembering my request after six hundred years? You’re going above and beyond anyone I’ve ever met, Lee Minho, you should stop raising the bar too high for men like this.” 

three

past: May 1592

“Are you sure you want to be here?” Minho from 1592 asks you right after you’ve reappeared in his house. Chan is out for work and Changbin is visiting Haseul on this particular day, leaving him to tend to their main house alone. “We’re in the middle of—”

“A Japanese invasion, I know.” You finish his thought for him, casually plopping down on the front porch right next to him and gingerly receiving the cup of tea he offers you. The garden he’s been trying to tend the last time you were around hasn’t made any significant progress even when an entire century has passed. You want to think it’s because the boys have been travelling elsewhere right before you returned but you also know it’s because they haven’t met Seungmin and Hyunjin yet. Those two are still probably travelling with Shiyeon. “That’s exactly why I’m here.” 

“Don’t tell me you’re—” Minho leans away and gazes back incredulously at you. He can already tell, with his own abilities, that you’re not thinking of what he’s thinking but he asks anyway to fully confirm. “I’m not letting you go to the frontlines if that’s what you’re going to ask me this time.” 

You chuckle at his genuinely mortified expression as you sip on your tea, making the boy furrow his brows at you. You really must be crazy. “You already know I’m not thinking of that! Though, I will ask you crazier things in the distant future.” You assure him. “I’ll only be staying for a year, six years again at most since I only need to complete a few interviews and fact-check a few books.” 

“Good.” Minho sighs in relief, taking a long sip of his tea as well. Even in 1592, the only human beverage Minho could stand is tea, you’re quick to notice. “That’s...that’s a relief.” 

“Why would you even be worried about going to the field, you’re immorta—ya, perhaps, do you you care about me?” You tease, grinning widely at the sudden realization. “We have a really messed-up timeline but you already care about me as early as now, that’s cute!”   

Minho from this time period could only roll his eyes at you against his sudden flustered feeling. If he was curious of your relationship with his future self when you first met, he’s curious as to how his future self keeps up with you this time. “Because you might be important to me in the future or something.” He bluffs to which you only chuckle fondly at. “I can’t really tell since you won’t tell me exactly how I know you in the future.” 

“Well, what am I to you now?” 

“A friend.” And he means it truthfully.

You’re momentarily taken aback, Minho sees even when you’re quick to hide it. Present Minho won’t even call you his best friend like you do to him. “Then just—just remember that until then.” You point out, smiling when you gaze over to his side and see his sincere expression. Something leaps in your chest at hearing him say those words without his usual playful tone of voice. It’s not what you’ve always been hoping for but it’s a start. “Won’t it be better if you just find out in the moment when it does happen?” 

Minho wants to tell you that he can’t wait but his teasing nature always gets the best of him first, “Hm, maybe you don’t actually know me at all in the future, that’s why you’re always being vague when I ask you.” 

You scoff, smacking his arm. “Ya!” 

“So, really, what are you to me in the future?” He insists anyway, swiftly dodging your hits until he’s caught your wrist in his hands. “Friend? Best friend?” 

A lover? He wanted to add further but he bites his tongue back just in time.  

“I always call you my best friend but I’ve yet to hear the same thing from you so, honestly, how would I know when you’re so secretive with your true feelings all the time! I’m even surprised you answered my question just now.” You frown, unintentionally coming off as bitter in your tone of voice as you retract your hand back to your side. You place your cup down as well, careful of the remaining tea so it doesn’t accidentally spill on your hanbok. At this moment, you miss the way Minho’s expression turns into confusion. “If it helps, though, I can only tell you that you always let me in your house to hoard the wi-fi—which you don’t have to know about right now!—and you’ve kept me around long enough to know when you’re trying to lie to me or read my thoughts with your clairvoyance thing going on.” 

Minho nods along, humming in thought. “So you’re a parasite?” 

You inhale a deep breath, focusing all of your energy into restraining yourself from hitting him for a second time. “You’ve called me worse.” You sigh with a controlled laugh. “Expired dinner and ex-wife who has nowhere else to go are my personal favorites.” 

Next to you, Minho’s eyes genuinely widen in curiosity. “We got married?” 

“Um, no? No, no, it’s an expression!” You shake your head and snicker despite the contrasting heat on your neck. Minho grows flustered at sensing the blood rushing up to your face. “I don’t even know if you’re capable of romantic love, dude. You’re always kinda everywhere and nowhere.” 

Minho’s not offended, though, especially not when you try to apologize after at realizing that you’re not as close with this version of him as you are with the version you know in your own time. “It’s fine.” He assures you with a shrug, knowing full well that you were just kidding around. “I’m guessing with that that I’m still single five centuries later.” 

“That and a bit of a flirt, too.” You clarify before his words fully process in your head. “Wait, so that means you haven’t dated even before this?” 

Minho shakes his head. “No, no one’s caught my eye yet.” 

You purse your lips in thought of this new revelation. It’s in moments like this, when you’re meeting past selves of your immortal friends that you realize just how little you actually know of them. “Huh, I didn’t peg you as the type.” 

“The type to what?” 

You shrug slowly, hunching over in your seat. “To be the fall in love just once type? I don’t know...”

Chan has mentioned to you once about Minho believing in soulmates but you were quick to dismiss that then. Remembering that now, maybe he is right. 

And, as if he has been reading your thoughts this entire time, Minho agrees with a nod. “Then, now you know. If you’ve lived as long as I have, soulmates are really nice to think about.” 

“But you always tease me about it...you from the future at least.” You pout. “Again, no offense, it’s just that—from the way I know you in my time, you’re very confusing.” 

When you glance over at Minho, you see him sit up straighter and lean closer to you again, your shoulders bumping against his as he tilts his head to meet your gaze. “Really? How am I confusing? Maybe I can help.” 

You scrunch up your nose. “Ah, but that’s unfair. You’ll take note of this in the future again.” 

“Your time’s five hundred years away, I’m sure I’ll forget this with time.” He assures you to no avail as evidenced by your squinted eyes. 

“You remembered my ramen and coffee request from last time, though.” You argue back, making his eyes light up. 

“I will?” 

You nod, placing a finger on his forehead and pushing his face away from yours. “Yeah, so I don’t trust you. Let’s just leave it at that.” 

Minho doesn’t bother you anymore about it for the rest of your one-year stay, which you’re more than grateful for.

present: February 22, 2020 

He does, however, teases you about it again when you’re back to the present. Closing in on you in one of his bone-crushing hugs when you reappear in his room, he asks, “So, how was meeting me in the 1500s this time, best friend?”

“Excuse me, what did you say?” You furrow your brows at him, your arms going limp on your sides while your entire body freezes on the spot. 

“I just called you my best friend.” He repeats casually with a shrug. “Why?” 

Minho purposely omits the fact that he double-checked his old journals to make sure that you just time traveled to that period when you mentioned to him how he’s never called you his best friend. He’s been waiting for this opportunity to set it right with you since he didn’t know much of the context back then. 

You shake your head in response, reluctantly hugging him back once you’ve regained feeling in your arms again. “Nothing, it’s just...” 

“Dude, you’re acting like past me and present me are different people.” He chuckles against your hair, squeezing your frame once before pulling away. “So, we’re good, right? You’re not bitter about the whole best friend thing now?” 

You frown, slapping his elbow to which he only chuckles at. “Who said I was bitter?” 

“You did in 1592!” He teases, his mischievous grin softening into a fond smile after. “But seriously...sorry about that. I just think it’s cheesy to say most of the time but you really are...my best friend now I guess—maybe until you die in 50 years.”

Minho then runs away before you could even protest, prompting you to chase him out of his room and into the hallway. “Ya, Lee Minho! I’m going to kill you first, you brat!”  

But you know that deep in your heart that he’s only joking (and also because Jeongin has gossiped to you once about accidentally reading one of Minho’s journal entries from the 1700s once about meeting someone who shares your name but was already working as a professor in university and may or may not already be a vampire). 

present: February 29, 2020

“Okay, to refresh...” You mumble as you adjust the watch on your wrist and the switchblade Minho insisted on you keeping in your pants’ pockets. Next to you, said vampire’s is sprawled on his bed, a reviewer and highlighter in hand. “In 1895, Hyunjin was following Shiyeon around the world, Seungmin was starting out his photography career, Soojung was taking a beauty nap, Haseul was still sleeping, Changbin was going on a Jack the Killer rampage somewhere in Europe, Jisung was still a newborn, Felix, and Jeongin haven’t joined you yet, and Chan was...learning yoga with Eunhye? Is that right?” 

“And I’ve met all versions of you by this time.” Minho adds in absentmindedly before going back to chanting his notes over and over again. He really doesn’t need to since he really has sharp memory these days but you let him study for whatever it is he’s studying, anyway, so he has something else to do besides Kart Rider and annoying his other friends. “Just tell past me who I’m meeting when you arrive since you know how I kept mixing graduate studies you and college thesis you up all the time.” 

“That’s...you guys have lived lives.” You puff out a tired breath, making Minho glance up to you briefly and chuckle. “Sometimes, it makes me and Nari feel so small.” 

“It’s not much.” The boy shrugs back. “It personally hasn’t felt that long.” 

“And why’s that?” You hum curiously. 

He mumbles something behind his paper but you don’t hear it well. When you ask him about it, he only shakes his head and kicks you with his socket foot, urging you to go already. 

Minho actually said, “It’s because you’ve been with me the entire time.” but he’ll just tell you all about it later when you come back. 

With a scoff, you then swat his foot away and bid him goodbye. “Fine, see you later then.” 

“I’ll organize your notes until then. Bye.” 

past: July 1895

Minho sets your location on your watch to his house, now renovated to what was considered modern then. You’ve been here countless of times, albeit in different time periods of your own past (the last being when you had to ask for his help in the 1860s about your graduate thesis), but you’ve never been here in the 1890s, not when a newborn Jisung had the self-control of a toddler and immediately tried pouncing on you the moment he smelled you on their front lawn.  

Now you know what the switchblade is for (and the one time Jisung kept apologizing to you in the 1910s). 

“Ji, calm down!” Minho growls in annoyance, holding the younger boy by his arms as he drags him back inside the house. He can feel your anxiousness increase just by looking at this unfamiliar side of Jisung, prompting him to send you an apologizing look. “Sorry, um, Y/N, I—” 

“I-It’s...it’s fine.” You assure shakily with a curt nod, taking a step back as well when Jisung tries regaining two steps towards you again. “I think I came in the wrong day.” 

“It depends. What are you here for?” He asks, his voice growing faint as he successfully manages to lock Jisung inside the house. He then quickly jogs back to you, examining your face for any recognizable hints of where you could be from.

“Doctorate thesis.” You answer for him, earning you a look of realization from him. 

“Oh, it’s you.” He smiles in relief. You remember distinctly how these were also the very same words he told you when you first met him in a time travel. “I was thinking you’d never come back.” 

You feign a frown in front of him, making him laugh. “Why? Did you think I wouldn’t finish my studies?” 

“It’s just that the next time you came back, from my point of view, is when you were only in college to ask me about the 1810s.” He clarifies, to which you nod in understanding. So he does remember. “I thought it weird at first that you didn’t come back sooner to finish your doctorate.” 

“Ah, well, you in 2020 has been a big help—well, him and a shit ton of books.” You chuckle awkwardly. “This is my last trip for my doctorate, actually, since I have the smallest amount of resources for Queen Min.” 

“T-This is—this is your last?” 

You smirk at his briefly dejected expression, elbowing him gently. “Why do you look so sad? You already know we’ll meet again in the future. Plus, you’ll still meet younger versions of me later on for my college requirements which is a bit confusing to hear right now but you’ll get it later!” 

Minho opens his mouth to speak, initially to tell you something about being frustrated that he’s only seen glimpses (and different versions) of you throughout his life so far, but he’s suddenly cut off by Jisung banging wildly against the front door, making him and you flinch. 

“Um...what if we deal with Jisung first?” You suggest. “I assure you we’re all going to be great friends in the future but no one really told me that this would happen.” 

Minho nods slowly next to you, rubbing the nape of his neck. “Yeah, we should probably take care of him first before your thesis. You could spare five minutes to sit down, right?” 

“Definitely.” 

And so, you spend the rest of your first day getting Jisung to calm down in your presence. 

present: February 29, 2020 

“Chan, babe, please, please, please promise that you won’t flinch when we use the party poppers later.” Eunhye sighs exasperatedly as she leads everyone into organizing the kitchen and living room. “Felix, good job on the cookies by the way! They turned out really well! Jisung, hurry up with that banner!” 

“Babe, I don’t flinch!” Chan yells across the hallway as he re-checks if everyone will have enough party hats, trumpets, and poppers for later. 

“Yes you do!” 

“What’s so significant about today, anyway?” Nari asks Jeongin as the two enter the apartment with boxes upon boxes of blood bags and alcoholic drinks. “Besides Y/N finishing their thesis, of course.” 

Shiyeon and Hyunjin follow closely behind with take-out boxes of chicken wings. “Because today is Y/N’s last time travel before they become a professor! A lot of good things are going to happen after, trust me.” Shiyeon answers with a wink. 

“How come you know all of that? You were barely with us in the 1800s.” Jisung asks while struggling to put the other end of your congratulations banner across the kitchen. Soojung is on the other end, arm beginning to fall asleep as she holds up the other end of the banner for Jisung. “Even Jeongin and Felix don’t know that.” 

“There’s a thing called correspondence and Hyunjin was a diligent gossiper.” Shiyeon only chuckles, setting down the take-out boxes on the countertop. “Also, hey, I was there in one of Y/N’s visits! It just hasn’t happened in our timeline yet but it will in three years!” 

Minho then emerges from his room, phone in hand counting down the seconds until you’re back again. “Okay, we have two hours to get everything ready.”

“Lee Minho where have you been this entire time!” Eunhye complains, finally taking the boy’s presence to take a seat. “I’ve been organizing everyone for a whole ten minutes!”  

“You mean you have two hours to get ready.” Haseul teases, seated on one of the dining table chairs and helping Changbin, Seungmin, and Felix make proper chocolates this time. “Don’t you have something else important you need to prepare?” 

“No, I can just wing it.” Minho dismisses to which Chan immediately laughs at, catching the younger boy’s panicked expression. 

“Sure you do.” Seungmin dryly responds, to which everyone topples over in laughter. 

past: November 1905

“You’ll see me again in five years, at least from your point of view.” You assure Minho from 1905 right before you leave. Jisung’s apologizing again about the incident last time but you’re quick to hug him and effectively shut him up. “The one you’ll meet in 1910 is going to be a little different, though, a little younger.” 

“But it’s still you.” 

You smile at this. “Yeah, still me.” 

Minho wants to tell you so badly that he’s met another version of you while you were away, someone older, but he quickly pushes the thought at the back of his head. Is this how you feel holding back spoilers from him? Instead, he ops to tease you. “You know, when people usually meet, it’s not as backwards as us.” When you raise an eyebrow at him, he continues, “You keep meeting me from the past and I’ve met you from the future countless of times. Even if culture’s going to be different in the future, I’m pretty sure this is still not how it goes there.” 

Finally, understanding, you let out a laugh, hitting his side playfully. “Definitely not.” You agree sheepishly. “But I think that makes it even more special. It makes you wait until we’re in the same time, right?” 

Minho nods. “What date are you going back to again?” 

“February 29, 2020. Why?” 

He says nothing else on it but bids you goodbye with one last hug instead. “Nothing. I’ll see you again soon...or another version of you.” 

“And I’ll see future you.” You chuckle before disappearing. 

present: February 29, 2020 

You come back to all the lights in Minho’s apartment turned off at the present. You hear whispers and the soft clicking of a lighter as well, prompting you to follow the noise outside. 

“I think it’s better if Changbin doesn’t hold the cake, don’t you think?” You recognize Haseul’s loud voice even from the hallways, fueling your curiosity even further. 

A slight pause then follows before you hear Chan agree, “Yeah. Hyunjin, you hold the other cake.” 

“Lix, you’re stepping on my foot.” That’s Jisung, you know by the way he’s always whiny when he complains. 

“Oh shit, sorry!” 

“Everyone, quiet! Y/N’s on their way!” Nari scolds and the hushes then quickly fall silent once you reach the kitchen, flipping the light switch on the hallway to the sound of party poppers exploding right in front of you. Only then do you see the big ‘CONGRATULATIONS Y/N!’ banner hanging right above everyone standing in a line with cake, hats, and trumpets. 

“Um?” You raise an eyebrow at everyone, breaking out into an uncontrollable grin. “What’s with all this?” 

Minho of your time then walks over to you with a Toblerone cake, carefully protecting two candles from the breeze that enters through the windows. “Chan and Eunhye insisted on a party so...congrats on finishing your thesis!” 

Over his shoulder, said vampire and immortal immediately shake their heads in denial. “It’s his idea!” Eunhye mouths to you with a smirk, making you chuckle.

You then turn to Minho with a smile. “I haven’t even finished writing it yet.” You point out only for your best friend to shrug nonchalantly. “And my graduation’s in a month.”  

“Yeah, we can work on that once everyone’s out of the apartment.” He suggests. “Now, just blow on the candles first, Seungmin’s arms are about to fall off waiting to take a picture.” 

You briefly apologize to Seungmin on the side with a sheepish laugh, blowing on the cake’s candles after to the many snaps of his film camera. “Thank you for all this. I really appreciate it, you guys!” You thank your guests after, approaching them with Minho on your side this time. 

“We can call you Professor now, right?” Hyunjin playfully asks, elbowing you gently on your side. 

“It makes me sound really old.” You pout, making him laugh. “In a few years.” 

“Three years.” Shiyeon coughs to which Minho immediately glares them down for. 

Catching this gesture, you decide on purposely ignoring it for now. You’ll have to ask Shiyeon what they mean with that later. “Anyway, let’s eat. Have you guys been here long?” 

“Not really but I’m already starving!” Soojung exclaims, passing you a plate and utensils. Next to her, Felix and Chan instinctively open up all the take-out boxes of food for everyone to dig in. 

“Alright, let’s eat!” 

present: March 1, 2020 

Minho kicks everyone out after by the strike of midnight, when all the food’s been devoured and the party games have been played at least twice. Surprisingly, even Jisung and Jeongin were directed outside by Minho at this time, which you immediately ask him about once the two boys are out of the door. “Don’t those two live here?” You joke with a dry chuckle. “You don’t have to kick them out so we can work.” 

“They’ll come back later.” Minho gently shuts the door before turning to you as you stand with your arms crossed in front of your chest, a genuinely curious expression on your face. “I just...need a moment with you.” 

You pretend to take a step back with your best dramatic expression of fear. “Oh my God, you’re going to kill me after eight years of friendship, right?” 

“What? No.” Minho furrows his brows at this, making you laugh. “It’s just...fuck, now I’m off-tracked.” 

You giggle this time, loosening your arms in front of you. “What is it, Minho?” 

There have been times, both in the past and present though rare, when Minho has looked nervous in front of you. The last time he was, from what you can remember, was when he was about to tell you that he accidentally killed the squirrel in the apartment’s back garden but even then, he wasn’t as nervous as he is now—fiddling with the hem of his blue sweater for a brief moment before finally taking the courage to step closer to you. “I-I, um—” He stammers out, one hand instinctively going up to his nape. “What I want to say is that...remember when I asked you in 1592 about how I know you?” 

“You just teased me about that last week.” You roll your eyes in an attempt to ease the sudden awkwardness, only to make it even worse for Minho. With this, your expression immediately contorts into worry. “What about it?” 

“Then in 1905, where you just came back from, you told me we’ll meet in the right time eventually...” He continues after a while, smiling back when you do reassuringly. “In between those centuries, of course, y-you—you came in for your college homework and your Masteral’s but there was also...there was also someone else.” 

This unexpected turn drops something heavy on your stomach, your smile unconsciously faltering. Minho wants to snicker but, knowing you, you’ll probably think of him cold if he does so he takes in a deep breath and tries his best to continue with less stutters this time. “Don’t be too sad, it’s still you, just a few months in the future.” He assures with a chuckle, hands instinctively going up to your sides to rub your arms comfortingly. Your eyes widen at this in response and you freeze in his touch. “Anyway, July 2020 Y/N just told me to do something tonight, if that’s okay.” 

It takes you a moment to respond but Minho patiently waits, holding back his laugh by biting his lip down. He’s reading your thoughts as they go into overdrive. Is this how you feel when I hide the future from you before? You internally ask to which he nods at. “U-Um, so...what are you going to do?”

“Just tell you that I’ve been in love with you for a long time.” Minho finally confesses, sighing in relief once he’s gotten the words out surprisingly well. “And if you’d like to go out for a trip after your graduation—and not the time travel trip, this time so we can be together right.” 

There’s more to it, actually, Minho has a whole paper written and rehearsed for a span of almost three centuries but he figures you’ll find out about it eventually. He could tell you about how he’s been in love with every version of you that he’s met in the past another time or maybe you already know it. 

“So?” He asks after a while when you don’t speak verbally. Your thoughts are still muddled and your heartbeat’s a little too fast for his liking but he holds any impulsive urge he might have in for your sake. “What do you say?” 

You purse your lips once, mustering up a relieved smile at him after. “You already met me from the future this time—which I commend you for, by the way, because you’ve one-upped me again this time!—so I think you already know the answer to that.” 

epilogue

past: July 1799

You know full well that you’re not supposed to travel back in time for personal reasons, especially not for the reason you’re coming into 1799 to see a past Minho for, but you figure that you’re already in your university’s faculty roster. If I get caught, you think to yourself as you easily spot Minho with Chan at an art exhibit in Paris, the professors will probably understand. 

“Minho! Chan!” You call with your hand above your head waving frantically at the two, catching theirs and a few patrons’ attentions. You don’t mind the extra attention as you approach him, though, since they did instinctively made way for you because of it. “Hello there, you two!” 

“Hi, Y/N!” Chan greets you happily, giving you a side hug. “Aren’t you back too soon?” 

But knowing full well that you’re probably not the same one the two met last time, Minho smirks in amusement as he eyes your choice of clothes and asks, “And where did you come from? By the clothes, me from the future probably doesn’t know you’re here.” 

“Yeah, I picked out my own clothes for today. Anyway, I won’t be here long.” You roll your eyes with a chuckle. “I’m from July 2020 and I’m not here for any academic work this time! I just wanted to ask you a quick favor.” 

From what you’ve detailed in your own journals, the last time you met from this particular Minho’s point of view was when you were doing a paper on the Baroque movement for one of your college classes. 

“What is it?” He asks you anyway, his body turned away from the painting that he and Chan have been previously admiring as he gives you his full attention. 

Judging from the amount of times you’ve visited him (and the different versions of you he’s meet as well), his future self seems to agree on your requests all the time. 

“I can’t tell you much but please prepare something on February 29, 2020!” You answer, your watch beeping on your side to remind you that it’s almost time to leave. “And make sure to mention me! Remember, Y/N from July 2020!” 

Before he could ask about it, further, however, you were already gone. 

“What do you think that was about, Chan?” Minho asks the older vampire instead. 

But Chan simply shrugs, hands going deeper in his pockets as he thinks. “No idea.” He admits in equal confusion. “Guess we’ll have to see in three hundred years.” 

[lordeasriel]

The Sun never sets on the Magisterium

The reach of the Holy Church in Lyra’s world is the first and most prominent worldbuilding aspect we learn from Northern Lights. It is the most important introduction one has to this world, so vastly different than ours yet so similar still, and it is the one trait that remains constant throughout both trilogies and novellas included.

This is an analysis of the Church in Lyra’s world, so spoilers for all the books and novellas, most likely. I’ll try and make a single post about this but I’m gonna reserve the right of maybe doing two separate parts because it’s a big subject. Under the cut because you know the drill, it’s long lol

The Magisterium was founded after John Calvin’s death, who had been Pope, and had the seat of the Church moved to Geneva. Although it is never clear, the Magisterium’s religious aspects come mostly from the Roman Catholic Church, and Pullman himself said in an interview, that some of its dogma is based on the original puritans. In this world, Calvin didn’t seem to have moved forward with his reform, not needing to break ties with the Catholic Church since he had become the Catholic Church.

Despite becoming a vast collective of “courts, colleges, and councils,” the Magisterium remains rather similar to most Christian branches from our world, at least in the medieval times. They had ties with kingdoms, they had influence over colonization, as well as economic and political influence, not to mention military too.

In Lyra’s world, the Magisterium seems intimately tied to Geneva’s politics, at the very least; it gives the impression that the city is somehow independent from the rest of Switzerland, not unlike the Vatican is independent from Italy. It is however, mentioned that the Swiss War was an armed conflict between England and the Magisterium, which means that they must have a full fledged control over the entire country and not just Geneva, although like most things in these books, this is not a sure claim.

With the Swiss War happening some time around 1933 and 1935, it gives this wild and quite odd picture, of a Church actively trying to invade a country. Although not that foreign a concept, since the Catholic Church was highly involved with the colonization process of our world, they never quite invaded the countries themselves (at least during the 1500s colonizations, as the Crusades were sort of Catholics invading countries lmao), instead joining later as the Monarchs of Europe established outposts and colonies and had already subdued natives in the area.

We do not have an exact date for the Magisterium’s creation, the implication being that it was set somewhere 600 years prior to Marcel Delamare’s acceptance of Leader of the High Council in TSC, it is fair to assume that colonization was already happening in Lyra’s world’s 15th century-ish and that the Magisterium was involved with that much in the same way it was in our world: by converting people, be it by force or by persuasion.

However, in Lyra’s world, the Magisterium stopped being a fully religious entity at some point, and became a full fledge state-like organization, spread all across the globe in different shapes and names, all answering to the bigger and more powerful groups, usually stationed in Geneva: the College of Bishops during its initial centuries, then eventually the Consistorial Court of Discipline, who by NL had become an immensely powerful group, in a power conflict with the less threatening Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit. The CCD being the harshest and most powerful group in the Magisterium, at least during the events of HDM, seemed to have had a lot of power in Geneva and in nearby areas, such as France (as we learn in LBS, the alethiometrists of Paris were sympathetic to the Church, not a surprise given France’s very Catholic Background) and Germany.

With information known from LBS and HDM, the Magisterium seems to hold under its power both the Swiss Army (implied, at least, given the Swiss War being a conflict created by the Magisterium itself) and the Imperial Guard of Muscovy, which seemed to have been under the control of the CCD in particular. It is not explained exactly why the Muscovite Army serves the Church and personally, my knowledge of anything Eastern Europe is very slim, so I’m not gonna attempt to assume much, but given that in TSK it is said they were “sworn to uphold the power of the Magisterium”, it’s possible — and very likely — that the Muscovite government had some sort of deep rooted connection with the Church. Again, not a surprise for Europe, as most countries had monarchies connected to the Church very intimately.

I’m not diving deep into every single one of the Magisterium groups, especially because we know very little about most of them. During the Magisterium congress in TSC, it is mentioned that 53 delegates attended, each representing a group at least (we know both Pierre Binaud AND the President of the CCD attended and they both are part of the same group), so that alone should prove why I couldn’t possibly talk about every single one of them lmao Some of those aren’t even mentioned by name. So, before I tackle on the most important groups and what they represent, I wanted to discuss how the Magisterium’s influence in the world seems to work in a geographical way.

We know for a fact that Geneva — and Switzerland, at least implied so — is absolutely under the control of the Church. Whether they share power with a political group or they are the political branch themselves, I could not say, but at any rate, we know the Magisterium waged war on England under the Swiss banner at one point in time and it’s fairly unlikely that it changed much in less than a century; that alone proves that State and Church don’t seem separate here.

So, how I perceive the Church in Lyra’s world — not just based on preference, but also on what we see of the world, however little it is — is that the further the country and cities are from Geneva, the looser the Magisterium’s grasp is and the more different its approach to power becomes. I use the word ‘looser’ here very lightly, as I don’t think the Americas weren’t oppressed, but I think the Magisterium had a much different type of hold and influence there, and I do think the huge oceans separating Europe from Oceania and the Americas helped change the pull of the Church.

That is different from how it happened in our world, but there is also the difference in how the Magisterium operates; each of its groups work under different philosophies and dogmas and politics. They embody the same religion - Christianism - but they do not act the same way, a good example being how the faithful in Constantinople act towards the Patriarch, while England has very little respect for the CCD, instead just fearing it. In our world, the Church operated sort as an unified front, but in Lyra’s world these many groups are always and constantly fighting each other for power and influence, creating alliances and making enemies between themselves. In England alone, we see that many groups have “outposts” there, the CCD and the Oblation Board, as well as all the Priories and chapels and all that.

There is also the fact that Lyra’s world still seems to have a very independent Africa, as we see the presence of King Ogunwe, meaning that some of the areas in Africa still had independent Kingdoms. This doesn’t mean that the African colonies that did exist weren’t converted or oppressed, but it does mean that these independent Kingdoms resisted the Church’s influence and depending on what group was harassing them, they could succeed in breaking the Church’s ever growing presence. This seems a similar situation for the Americas, given how odd the borders are in Lyra’s world  — South America having way less countries than it does in our worlds and the US never being formed, instead separated into at least two regions, three depending if New France means Canada or yet another part of a possible US.

This is a very ugly map I coloured to show my point lmao The Red Areas cover most of Western Europe and some of Eastern Europe, as well as a part of Russia. All these areas are connected by roads or trains, meaning that the Magisterium’s pull could have started long before airplanes were even created; these means the influence and presence would have existed for a long period of time in most of Europe, meaning More Magisterium Strength. It also covers areas I assumed would be heavily populated areas in the colonies, most of the coastal areas in Brasil, most of the United States because they have two different countries in them  — Texas and New Denmark  — and most of Coastal Australia, although by HDM it’s fair to assume all these regions are no longer colonies, but independent states.

I didn’t go into full detail, there are countries I didn colour with red but that should be red. The Green Areas are contested Areas, places where the Magisterium would have a presence but that would create conflicts for different reasons, being other religions, an uncooperative governement or simply because the group in charge of the area is not competent or too violent to properly establish a presence. This would be the areas in the continents, especially in Africa, where in our world they were heavily colonised but in Lyra’s world they are still independent kingdoms, with military forces and political freedom. Some parts of Russia are green because in Lyra’s world there is the implication Russia is divided into at least three different territories  — Muscovy, Tartary and Siberia  —  and the tartars are considered heretics by the Church; is the territory I painted in green correspondent to actual Tartar regions? I have no idea, but I’m hoping you can forgive my geographic inaccuracy in favour of all this mega meta thing I just spurred. LMAO

And finally the Purple Areas are mostly in places where the weather would be too harsh or where population would be too small to attract the eye of the Magisterium. Ultimately, the Church in Lyra’s world does not only seek to convert everyone and rid the world of heretics, but they also want political influence, economical and military as well, and a small village in Greenland offers absolutely none of that. Some of these areas would also be found in Asia, I believe, especially the very distant and small villages where Islam would have been able to survive. I’ve written a bit about other religions in Lyra’s world if you want to read before going on.

With all that in mind  — and out of the way!  — let’s take a closer look at the Magisterium most notable groups. Starting of course, with the CCD, it’s important to keep in mind that the CCD was the first group created in the Magisterium. It wasn’t always, however, the most powerful one; in Northern Lights, it’s said they only gained notoriety in “recent years”, and we see in La Belle Sauvage that they were already active, including in England, so my assumption is that not only Pullman did a slight retcon here, but also that recent years can mean somewhere in the range of 70 to 100 years. This doesn’t change the fact the CCD became powerful and feared in the Magisterium, nor that their power in England grew considerably between LBS and TAS and then TSC. They are mostly an enforcer type of group  (this is how I refer to them, not canon: enforcer or militia for groups that can arrest, or do any type of Police/militia/army related type of work; dogmatic is how I refer to the groups that usually deal with conversion, reeducation, philosophical works - this isn’t relevant, I’m just. Trying to Make Sense lmao) and as an enforcer, the CCD is violent and ruthless and often lawless in its work outside Geneva.

Despite the fact they are known as a Church Authority, they cannot murder freely and without consequence. In England they act in the shadows during LBS, disguising Robert Luckhurt’s murder as a drowning, and not much is known about their work during HDM, but in TSC they start to openly arrest people for heresy, no doubt a change from the government after Marcel’s rise to power. The CCD seems to act all across Europe and even Central Asia, as we see some of its forces in Constantinople, although it isn’t clear if they were there simply because the Patriarch died or if they are also stationed in the city; the Sublime Porte had its own guards as well, given its status as a government base.

Not much is known of the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit, except that they seemed less harsh than the CCD and during their quest to find Lyra, they were far more interested in not killing her. Lord Asriel mentions in TAS about his surprise in learning that Lord Roke managed to infiltrate the group, as they were considered impregnable; given Lady Salmakia’s method, and the whole attitude of the group towards the prophecy — it was assumed they weren’t going to do anything about it  — I’d safely assume they were more inclined towards being dogmatic.

Perhaps even older than the CCD, the College of Bishops was perhaps inherited from the Catholic Church before the Magisterium was born. It was known to be the most remarkable and powerful of the groups for centuries after the creation of the Magisterium. Not much is said about them, but given their counterpart in our world, I’d assume they were more inclined towards dogma than enforcer. They are, in our world, a collection of bishops who work closely with the Pope; in Lyra’s world, by the time the Magisterium existed, the Pope no longer existed, so the assumption is that the College replaced the Pope figure altogether, being led by all the bishops in the collection, probably working like a council.

Everything we know about La Maison Juste is confusing and unclear, as most things worldbuilding-wise are in these books. Their official name is League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose, which coincides with Olivier Bonneville’s description of their work, about “accomodating the life of the world to the life of the spirit”. In other words, it means making sure that daily life can be fitted into the dogma of the Church; it’s vital for the Magisterium to adapt as progress comes. Unlike the CCD, that suppress anything that borders heresy, La Maison Juste seems more inclined towards adapting the dogma so the world can still be within the Magisterium’s expectations.

However, there is mention of La Maison Juste being a place meant to study and examine heresy; there is also a mention in TSC, by Olivier, about how the group changed under Marcel’s leadership, “being a force for good” in the ranks of the Magisterium. What that means exactly, I can’t say; it could be Marcel changed the heresy examination to something more productive and less harsh, or it could just mean he became more strict towards heresy, but that would conflict with Olivier’s description about the accomodation thing. At any rate, I do classify them as dogmatic, and we see Marcel using the CCD to go after Olivier when he flees Geneva; it’s curious because there seems to be implied the CCD outranks his group, but he still uses their forces to do anything remotely violent. There is however, a passage where Lyra lies to a guard from the Office of Right Duty about being part of La Maison Juste, and the guard gets spooked. This is curious because La Maison Juste barely seems remarkable up until the congress happens, but the mention scares the man off.

Two groups  — that we know of  — were responsibility of Mrs. Coulter. The League of St. Alexander seemed to have been created around the same time LBS happens (roughly 1986 if the timeline makes any sense, which probably doesn’t). Hannah Relf learns at some point that Marisa was behind it, but it’s never clear what was her role in it exactly. It doesn’t look like the League was a private initiative, but actually tied to the Church and it was as good a Scam as any. Marisa being behind it didn’t necessarily mean she was the active leader of the group, as they mention a man under the codename Bishop seemed to be in charge, but then again, I cannot say with certainty. They were definitely a dogmatic group, with brainwashing added to the mix, but they seemed to have mutated over time and it isn’t clear whether they only existed in England or not.

The General Oblation Board was Mrs. Coulter’s actual, proper group. It was a private initiative, under the CCD’s rule, but the nature of their work seemed to threaten the CCD’s leadership in the Magisterium. MacPhail made an extra effort to try and dismantle them, especially because he believed that Dust should be destroyed and not examined. I don’t think the fate of the group was ever disclosed, despite their losses, but by TAS MacPhail mentions them as if they are still functioning. Whether they survived up to TSC is not clear, but it’s also hard to imagine what could they have become without Marisa. It’s also interesting to think what would have happened to the Magisterium, had Marisa succeeded in taking the place of the CCD; a private initiative group as the most powerful group in the Magisterium would have caused drastic changes, and probably opened the doors to the big corporations much sooner than Marcel’s work in TSC. The GOB could be classified as dogmatic, given their interest in Dust, but they were far more into scientific research than La Maison Juste seems to be, for example. They also had their own private guards, so no need for the CCD’s enforcers.

I think these groups showcase well how the Magisterium operates. The further we see Lyra go into the East, we realise how the grip of the Church seems lighter and far more military inclined. Is the Magisterium everywhere? Frankly, I don’t think so. I think they have a substantial presence in every country with any amount of political influence or power; any country that might offer opposition. We know they tried to conquer England through an actual war, which is quite odd for a religion, but this is where the Theocracy takes it place in Lyra’s world: they become a single unified front with their country  — Switzerland, in this case  — and the countries where they have more power, they can also control. The places they can’t take by force, they take with dogma and faith, and slowly overthrow these governments by turning their people against themselves.

They are so vastly fragmented that even places with small groups are affected by their presence, no matter small and odd that can be. It’s both curious and terrifying to see a world so deeply overwhelmed by a single opponent, but then again, it’s not that far off our reality. The Magisterium doesn’t represent just faith and religion, but also the big oligarchies, and how governments bend to the will of big companies, and how these aligned forces can become oppressive over time. The Church’s hold across Europe, Africa and Asia was not fast and unpredictable; it was obvious and slow. It started with small conversions and with time, the Church become a force of sustainability for different regions; they become an important part of the enviroment, of the economy, of the security of the country. They become something to be relied on and thus removing them become difficult over time as well, as the micro societies  — the neighborhoods, the small villages  — they become reliant on the Church’s helpful groups to survive, meaning that their fear of the enforcers are overwhelmed by the help of the Chapels, and the priories.

It’s the creation of a co-dependent ecosystem that is very difficult to dissolve without harming innocent people.

[headcans-oneshots-and-stuff]

Do Angels giggle?

Warning: Mentioned death of multiple people, a teeny tiny bit of angst, swearing, but otherwise you should be fine Word count: 4k (sis snapped again)(I should really stop doing this tbh) Summary: A rumor of an angel kidnapping criminals and leads them to a path of justice and Jason is on the suspects track. He hasn’t expected to be caught and he surely hasn’t expected what met him there...

This was requested by @middevil465​: 'Babe did you fall from heaven bc you seem to be a chaotic ever shifting sphere of eyes & wings making a sound not of this earth and I’m kind of hoping God sent you because this is terrifying' with jason x reader

Jason really didn't plan on this to happen. He didn't plan on getting caught while spying on the current suspect in a case of criminals disappearing only to re-appear with no memory of what happened and babbling of being lead to a better life by an angel. And he certainly didn't plan to end up in a warehouse that was decorated with a clearly religious altar and other things that heavily reminded him of the church. The only thing that wasn't church-y was the fact that he was tied to a - honestly not uncomfortable - chair in front of the altar. The worst fact was that he, too, couldn't remember how he ended up here. He had some flashes of memories, about how Bruce assigned him to the case, about how he found a man that all the criminals who found themselves 'victim' had met sometime before their disappearance and how he'd found and followed him before he blacked out.

And now he was here. He wasn't really afraid as much as he was concerned and curious about what was going to happen next. Bruce could easily track him as soon as he noticed he wasn't answering so there was also not much reason to try to escape before he knew what was going on here or if he was in any serious danger. Jason wasn't sure what to expect. Tortue, drugging, brainwashing? He knew the man must have some kind of secret weapon that made him able to re-write these criminals to his liking, but he wasn't quite sure why. Everyone in the cave had different theories. Bruce and Dick thought that he maybe got information about their 'businesses', deleted the memory and sold the info, Damian and (surprisingly enough) Tim thought that the criminals had been involved in something bigger, all of them involved somehow, and the person (or people) who hunted them down and changed their memories and life choices, were on a hunt for information. Steph and Cass had agreed that it was a cult or a conspiracy and Barbara had said that she wouldn't make any theories just yet, or rather not reveal hers. Jason had a more sinister thought though. He knew about the criminal world better than most others in his family, once having been a big part of it too, and he thought that whoever was able to do this, was slowly building an empire, first taking out smaller criminals, snitches and errand boys, maybe as to test their methods, before going for the big fish and re-writing them to take over their territory. It was honestly a good plan, but the fam wasn't really happy about it. Having an enemy that could delete and rewrite memories and demeanours could be a real threat. That was why Jason needed to find out how they did it. But he didn't see anything in the warehouse room that would implicate what they used for their plan, only all that church stuff, and Jason considered that it was probably something to harden the illusion that it was an angel who showed them the 'light'. 

"I've seen thou have been awakened, man in the blooded hood," a male voice echoed through the large space and bounced off the walls. The man he had followed stepped in front of him in a robe that reminded him of a monk. "It's crimson, bitch," Jason snarkily responded and couldn't help the smirk on his face, but it didn't seem to even slightly faze him. "Many have found the devil in their words in this city, but we, the church of hope and new ways, have made it our mission to bring thou, wrongdoers, to a path of justice and good, to a path of the angel." So Cass and Stephanie were right after all? A cult, really? "So that's all very noble and all, at least in theory, but ya know, I'm kinda on your side. With hunting and jailing criminals and all that jazz." "Thou words are full of sin that thou not even recognize, but don't fret, we will free you of them, free you of the devil within and bring you on a path of belief and light, we will bring thou to face with the angel that hath shown us the way too." Now that was next-level crazy, Jason thought and rolled his eyes under his still worn helmet. "Well, knock yourself out," he sighed and leaned back in the chair. Seemingly listening to Jason, the man disappeared through a door and suddenly all the lights in the room went out, leaving Jason in complete darkness, unable to turn on the night vision in his helmet. He heard another door on the other side opening and light steps echoed through the room, but whoever came in didn't make any other sounds but that. Then he was blinded by the brightest light he had most likely ever seen and what his eyes saw when the light simmered down a bit and he got used to the brightness made him freeze to the core. The words that left his mouth next were the result of habit more than thought, but he said them nonetheless: "Babe did you fall from heaven because you seem to be a chaotic ever-shifting sphere of eyes and wings making a sound not of this earth and I'm kind of hoping God sent you because this is terrifying." He wasn't wrong though. In front of him was, in fact, actually an ever-shifting sphere of eyes and wings that was making sounds that were clearly not human, neither anything that he had ever heard off-world and even though Jason was by no means religious, he had heard enough about how the angels in the bible were described to identify this thing in front of him as an angel. Suddenly the ever so brave, fearless and cocky Jason Todd stared at that being in front of him and his hidden face was drawn by fear and terror. He could deal with torture and pain, he could deal with technology and drugs, but he couldn't deal with whatever would be happening next. What would be happening next? Well, whatever it was that he expected, it sure as hell wasn't what happened. The sphere that he feared more than he had feared anything in the last years started to giggle. GIGGLE! Do Angel's even giggle? How would I ever know if angels giggle? The glow died down and the shifting intensified, the eyes were closing and drawing together, the wings merging too until there was only one pair left and the sphere turned into a different form, something longer and more humanly shaped, until it did a final change and turned into a girl. And what a girl she was. Jason's breath was stolen by her and the atmosphere surrounding her. She looked stunning in every sense of the word, from the Y/S/C skin that was basically glowing with angelic shine, her hair that was somehow looking like a halo even though it was nothing like one and her face that seemed to be sculptured by whoever created this hellhole called life themselves. And don't let him get started on the pair off wings that she was still sporting on her back. It was quite honestly gigantic. So big that its lowest part was reaching the floor and the highest part was still a few inches higher than her head. He could imagine that they would fill out the entire room if she was to stretch them out and the thought alone made him somewhat fuzzy in his head. He wished he could describe their colour, but he was sure that it was none of the ones he had ever seen on any planet, ever, he wasn't even sure if his eyes should be humanly able to comprehend the colour and yet there he sat looking at them. He was so impressed by these celestial limbs that he didn't even notice the fact that the girl was, in fact, completely naked. But even if he'd notice it, he wouldn't have seen her body as something sexual. The way she was moving like it was completely natural would more likely make him feel ridiculous for ever thinking of a naked body as something as intimate. And then her voice. Her voice was even more divine than anything else, making his whole body tense up and relax simultaneously. "You are full of darkness, but your darkness is unlike anything else they have shown me," she stated matter-of-factly and she came close to him, rounding him a few times with curiosity in her eyes, "And not just your insides are different than the ones they showed me, your head seems to have a sort of protective shell, how magnificent." Is she talking about my helmet? Does she think it is a part of me? "Uhm, Miss Angel, that isn't a part of my body, it's removable," he said, surprised that he was even  able to talk with his heart basically having stopped beating. Her eyes widened in child-like wonder and she kneeled down in front of him, her wings spreading out slightly beside her to accommodate the change in height. "Would it be okay if I were to take it off?" she asked in innocence that Jason has quite honestly never seen before. "Uhm, sure," Jason answered, completely having forgotten the whole reason that he was here in the first place.   Her delicate hands slowly found their way to were his helmet laid over his ears and she looked into the general direction of were his eyes were, her Y/E/C orbs seemingly shifting colour every time she moved even an inch. "I'll try to be careful," she hummed and started trying to get it off, changing her tactic ever so often when she noticed that it wasn't working, but instead of telling her what to do, Jason just looked at the angel and couldn't find any words. Finally, after about two minutes, she managed to pull it off and carefully laid it down beside the chair, before finally leading her gaze to his now, except for the domino mask, uncovered face. She didn't say anything, just bringing her hands up to his face and tracing it, including every scar, no matter how little, and every edge. Even though he had been in awe before, now he could almost comprehend why the criminals changed their ways, hell, at that moment he'd burn the city down without hesitation if she'd asked for it. Finally, her fingers wandered over the edges of his mask and when he gave her a small nod of consent, she somehow managed to peel it off and free his eyes for her to see. He didn't mind that she now knew what he looked like, that she could now identify him, but to be honest, he didn't think much about it, too caught up in that moment and that moment only. Their eyes met in a moment of complete silence whit the only sound present in Jason's head was the pounding of his heart and the rushing of his blood. "You are really unlike the others aren't you?" her voice broke that moment, but he somehow knew that he wasn't expected to answer. For a few heartbeats, the two off them stayed in place, before the angel ruffled her feathers, the sound echoing through the warehouse, like dozens of birds flying away. She raised back to her full size, her wings folding back to where they had originally been. "Tell me, why do my saviours want me to bring you to the light? I can see that it is already in you, it may be clouded and darkened, but it is there," she asked him and her hand was cupping his cheek in an act that seemed unnoticed by herself as if she was doing it unconsciously. Jason wasn't quite sure how to respond to that question, but he noticed something else in what she said, something that formed confusion in him. "Your saviours? Shouldn't it be the other way around?" "How do you mean that?" the angel asked with honest naive confusion written over her face as she cocked her head to the side and folded her hand in front of her bare stomach. "Well, uh, I'm no expert by any means, but you're an angel right?" She nodded but kept quiet as if that question didn't give her a clue as to what he meant. "Uhm... Angels are creatures sent by God and...uhm...they are over humans, right? So how is that guy and whoever he works with your saviour? Is he Jesus or something?" What she answered was something he didn't even remotely expect. "Who?" "Jesus? Your Boss's son? God sent messiah to free all humans? Allegedly forgave us for our sins and got killed for that?" Jason rambled and tried to count down everything he still remembered. The angle put her hand in front of her mouth in shock at his words. "That sounds horrible, is he okay?" she asked in a tone that made it pretty clear to Jason that she did, first of all, not know who Jesus was, and second, had no idea what killing actually meant. "Uhm, sure, he's great, somewhere up there with his dad, I guess," Jason just shrugged, not really caring about that topic anymore and more focusing on all the facts about her being an angel that didn't add up. "Can you tell me about yourself?" he just boldly asked her, but it didn't seem to phase her at all, in fact, she brightened up at the possibility to tell him about her. "Uhm, I can't tell you much, but I was saved by the church of hope and new ways when they found me after what they called a miracle, they took care of me and explained to me that I was sent to them to be their tool to re-shape the world," she explained with a somewhat proud undertone, but Jason's feeling got cemented. The feeling that she had actually no idea what was going on around her and what she was used to do, and the feeling that she may not really be the sort of angel he, and seemingly she, believed she was. "Re-shape the world?" he investigated further, a small voice muttering theories in the back of his head. "Mhm," she nodded and her right wing folded itself slightly in front of her as if she was nervous or shy, "They bring men who are filled with darkness and they have me look into them, look if they have light and make me watch their mind, then they have told me to bring them into the sun, I show them the way that they tell me is right, make them believe in the church." Her words were slightly wary and Jason could recognize the doubt in them. She wasn't doing this voluntarily... "Do you want to do that?" he asked to clarify things for himself, and maybe also her. Her eyes wandered to the door the mock-monk had disappeared in and Jason could have sworn he saw something like fear in them. "I- Uhm- Yes," she nodded, but couldn't look at the man in front of her, she had almost turned her whole body away from him. "I don't believe you." "Why?" her voice wasn't as childish and curious and innocent anymore, it was small and fragile. "I'm not sure, but I think they are lying to you, I think you aren't an angel. I mean, you're sure as hell no human, but you're not an angel, at least not one in the...uhm..traditional sense." This seemed to gain her attention in a way that had her turning around again and made her take a step towards him. "Do you really think so? Because... I have tried to tell them, but they said no to all my questions, they told me that I am the tool for the church, that that is my only task and that I would be lost without them, but I can see it in them too. The darkness, they tell me to turn into light, is in them too, but they don't let me change it, they tell me I must see something that isn't there... And not only that... I have memories, memories of the Miracle. I see flashes of other people, people that make my heartache, and flashes of a building, one that looked like this room here on the inside. "And then there are other flashes, flashes I have at nights when I'm resting, there are loud noises and heat is licking at my skin, at my back, at my whole body, and there are so many screams." She seemingly didn't find the connection between those memories, but Jason sure as hell did. It was mainly a theory at that point, but he believed that she had been at church with her family when it burned down, maybe there was magic involved or she had the meta-gen inside her, but while her family burned she must have turned into the angel she was now, losing most of her memory in the process. The people that must have found her and figured out of the great powers she had, had decided to use her for their own sinister plans and she was none the wiser, Jason couldn't know if she had always been that naive and innocent, but she was now and, even though he had only known her for a matter of maybe half an hour, she had grown on him if he was being honest. "Can you see into other people's heads? Can you read other people's memories too?" he asked, a small plan forming in his mind. She looked at him in thought, but she seemingly was somewhat intrigued. "I believe so, I have only done it one or two times." "Read my mind, read my memories," he almost commanded, but she was taken off for other reasons. "Why would you want me to do that? My saviours tell me that it isn't my place to do so..." "I know this is confusing and what you will see will shock you, but I hope you will be able to trust me after that, trust me to help you, get you out of here." The prospect of being away from her 'saviours' seemed to make her interested, but there was something else that she had to know beforehand. "Will you stay with me? Will you take me with you? I can't be alone, I don't know where to go, what to do, I can't- don't think that I can survive all alone," she looked away and he could see the fear and pain, of not knowing what the future would hold in her whole demeanour, and he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms, but the restraints that were still binding him to the chair were keeping him from doing so. "If you don't want to be, you won't be alone, I will take you with me, we will go through this together, okay?" "Okay," she smiled slightly and came to him, her hands hovering over the rope around his chest and, in a for Jason surprising turn of event, her palms started glowing and the rope basically disintegrated leaving him free to stand up, having to physically restrain himself from holding her. "This won't be happening to me too?" he asked gesturing to what was still left off the rope. And she giggled again. God, he had almost forgotten how heavenly that giggle was. "No, I don't think it will," she said in a tone as if she was honestly questioning her statement, but before he could say anything about it her hands found themselves on the sides of his temple and the last thing that echoed through the room before the angel fell unconscious in his arms was her scream.

When the angel woke up she felt utterly exhausted. She had seen everything that had ever happened in Jason's life, including his death and every time he had killed, and she had felt it like she was it who experienced it. It had literally drained her, but Jason was correct, as she woke up again, she trusted him with her life and more. She knew him now. Possibly better than anyone else in the world. And not only that, when her eyes opened he was the first thing she saw. She was laying in his lap, something that was astounding enough considering the giant wings that were spread out beside her and partly over Jason, and somewhere along her time of being in his memories he had taken off his brown leather jacket and had put it on her and zipped it up, keeping the, in normal standards, intimate parts of her body hidden from sight. What the angel couldn't see were the bodies of the people who had, in Jason's opinion, used you for the past few months that were stacked in the backroom and, if he was lucky, not dead. "Sorry you had to see this, but I wanted for you to be able to completely trust me," Jason whispered, his hands caressing through her hands. "It's okay, I understand," she hummed back and they both knew that she meant more than just the statement about him wanting her to trust him. "Can we leave now?" "Of course," he smiled and helped her up, having been made aware earlier when she passed out that her wings added more to her body weight than he had anticipated, but that was to expect, they were robust and spread out almost twice as big as Jason in width. The angel, who Jason really needed to find a name for, had the wing on the side opposite of where Jason stood beside her, drawn in, but the one that was on his side was spread out behind him like a shield, curling around him slightly, but he just smiled and slightly shook his head at that. He honestly really didn't know what it was about the girl, his angel, or the whole situation itself, but a really small part of him wanted to believe that maybe there was something like a bigger picture, maybe not necessarily a god, but something that had brought them together, something that had wanted to make him know that the two of them knowing each other was meant to be.

[serialreblogger]

Empty Masks

The Phantom of the Opera and Social Dynamics of Exclusivity

(or: an essay I will never have an academic excuse to write, but shall anyway, because I watched The Phantom of the Opera tonight and i need to get this out of my system)

I can’t express just how desperately I want to be the Phantom. The strange, half-human ghost hidden under a mask, with a billowing cape and an opera house to hide his secrets, snow-covered stone gargoyles hiding him from the streets when he ascends to the roof and sings to the cold, bright stars. His would-be bride, the ethereal maiden entranced and led down into those secret places, where dark spires arc overhead and dark water flows away beneath the prow of the boat the Phantom, her would-be lover, steers.

But therein lies the problem: we are not meant to wish we were the Phantom.

The Phantom is meant to be a stranger. He is, after all, inhuman. It’s in his names: angel, demon, monster, ghost. He is not a man. He is more, and less. He is altogether other, and while we may sympathize, we are never meant to see ourselves in him.

And yet.

Because the thing about alterity is that there are far, far more of us than there are “meant” to be, the ones who see ourselves not in the heroes but in the villains of such tales. We, the queer viewers, the POC, disabled and disfigured and neurodivergent watchers and everyone else that lives on the margins of polite society—we do not see ourselves in the heroes. We are not only invisible in the ranks of the righteous: far, far too often, we are (implicitly or overtly) represented as the villains, the monsters, precisely because of who we are. Of what we are.

And that’s why the Shape of Water hit so hard for so many people, and why we’re seeing so many reimaginings of Lovecraftian horrors as something sympathetic, something good. Because so many of us have only ever seen ourselves in the monsters. We aren’t the people fleeing in fear and being reassured by the death of the creature; we are the creatures, watching our counterparts die again and again, in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different justifications. We are the monsters, cast out for things we can’t control.

But, of course, that is unjust. Even the heroes could see that. There must be something else, some justification, a reason we deserve to be slain. And so every dragon-slayer tells tales of the stolen princess. Every story with a monster makes sure to establish that the monster is dangerous and evil, ruined inside and out.

The Phantom is a murderer, and so he deserves to be unmasked. We are meant to understand that the two are inextricable: the face the mask hides is the murder the man commits. Even as Christine sings that it is “no longer” his face she is repulsed by, but his “soul, in which the true distortion lies,” we know that the accusation of “murderer” is always preceded by, caused by, the more heinous accusation: “monster.”

The Phantom’s wickedness is an excuse. His murderous inclinations, his possessiveness, the “evil” characteristics that are narratively traced back to his childhood and the way he was treated—they are used to justify the way he is robbed of his mask before a crowd, the way he’s ripped away from his longtime home in the secret twists and hideaways of the opera house.

I had a visceral reaction to that scene, where Christine unmasks him. It hit too close to home. To have something that was kept so carefully hidden, something that, if revealed, could be so catastrophically dangerous—to have that be revealed, against your will—and by someone so intimately close to you? Someone you trusted, body and soul?

It felt like watching someone getting outed.

And, in a way, it was. The Phantom’s face was revealed, and it was as relevant as gender or orientation to his evil acts, and yet all the narrative repercussions still tied it inexorably, inextricably, into his villainy.

“Keep your hand at the level of your eyes,” Madame Giri says, and it is because his weapon of choice was a noose; it is because his face is a curse to behold. The Phantom’s violence is caused by his face. The Phantom is evil because of his face. The Phantom is a monster because he is evil—because of his face.

And that’s the rub of the Gothic genre, of horror that makes ordinary people monsters (of societies that ostracize its members for being “monstrous”): there is no place for the people that don’t belong.

The Phantom escaped his original prison (a captivity which has its own signifiers of racism and dehumanization—making very human monsters out of another oppressed people, this time the Romani—but that’s a whole essay of its own) and donned a mask, because his face made him a monster. He put on a mask of his own accord, perhaps, but he also didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t look in the mirror without it, not after everything he’d been told. He knew what made him a monster. He couldn’t change his face, so he tried to hide it. He was made to wear a mask.

It was not enough. There does not exist a mask behind which we will not long to look.

“Masquerade” is a masterful scene that shows the different layers of social exclusivity. There is the ballroom full of upper-class mask-wearers. Everyone there is unrecognizable, hiding behind their costumes. It is perfectly choreographed. It is perfectly gilded. It is entirely, divinely, grotesquely perfect. It is false.

A few floors lower, the servants and lower-class players have their own party, carousing and laughing with unbrushed hair and wide grins. They wear no masks, and feast on sour beer and stale pastries. They wear no masks because they can’t afford them. They are not permitted to be seen, but nor are they permitted to hide behind the masks of the rich. They make do. They celebrate together, because none of them have any masks, and that makes them friends, at least for the evening. They are forbidden from having masks, and so—if they stay in their proper place—they need none.

The Phantom has not removed his mask in years.

Even then, it is not enough. The room of the rich falls deathly silent as he appears in their midst. He cannot blend in among them. He cannot dance. He has not the patience, anymore, to try. He wears his mask, and at least they cannot see his face beneath it.

They fear him, not because he’s a monster, but because he is a mask. They want to know what’s behind it. They want there to be nothing at all behind it. The Phantom is a mask, and the person behind it is a blemish. They put up with him when he is invisible except for a shadow, a flash of white plaster and black cloak in the night. They can pretend there is not a person behind the mask. It’s a ghost. They want it to be a ghost.

It isn’t a ghost.

And when the mask is ripped from his face, when the person behind it is revealed to be human, even then perhaps they could go on; but he isn’t the right kind of human. He’s physically disfigured. He isn’t human at all. He’s a monster.

They hunt him like one.

There is no room in their world for a person that looks wrong, even one that hides behind a mask.

There is no room in their world for monsters.

(The monsters listen, and hold our masks a little tighter.)

[beyond-far-horizons]

Korra, subversion of gender roles and the regressive nature of gender essentialism

This is an aside to my latest meta, the context of which was reading a fansite’s reviews on A:TLA and S1 of Legend of Korra. I started because of the author’s interesting take on the finale of S1 of Korra. He made some really insightful points but because of the vein of increasing subtle misogyny I kept picking up I was wary.

Turns out I was right when I came across the review of Epi 5/S1 and we go smack bang into not just gender essentialism but when you thought it couldn’t get any worse he digs himself into a deeper hole and starts talking about the possible ‘transgender agenda’ in Korra because Korra acts ‘like a boy’ and the guys act kinda feminine at times. Oh but then he is assured she must actually be a girl because she angsts about romance stuff. Cause you know men and boys never do that. Men and boys aren’t capable of da icky romance...

Ugh, just ugh.

Okay, this is just some dude on the internet writing in the early 2010s I know, I know. But it’s attitudes like this I really want to highlight and dismantle, hence this meta/rant/stream of consciousness, which let’s face it is basically most of my MO on this hell-site. 

It’s not just the blatant horrible transphobia and prejudice towards non-binary or gender non-conforming folk, but also has this dude never met a girl that didn’t act like a stereotypical ‘pretty girl’ before, even in the ye old days of the early 2010s?? Like we’ve had the concept of a ‘tomboy’ for ages and frankly there have always been a whole range of ways to express gender across cultures even if you set aside the fact that transgender and non-binary people have always existed throughout history in some form. (Don’t argue with me on this I study culture amongst other things and come from a family of archeologists and historians.)

Sorry to rant but the more you look at it the more it falls apart and shows how ludicrous enforced gender roles actually are esp when you consider the vaunted concepts of ‘the past’ and ‘traditions’ etc and realise that a couple of hundred years ago in Europe the height of aristocratic manliness was literally makeup, wigs and a ‘shapely calve’. I kid you not, I have been to Liverpool Museum where they have padded mens’ stockings if nature didn’t provide  - here’s the proof.

Oh no fellas! Don’t let the side down with those scrawny legs! You’re not a real man if you don’t have calves busting out of your silk stockings! Seriously it reminded me of padded bras so much.

Going back to Korra I personally love how she’s written and it still holds up today. She doesn’t fall into the trap of a ‘Strong Female Character TM’ - she still runs the whole gamut of emotions - she’s vulnerable, loving, romantic but she’s also extroverted, aggressive, coarse, athletic, confident - all traits traditionally positively associated with men. And I love that at this point in S1 she is never reprimanded for this, she’s never told to be ‘more lady-like’. The only two times that this contrast to a more ‘traditional’ girl is brought up is 1) her try-outs with Bolin revealing her bending power and 2) Bolin’s embarrassment over his burping in front of her which she promptly joins in with. In both cases Bolin doesn’t put her down or attempt to force her back into a traditional role, he is actively delighted and impressed with her. 

I cannot tell you how wonderful that is to see, especially on a kids show which is unconsciously socialising the new generation. 

Another toxic trope subverted is the competition between Korra and the ultra-feminine Asami. While I disliked the love triangle element and wish in some ways it was handled better, I do love that Korra isn’t really made to feel lesser compared to Asami in womanhood terms. In fact Mako’s vacillation between them is made more understandable because he admires Korra for her attributes as much as Asami for hers. Also the wonderful subversion that Asami isn’t going to force Korra into the usual shopping/makeover trip which is standard for this type of episodes. She recognises Korra wouldn’t enjoy that despite the fact that Asami clearly does and instead takes Korra on a joint speed-racing trip that shows Asami is multifaceted too and over which they mutually bond. 

(Also Korra’s discomfort of traditionally feminine things like makeup is not just played for laughs but turned into a plot hook as she overhears plotting due to being in the powder room. Brilliant! Korra is also shown looking pretty in her Water Tribe dress but is also deemed attractive in her usual attire and on the bending court. I personally think she is gorgeous either way. 

Both Korra and Asami represent different aspects of womanhood and they do it in I’d argue in well rounded ways. The fact the men they have intimate ties with - Mako and Bolin - also appreciate this is icing on the cake. (Also if I was getting too hetero-normative there is of course  - spoilers - the fact they fall in love later on in the series.)

Korra’s influence is also not in any way attached to her perceived level of attractiveness. Her power and the narrative conflicts that surround it comes from her role as the Avatar and a bender. I get the distinct impression that characters like Tenzin and Tarlok’s dismay with Korra don’t come from her being a young woman acting boorish (which the writers could have very easily slipped into), it’s the qualities of being youthful, boorish and uncontrollable themselves that’s the problem.

Amon as the prime antagonist also treats Korra with respect even as he seeks to undermine and destroy her. He does this to her as the Avatar - his enemy - not as a woman which makes the (spoilers) latent potential threat of assault and its real world parallels in Epi 4/S1 easier to stomach. 

So in conclusion - f**k that reviewer and Korra - carry on being awesome!

[beautifulchaostrash]

Hi! could I get some fluff with Lester Sinclair and a female S/O? like a date, they go to the woods to search for animal bones and other cool stuff that can be found in the forest and at some point they get lost because they were too distracted being adorable? thank you so much!!!💞💞💞💞 love ya! hope you're doing well💞

A Paisley Afternoon

Lester Sinclair x Fem!Reader

SFW, mentions of abuse, swearing

Word count: 4,884

assasdjhajfsgawgeu you are SO sweet! QwQ I hope you’re doing good as well!

Quick disclaimer: I have not seen the House of Wax, and I haven’t really written for the Sinclair brothers that much, so if their characterization seems off plz let me know! This was hella fun to write and I’m super glad you requested this! (I’m also lowkey simping for Lester Sinclair, what have u done to me)

I know u asked for fluff and while this mostly is, I made the ending kinda angsty cause I can’t help myself...T-T but it has a happy ending tho

cut because this is a loooong ass fic

“S-so uh, Y/N! V-Vinnie asked me to uh, go get some stuff from the forest, ya know, for his artstuffs? And uh, ‘was wonderin’ if you wanted to come with, since yer a big fan of nature and stuff, heh. I-if you don’t that’s ok I understand I-”

You silenced his nervous rambling with a kiss on the cheek.

“I’d love to! Could we make it a picnic? I don’t get to cook for you often,” you hummed.

Lester blushed a deep red. “Y-yeah if you wanna, I’d love that...uh, m-meet you at our usual spot? Four pm?”

“I’ll see you then!” You gave him a chaste kiss on the lips before turning to go back into the house.

He gawked for a minute before jogging down the porch steps, stammering his goodbyes. He drove off as if he had gotten de-pantsed during gym class and was retreating to hide out his shame in the locker room.

...

He would never call this a date. Not in a million years. After all ‘Dates are s'posed to be nice and fancy, and if there’s one thing I ain’t it’s that!’. Lester’s self-deprecating humor came back in your mind as you sat on the edge of the boarded-up well. The well served as your go-to meet spot for these kinds of outings.

Even though you had both been dating for years, Lester always treated every date as if it were his first. As if he couldn't believe that you wanted to spend time with him. It broke your heart to think about, but it was sweet in away.

Every time he came up with an excuse. ‘Bo wants me out of the house for the evening'...'We need more parts for the House of Wax, and I need some help'... 'You’ve spent a lot of time inside lately, you should go on a walk'! And I’ll come with to protect you in case people come by.’  But you knew better.

You knew that Lester was too nervous to ask you outright. You’re snapped out of your daydream by the slam of a car door. Looking up to see Lester jogging towards you, Jonsey following close behind.

“S-sorry I’m late! Lost track of ti-...Y/N! How many times have I told you not to sit on that well!?!” he picked up his pace, sprinting to where you sat.

You sheepishly stood up, not noticing that you had been leaning on it in the first place.

“Sorry sweetheart, guess I jus’ got tired,”

He pulled you into a tight hug, then pulled away to check your body for injuries. He was like a flustered mother goose, almost.

“That well is ancient, why it-it was 'prolly here before Bo and Vinnie were even born! If you p-put too much weight on it, it could-”

“Collapse and I could get hurt, I know, I know. Gah! You worry too much darling,” You stood on your tiptoes to press a kiss into the bridge of his nose.

He stood back and put his hands on his hips, eyeing you up and down.

“Why I oughta-” He wagged a finger in your direction.

“What? You oughta what? What’re you gonna do huh?” you smirked and leaned into him, tilting your head.

“I oughta…” He trailed off at your sudden challenge, blushing hard.

His eyes widened and a mischievous grin spread across his face.

“I oughta kiss you, fer being so reckless!” He crossed his arms.

You giggled and put a hand over your forehead. “Oh no! What a tragedy! Forced to kiss the most handsome man in the world! Whatever shall I do???”

You sank to the ground and leaned against Jonsey, putting a hand to your forehead. Lester looked down at his feet and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Aww shucks!” He muttered.

You jumped up, wrapping your arms around his waist and ghosting your lips against his. Lester pressed his hands against your waist and closed the distance between you two. You stayed connected for a moment, savoring the tangy taste of sweat and dirt on your tongue. You only broke away when you heard Jonesy snuffling around in the picnic basket you brought with. After shooing her away from your food, Lester went back to his truck to gather his bag, and you were both on your way.

You and Lester walked through the forest, taking your time to pick your way for the undergrowth. Even though you both did this often, and usually traveled the same path each time, you never failed to find stuff.

Jonesy, not learning her lesson from the last time, went after a badger and got her ass kicked again. Leading to a very angry rant from Lester, even though she couldn’t understand what she was saying.

Even though you were looking for animal bones, anything was game. From discarded beer cans to cool looking rocks, weird plants, whatever you managed to find.

You both stopped in a small clearing, the trees were sparser here and the grass a bit taller. A perfect place for treasures to hide. Lester beamed, moving to start sifting through the vegetation. You set your basket down nearby and followed suit, hiking up your pant legs to avoid the mud.

A few minutes and a couple of oddly shaped rocks later, Lester called out to you. He showed off a very excellent stick, that was a bit shorter than him and looked thick and sturdy. He handed it to you, proclaiming that it was going to be your 'wizard staff'.

“Wizard staff?” you chuckled, grabbing the stick from his hands.

“Why yes! You are the most magical person I’ve met! You’ve got to be some sort of powerful enchantress! Sein' as you’ve put a spell on my heart~” he smiled and grabbed you by the waist, leaning down to kiss you.

You gasped when he pulled away, blushing at his cheesy comments. You sure as shit weren’t gonna let him get away with it without firing back with some of your own.

“That’s funny, seeing as you’re the one who’s charmed me~” you whispered in his ear, your breath hot on his sensitive skin.

You spun around and stooped down to pick through the grass,  ignoring his flustered gaping. He smiled and kneeled next to you in the dirt, enjoying the silence of the forest.

You both trek on for another hour or so, before finding a level area near a creek to collapse and have lunch. You made quick work, unfurling the blanket and setting out the food. You tossed a few treats towards Jonsey to make sure your meal wouldn't get sacrificed.

You fell onto the ground with a thud, letting your aching muscles relax. Even though it wasn't hot out, the humidity made doing anything outside torture. You don't know how Lester managed to do it every day.

“You need to eat, here d-drink some water,” he pushed a canteen into your hands along with a sandwich.

“Water?” Taking a swig from the canteen, you smirked. “Why, I think you have more than quenched my thirst, gorgeous~”

Lester went red from ear to ear as he realized that you were ogling his backside while he rummaged around in his bag. He flushed and sat down next to you, suddenly very invested in the ham sandwich in front of him. You finished your sandwich and leaned against his shoulder. Lester blushed and started stammering. You silence him with a kiss, one hand moving to cup his cheek, the other moving to his chest.

He reciprocated, wrapping his arms around your waist and deepening the kiss. His lips slid against yours, chapped and sweaty, and tasting faintly of blood. It was more than gross, it was ghastly, repulsive even, and yet so so addicting. Every time you think you get enough of him he leaves you yearning for more. If you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought him to be a succubus or some kind of land-dwelling siren.

But nope, it was just Lester. Lester bringing you gifts in the form of wildflowers, pretty rocks, and books. Lester giving you full-throated, heartfelt praise and sappy comments. Lester giving you more passion and love and charm in one smile than anyone else could give you in a lifetime. Bo may be a smooth-talking seducer, but Lester? Lester was straight up husband material, and it made your heart melt.

And it made other things melt as well, you realized as you were craving more of him. You opened your mouth slightly, pushing your tongue on his lips to savor more of that sickly sweet taste. He obliged you, parting his lips to brush your tongues together. Straddling his waist, you press your body against his, leveraging a more intimate kiss.

He gave out a small groan, which only spurned you on further. Your  hand reached down to pull at the hem of his shirt, when his rough hands gripped your hips and pulled you off of him.

“Not in front of Jonesy!” he hissed into your ear.

You couldn’t help but laugh at the notion.

“Jonsey? Babe, she’s just a dog she doesn’t care what we’re doin’, she doesn’t even understand what sex is!”

He puffed up , a bit offended by your words. “She is not jus’ a dog, she is an innocent creature and does not deserve to be exposed to that kind o’ stuff!”

You snickered again, conceding defeat. “Alright alright, but you owe me, mister,” you teased.

He smiled and kissed the top of your head as you snuggled into his side.

“Don’ worry bout a thing darlin’, I always pay my debts,”

You both relaxed, exchanging kisses and occasionally commenting about work, or the weather. After a while, you both decided it was time to move on, and you packed up camp.

As you stopped to refill the canteens from the creek, your eye noticed something odd in the water.

Upon closer inspection, you realized it was a very smooth rock. You, of course, fished it out to take home with you. Only then did you realize what about it that had caught your eye in the first place. The rock itself was a dark color, flat, and about the same circumference as a small wine bottle. Right smack in the middle of the rock was a hole going clear through to the other side.

Your jaw dropped. It was a hag stone. You had heard of them before but had never expected to ever find one naturally occurring. They were ridiculously rare and only formed under specific circumstances. Even though it seemed to be a bit silly, you mentally thanked the forest and the creek for giving you such a gift. “Lester!” you called out. “Come look at what I found!”

You ran over to him and dropped the stone into his palm. His eyes widened, his fingers running over the smooth surface, tracing the round hole.

“You found this in th’ creek?” he held the stone up to his face and peered through the hole curiously.

“Yeah! It was just sitting there,”

“Well I’ll be, I never seen anything like it!”

“They’re called Hag Stones! It's rumored they hold powerful magic, since they're only created through natural means,”

Lester hummed and pushed the stone back into your hands.

“That’s a real hell of a find y/n!” He smiled.

You palmed the rock, thinking for a moment. An idea popped into your head.

“Say Lester do you have any rope or string?” you asked.

He nodded and went to retrieve it from his pack. It was a small bundle of thin para-cord, stolen off some unfortunate tourist. 

“Perfect!” you beamed.

Taking the loose end, you compared the length to your neck to gauge it, then took a small pocket knife and cut the rope. Looping one end through the hole in the rock, then tying both ends in a secure knot. Beckoning Lester to lean down, you looped the necklace over his head, leaving it to rest on his neck . He looked down at it and smiled.

“When Hag Stones are worn around the neck like this, they make the wearer pretty much immune to curses and bad luck. It’s even said that if you look through it, you’ll be able to see into the kingdom of the Fae Folk! And because we found this one in the forest, it grants you favor with the tree spirits!” you bit your tongue and blushed, realizing how silly and hippy-dippy you sounded.

“‘Course that’s just all legend, but it is still pretty though, and I think it suits you nicely.”

Lesters’ eyes widened, and he tried to lift the stone from around his neck. “I can't! Y-you need this more than me!”

You snatched his hands from the cord and laced your fingers in his, shrugging.

“You deserve it baby, you deserve to be protected. You deserve to be happy and loved too! I’m plenty safe with you and Jonesy around. It’s your turn to be taken care of,” you leaned and pressed your forehead against his.

Reaching up, you rubbed his cheek, surprised when your hand came away wet. Looking up you saw that he was crying.

“Oh, Lester? What’s wrong sweetie?” you wiped away the streams of tears with your thumbs.

“N-nothing I just-” he closed his eyes and let out a choked sob. His hands came to rest atop yours. “No one’s ever t-told me that, that i d-deserve to be happy and s-safe!”

He burrowed his face in your shoulder and sobbed. You stood and held him there, rocking back and forth while rubbing circles on his back in through his hair. His arms gripped you tight enough to hurt, but you didn’t mind. Even as you cooed and shushed him, anger bubbled behind your soothing tone.

You were furious. Furious at his parents for treating him like he didn’t exist, at Bo for bullying him constantly, and at Vincent too. Even though Vincent wasn’t as nasty, he still brushed Lester off like a horsefly that wouldn’t leave him alone. When Lester tried to talk to him, show him something, even just say hi, Vincent would always sign the same things.

‘I’m busy,’

‘Go bother Bo,’

‘Lester please, I have a headache, be quiet,’

It made your blood boil and your vision go red. Yeah sure, Vincents’ mute and can’t eat or smile without his deformity causing him pain. Bo was treated like the devil incarnate by his parents in favor of Vincents’ artistic talent. But they had the same fucking parents. The same fucking childhood. The least they could do is treat him like something more than a piece of dirt. Some days you wondered if they even cared about him.

You snapped out of your ire when Lester pulled you into a tender kiss, lower lip still trembling slightly. You pulled back and planted kisses all over his face, on his nose, chin, eyelid, everywhere. He devolved into a fit of wet giggles, his nose crinkling as your lips tickled his handsome features. He wiped his eyes again and looked you in the eyes lovingly.

“I love you, Y/N,”

“I love you too, Lester,”

You smiled and gave him one final kiss. He beamed. Taking the stone, he held it up to his eye, peering through the hole at you.

“Well hey! Would’ya lookit that! I’ve already found myself a fairy! And a mighty cute one at that!~”

You giggled and pushed him away bashfully. “Go pack up the rest of our stuff ya goofball!”

>>>>>

Following the river, you continued to look for stuff along the winding trail. You snagged a pretty decent haul, all things considered. Animal bones and carcasses and rocks and some jewelry left behind by a camper. Nothing really out of the norm for the pair of you, and things were going great.

That is until you realize too little too late, that the sun had all but set, and left you in the dark with no idea of where you are. You tried to follow the creek down back the way you came and kept following it. And kept following it, and….

“Lester? I don’t recognize any of this…”

You hoped that Lester would put on his brave act and reassure you that yes, Y/n. He knew the woods like the back of his hand and that you would be home in no time. You did not get that.

“Yeah, me neither, I don’ know where the hell we ended up. It’s too dark for me to read my compass an’ I left the flashlights at Ambrose ‘cause I didn’t think we’d be out past dark,” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone. “Ah, damn it’s dead! Knew I shoulda charged it before I left this morning! Did you bring yours?”

The lack of panic and fear in his voice made your skin crawl. How the hell is he so calm??? And no, you didn’t bother to bring your phone with you this time, not wanting to be annoyed with phone calls from work. Lester seemed to notice your mounting panic and quickly set about comforting you.

“Y/N! Y/n, dont be upset, we’ll be ok! You got me an' Jonesy here to protect you. I’m pretty sure that this creek leads to the main road, and we can follow the road back to Ambrose. You have extra food in that basket right?”

“Uh, yeah, treats for Jonesy, some apples and an extra sandwich I think, and we have water in the canteens still,”

“Alrighty then, If worse comes to absolute worse, we’ll make camp for the night in the forest. Then I can make a fire and we’ll head out in th mornin' when it’s light out, ok? Hey…” He reached out and put a hand on your shoulder. “We’re gonna be ok.” he said with an air of finality, putting you somewhat at ease and strenghtening your resolve.

You continued to follow the creek, holding hands so you wouldn’t get separated. You walked on for what seemed like hours, but eventually, you came across the road Lester talked about. You would’ve cried out for joy if you weren't so goddamn tired. You hadn’t realized how far you went into the forest. Lester stepped out into the middle of the road and looked towards the sky, looking for something. You stepped out and looked up with him. You gasped at the sight of the sky. You had never seen so many stars in the sky before. Well, that’s a lie, Lester took you stargazing often, but it still stole your breath every time.

“Fuck” he whispered under his breath. “It’s a new moon,”

“Why’s that bad?” you asked.

“Can’t tell which way east is, ‘least not very easily,” he muttered.

He scanned the sky further, peering at it with an intense stare. Even though you were horribly, horribly lost, you were happy to be able to spend time with Lester. A little bit of impromptu stargazing was also a plus.

“Jesus, you think after a while i’d start to remember to bring the flashlights, huh? Guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” He chuckled.

You reached out for Lesters’ hand again, squeezing it gently. He continued to curse under his breath before giving up on whatever it was he was looking for. “Y/N, I’m really sorry this turned into such a shitshow, I-”

“It’s ok pumpkin, shit happens sometimes. The only thing we can really do is try to do better next time,”

“Yeah, I guess,”

You both stood there staring at the sky, not knowing what to do or where to go from here. So you stood, and stared at the sky, in the middle of the road, like a couple o’ crazies.

You were so lost in thought that you didn’t notice the car approaching you in the road. A door slammed, jarring you out of your stupor. You rubbed your eyes, stuggling to adjust to the birghtness of the headlights. You heard a voice call out.

“Lester? Jonesy?” it was Bo, of all people, and he seemed to be somewhat concerned  for once in his goddamn life.

“Yeah we are we, just got,” Lester was cut off, the worry vanishing from Bo in an instant once he realized you guys were ok.

“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!? IT’S ALMOST ONE IN THE FUCKING MORNING AND YOU GUYS SAID YOU WOULD BE BACK AT DAWN!!!” he roared. “You haven’t been answering your phone Lester, and YOU, for whatever fucking reason, decided to leave yours at home, what in the fuck happened?!?”

“We got lost,” Lester shrugged.

“Lost?” he hissed. “Fucking lost? Let me guess, asswipe didn’t bother to bring flashlights did he?” Bo asked you, sarcasm and venom dripping from his voice like sour honey.

He was about to launch into another bought of cursing, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. Bo whipped around to face his twin, who signed something quickly. You couldn’t make it out in the darkness, but whatever he said, it pissed Bo off.

“Don’t you fuckin’ ‘Bo’ me, I’m tired of this lardass going ‘round ‘causin trouble!” He whipped towards you and jabbed his finger in your face. “And you! You-”

Something inside you snapped. You were exhausted, in pain, and flat out sick of everything.

“What?! I’m what Bo? I’m a worthless, good for nothin’ piece o shit? Huh? Just like your FUCKING BROTHER HUH?!?”

“Ya know what, now that you say it-” he smirked.

CRACK The air around you was still, and thick. Bo doubled over, trying to comprehend what happened. You clenched your jaw, refusing to show tears on your face, even as pain blossomed through your joints.

“Not another fucking word out of your goddamn mouth, Bo Sinclair, or so help me god I’m gonna be the one gluing your lips shut! Got it?” your voice quaked low and dangerous, and even Bo knew better than to try and talk back.

“The way you treat Lester is fucking shameful! The ONLY thing you seem to be good at is making people feel like shit, and I would fucking expect an ADULT MAN to have more emotional maturity THAN A FUCKING THREE OLD!!!” you felt your voice go shrill and high, warbling with rage.

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT THAT YOU PUNCH PEOPLE ‘CAUSE YOUR DADDY DIDN'T LOVE YOU, ‘CAUSE NEWSFLASH, ASSHOLE, LESTER’S DADDY DIDN’T LOVE HIM EITHER, AND NEITHER DID HIS MOMMA!!! A detail you seem to fucking forget even though he’s YOUR FUCKING BROTHER, AND YOU SHOULD BE TREATING HIM WITH MORE RESPECT THAN YOU GIVE TO YOUR FUCKING PICKUP!!!

And you!”

Vincent jumped and almost fell backward when you turned to talk to him. You could see his eyes wide with fear under his waxy mask. Good. You wanted this lesson to fucking stick.

“You have less spine than your fucking wax statues! If you had even an ounce self respect, you’d grow a pair and stop putting up with Bo’s bullshit! Or at the very least, you’d stop cowering in the basement being all sad and tragic and try to be invested in what Lester is trying to say rather than blowing him off with bullshit excuses because you can’t be FUCKED to give shit!!!”

You finally let yourself pause, catching your breath. You heard Vincent shifting his weight on his feet, and felt the eye daggers Bo was stabbing you with. “You three are brothers, so fucking act like it,”

And with that, you grabbed Lester by the hand and led him to Bo’s truck. Neither Bo nor Vincent seemed to make any move to follow you. Opening the driver’s side door, you let Jonesy hop up into the back. Noticing that the keys were still in the ignition, you pulled them out and tossed them to Lester. You slid into the passenger seat and let out a silent sigh. Christ, did your head fucking hurt.

You noticed that Lester seemed a bit anxious, but you could tell that he was happy that someone stood up for him.

You looked over at the twins just in time to see Bo smack Vincent's hand away.

“DOn’t fuckin’ touch me!” he growled.

“Bo, get in the fucking truck,” you hissed.

Vincent scrambled through the driver’s side door into the backseat. You exhaled through your nose, noticing that he chose the seat opposite of where you were sitting.  Bo was a little late to the party, but you savored the humiliation of him having to crawl into the backseat of his truck.

Satisfied, you leaned against the headrest of your seat, trying to steady your breaths. The purr of the engine was a welcome distraction from the tense air around you. You must’ve fallen asleep at some point because the last thing you remember was Lester carrying you to bed. He gave you a kiss, whispering a gentle ‘thank you’ before you drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

BONUS:

Bo gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes.

“I cannot believe you are making me do this,” he mumbled.

“Please, Bo! I don’t wanna get yelled at again!” Vincent signed hastily.

Bo raised an eyebrow. “You really are a self absorbed prick, aren’t you?”

Vincent dropped his hands in exasperation before picking them up again. “Fine, It’s the right thing to do, and I’m a jerk just like you, now will you please-”

“Alright, alright,” Bo waved Vincents’ hands down.

He reluctantly got up from the couch and trudged up the stairs, Vincent tugging him along . Bo gently knocked on Lester’s bedroom door. Hearing a muffled ‘yes’, he opened it to see Lester standing near his dresser, putting his gear away. Y/n was fast asleep under the covers.

“She asleep?” He nodded his head towards your shape on the bed.

“Uh, yeah i think so, why?” Lester whispered.

“We need to talk,” Bo stated numbly.

“Oh...Uh, gimme a minuet,” he stuffed his pack in the wardrobe before following Bo and Vincent out into the living room.

Bo stood for a moment, shooting his twin a sour glare. He rubbed his forehead and inhaled sharply.

“I’m sorry,” he groused.

Vincent looked at him expectedly as Lester tilted his head in confusion. Bo let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I’m sorry fer always yellin’ at you and tellin’ you yer a piece a shit, ‘cause ya aren’t. I know that you don’t mean to forget things. The reason why I got so angry tonight was ‘cause I was so damn worried about you, but that’s no excuse. So, I’ll try and uh, ‘manage my emotional outbursts', his words, not mine” Bo nodded at his twin.

“What he’s trying to say is that we both care about you, and we’ve both been letting our emotions dictate how we treat you.” His hands hesitated slightly before continuing. “I...as much as would like to believe, I’m not any better than Bo just because I don’t yell at you. I’m self absorbed, and I need to be more self aware and not let myself get strung up over little things,”

Lester sniffed, wiping the tears that were forming on his eyelids. “You wax-heads, of course I know you guys care about me! Why else would you come looking for me at ‘one in the fucking morning’?” he snickered. “I do appreciate your apologies though...I know you an’ Vinnie ain’t got it easy, god knows you didn’t, I was there, but that was it. Just, there. A bystander. I can’t help but wonder if I had said or done something maybe-”

“Lester,” Bo interrupted. “What happened to me-what happened to us is not your fault, or your responsibility.”

“I figure, but the problem is I’m still a bystander now, here in Ambrose. I don’t ever take charge of anythin’, I just stand there and wait for one of you to tell me to do something. Heh...that’s not really useful, ain’t It? I want-I should be takin’ a more active role in the House of Wax, we all have our part to play, don’t we?” “You’re right, we all need to work together,” Vincent signed.

Bo rolled his eyes and huffed, shaking his head at Vincent.

“OOOKAYY, if this shit gets any sweetter im gonna have a heart attack and die!” Bo stood up to leave. “Goodnight,”

“Oh no, not so fast mister!”

Lester wrapped his arms around Bo and pulled him into a hug. Vincent was quick to hug him from behind, pinning Bo between him and Lester.

“Alrighty, I love you too...ok that’s enough you can let me go

now...guys?....Helloooo?”

“We're not lettin' go 'til you hug back~,” Lester sang out.

Vincent rested his head on Bo’s shoulder in place of making a sarcastic remark. Bo grumbled, throwing his arms around Lester, who in turn, squeezed Bo tighter.

“Hey! A Sinclair Sandwich! Ain’t had one of these in a long time,” Lester giggled.

“Happy now?” Bo muttered.

“Yeah,” he sighed.

Bo relaxed a little, allowing himself to sink into the physical affection. Vincent hummed happily in response, and Lester nuzzled into Bo’s other shoulder. Bo closed his eyes, and for a fleeting moment, believed that he was going to be okay.

-Mod Elith

[mvsicinthedvrk]

mmm personality test sorting time !!

i’ve done one character a day for a while & now they’re all done, so: fun sorts for my characters alphabetically under the cut.

i took the 16 personalities test for the mbti, the eclectic energies test for the enneagram, for hogwarts house I was going to originally just choose based on instinct but i did end up using this knockoff pottermore test, and then I did the open psychometrics “which character are you statistically most like” quiz for the last one. 

henry strauss-- 

mbti: INFP (the mediator) -- “Mediators may feel directionless or stuck unless they connect with a sense of purpose for their lives. For many Mediators, this purpose has something to do with helping and uplifting others. Empathetic by nature, these personalities may feel other people’s suffering as if it were their own“ lmfao oh henry

enneagram: oh he’s a type 4 for sure. I agree with that 200%. -- “Fours are emotionally complex and highly sensitive. They long to be understood and appreciated for their authentic selves, but easily feel misunderstood and unappreciated.”

hogwarts house: 42% hufflepuff (then in order: ravenclaw, gryffindor, slytherin)

which other characters are you most like: 

#1: charlie from perks of being a wallflower (OUCH!!)

#2: wes gibbons from htgawm

#3: jonathan byers from stranger things

holland vosijk--

mbti: ISTJ (the logistician)-- “Logisticians have sharp, fact-based minds, and prefer autonomy and self-sufficiency to reliance on someone or something. Dependency on others is often seen by Logisticians as a weakness, and their passion for duty, dependability and impeccable personal integrity forbid falling into such a trap.” this is so funny to me. it’s very true. 

enneagram: type 8-- “People of this personality type are essentially unwilling to be controlled, either by others or by their circumstances; they fully intend to be masters of their fate... Eights have a hard time lowering their defenses in intimate relationships. Intimacy involves emotional vulnerability and such vulnerability is one of the Eight's deepest fears” legit

hogwarts house: 40% slytherin (then in order: ravenclaw, gryffindor, hufflepuff)-- this actually surprises me because I would have guessed ravenclaw instead. 

what other characters are you most like: 

#1: carolyn martens from killing eve (i didn’t know who this was but apparently she’s “principled yet ruthless” and that tracks)

#2: severus snape from harry potter

#3: mr. darcy from pride and prejudice (lmfao)

kaz brekker--

mbti: ESTJ (the executive)-- I don’t know that this is accurate because the whole first paragraph of the description is about how executives understand right/wrong and embrace honesty and tradition BUT later in the description some of it aligns: “Executives don’t work alone, and they expect their reliability and work ethic to be reciprocated – people with this personality type meet their promises, and if partners or subordinates jeopardize them through incompetence or laziness, or worse still, dishonesty, they do not hesitate to show their wrath. This can earn them a reputation for inflexibility.”

enneagram: type 3-- “They are frequently hard working, competitive and are highly focused in the pursuit of their goals... They are often self-made and usually find some area in which they can excel... They know how to present themselves, are self-confident, practical, and driven... They are good networkers who know how to rise through the ranks.” THAT’S accurate. 

hogwarts house: almost the same as holland, which is unsurprising-- 37% slytherin, then 30% ravenclaw with gryffindor and hufflepuff trailing far behind. 

what other characters are you most like:

#1: amy dunne from gone girl (lmfaoooooo)

#2: walter white from breaking bad

#3: vicious from cowboy bepop

martin blackwood--

mbti: INFJ (the advocate)-- “Advocates generally strive to do what’s right – and they want to help create a world where others do the right thing as well... Advocates may be reserved, but they communicate in a way that is warm and sensitive... Advocates might find themselves feeling especially stressed in the face of conflict and criticism. These personalities tend to act with the best of intentions, and it can frustrate them when others don’t appreciate this.” awww that’s sweet I do like that for him.

enneagram: type 2, with 6 being a close second. I definitely called that. “People of this personality type essentially feel that they are worthy insofar as they are helpful to others... Twos are warm, emotional people who care a great deal about their personal relationships, devote an enormous amount of energy to them, and who expect to be appreciated for their efforts.”

hogwarts house: 39% hufflepuff, and then the others are all fundamentally tied around 20-21% each. I’d agree with that. 

what other characters are you most like:

#1: landry clarke from friday night lights (initially i was like-- a football player? what? but then his wiki description is: “generally polite, awkward, and enjoys playing guitar” so lol ok)

#2: cameron james from 10 things i hate about you

#3: peeta mellark from the hunger games

melanie king--

mbti: ESTP (the entrepreneur)-- “Entrepreneurs keep their conversation energetic, with a good dose of intelligence, but they like to talk about what is – or better yet, to just go out and do it. Entrepreneurs leap before they look, fixing their mistakes as they go, rather than sitting idle, preparing contingencies and escape clauses.”

enneagram: like holland, she’s for sure a type 8: “Eights are strong willed, decisive, practical, tough minded and energetic.” I think the aggressive aspect of type eights is more obvious in her personality than his, though.

hogwarts house: 47% gryffindor! then, in order: slytherin, ravenclaw, hufflepuff. 

what other characters are you most like:

#1: erica sinclair from stranger things

#2: max mayfield from stranger things

#3: lois lane from smallville (yessss)

orpheus--

mbti: INFP (the mediator)-- I was actually surprised he got introverted instead of extroverted, but here we are. “Mediators’ creativity and idealism can bloom even after the darkest of seasons. Although they know the world will never be perfect, Mediators still care about making it better however they can. This quiet belief in doing the right thing may explain why these personalities so often inspire compassion, kindness, and beauty wherever they go.”

enneagram: oh, yep, he’s a type 9-- “People of this personality type essentially feel a need for peace and harmony. They tend to avoid conflict at all costs, whether it be internal or interpersonal... Nines tend to adopt an optimistic approach to life; they are, for the most part, trusting people who see the best in others; they frequently have a deep seated faith that things will somehow work out.”

hogwarts house: my sweet son is 43% hufflepuff, then gryffindor, ravenclaw, and essentially no slytherin.

what other characters are you most like:

#1: flounder from the little mermaid (ok that’s sort of rude)

#2: snow white from snow white

#3: dorothy gale from the wizard of oz (that tracks)

patroclus--

mbti: INFJ (the advocate)-- so, same as martin. “Advocates can speak with great passion and conviction, especially when standing up for their ideals. At other times, however, they may choose to be soft-spoken and understated, preferring to keep the peace rather than challenge others.” i love him sm.

enneagram: he’s a type 2, also like martin, the helper type. this half-surprises me because i thought there was maybe a chance he’d be a type 6. 

hogwarts house: it’s actually really close between hufflepuff and gryffindor? 31% and 32% respectively. then slytherin, then ravenclaw. 

what other characters are you most like:

#1: eliza hamilton from hamilton

#2: glenn rhee from the walking dead

#3: ben hargreeves from the umbrella academy

wei wuxian--

mbti: ENFP (the campaigner)-- “Campaigners, like all their Diplomat cousins, are shaped by their Intuitive (N) quality, allowing them to read between the lines with curiosity and energy... Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate, the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.”

enneagram: he’s my only type 7. “They tend to be extroverted, multi-talented, creative and open minded... They often have an entrepreneurial spirit and are able to convey their enthusiasm to those with whom they come in contact. When they are able to focus their talents, they are often highly successful. Focusing does not always come easily for Sevens, however.”

hogwarts house: this test says he’s 29% slytherin, 27% gryffindor, 23% hufflepuff, and 21% ravenclaw. 

what other characters are you most like:

#1: george weasley from harry potter (oh that’s genuinely really good)

#2: abby sciuto from ncis (that’s actually perfect too from what i know about ncis)

#3: nymphadora tonks from harry potter

yuri plisetsky--

mbti: ISTJ (the logistician), same as holland-- “Logistician personalities are no-nonsense, and when they’ve made a decision, they will relay the facts necessary to achieve their goal, expecting others to grasp the situation immediately and take action... To Logisticians, honesty is far more important than emotional considerations.”

enneagram: he’s type 3-- “People of this personality type need to be validated in order to feel worthy; they pursue success and want to be admired... When unhealthy, their narcissism takes an ugly turn and they can become cold blooded and ruthless in the pursuit of their goals.” lol

hogwarts house: 31% slytherin and 27% ravenclaw, then gryffindor and hufflepuff in last. 

what other characters are you most like:

#1: cordelia chase from buffy the vampire slayer (once again, hilarious)

#2: amy march from little women

#3: tahani al-jamil from the good place

[the-cookie-of-doom]

Good morning! Whats your favorite show/movie? Who are your favorite characters? Why do you like them so much? Also!! Did you have a good sleep?

Okay so I was a film major for a while, and I have opinions. 

Penny Dreadful 

I love this show. Like, so much. I adore it. I can not get enough of that show. Just all of the imagery, and the fantastic writing and acting. The episode intro alone is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Eva Green is a goddess and I love everything she’s been in. The take on classic horror stories is So Good, and it actually became the inspiration for my Gay Frankenstein story! (Started as a stitch AU, and then went completely OC after I had Ideas) but the show itself is so intimate? I think it’s largely that the period they’re in, everything was so repressed and restricted. So when the characters break out of those moments, it’s more meaningful. And the love-hate relationship between Ms. Ives and Malcolm in season one? Exquisite.  I could literally write essay’s about this show, but I’ll restrain myself and just say: it’s the best ensemble show I’ve ever seen. The characters come together, but they also each have their own distinct lives that sometimes intersect, but in s2 especially, are quite separate. They are constant with one another like ensemble shows usually portray. Also gothic horror and romance? My absolute favorite. 

Anything by Guillermo del Toro

This man Owns My Entire Soul. I’m not even joking, everything he writes and directs is perfection. Crimson Peak is probably my favorite (I have a stitch AU for this too ;) ) because again, Gothic horror and romance. I’m a slut for that shit. Also Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain? Delightful casting. I think it’s obvious by now that I love tragic relationships, so their dynamic is *chef’s kiss* amazing. they’re so damaged. And this quote right here is one of the BEST things I’ve ever read: 

“But the horror... The horror was for love. The things we do for love like this are ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret. This love burns you and maims you and twists you inside out. It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all.”

Engrave that on my headstone, please?? I’ve got a sort-of Dorian Gray AU (it’s delightful) that’s basically built on this entire premise. Mitch makes the mistake of falling in love with Stiles, and does many terrible things because of it. Mostly to himself, at least. 

I think my love of Crimson Peak is very closely tied with The Shape of Water. another beautiful movie, I could wax poetic about this forever. it was beautifully written, and such an artistic movie. I love the way it was filmed, and the set design, and all of the subtle imagery. Such as Elisa’s apartment being cast in cooler tones, it always felt very damp and had evidence of water damage, compared to Giles’, a mirror image of her own, in more warm tones. This is another one I could (and have) write essays about. There is so much packed into this movie, from the themes on toxic masculinity and entitlement, to the conversation on queerness and race and disability, and how all the various relationships are portrayed. Like. there is so much to pick apart in this movie. 

Aside from that, ofc Hell Boy deserves an honorable mention because i grew up on those movies. I’m pretty sure the Golden Army especially is responsible for who I am today, given all the lore on the fae in that universe. Wow, that explains so much about me... Also one of my first WoW characters was an elf named Nuala xD I still have her, too, and it’s been like 12 years lol

Near-Future Sci-Fi

Sci-fi is one of my favorite genres, I am a huge nerd for theoretical and astrophysics. But my favorite kind of sci-fi is the stuff that still takes place on Earth, rather than epic battles in space. Ex Machina and Annihilation are at the top of that list. Alex Garland is another writer/director that I love. He has the same kind of approach as del Toro, where he puts a lot of fine details into his work. And I love that it’s very cerebral; there are so many layers to Ex Machina. My English 101 prof actually refused to analyze it in class when I suggested it to him, because he didn’t think my class could. Basically handle? Dissecting that movie? Because a lot of it comes across as very surface level, but in some cases when you look deeper, it’s actually suggesting the opposite of what you might think at first glance. (And he was right, my fellow students were awful. I miss that class though, it was one of my favorites T_T Mr. Ryder was an awesome dude and super chill.) 

Morgan is another good example. As you can see, I fucking love androids lol. Which brings me to another of my all time favorite movies: Cloud Atlas. I could literally watch this movie endlessly, I love it so much. The acting, the writing, the filming, all of it is top notch. And one thing they did in the movie that didn’t come across in the book, was reusing the same actors through the different eras in the book. That was just so neat, because it really encapsulates how connected these souls are, as we follow the threads of their story throughout time. If you haven’t seen the movie, I can’t recommend it enough.  

Another one I always think of alongside Cloud Atlas, even though they aren’t related at all, is Predestination. It’s a great movie that explores the idea of fate and free will in a really clever way, utilizes time travel in a very organized way that I think was neat (think Umbrella Academy. They even use briefcases! As you can see, I love sci-fi bureaucracy, it’s fun. In fact The Bureau is another movie I enjoyed) and the main character is actually, explicitly trans, which was cool. You basically get to see the entire story of their life, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s just. So good. Mindfuckery galore. 

Shoot, and I almost forgot! Arrival! That is one of the best movies, and another one I could watch nonstop. It focuses on mathematics and linguistics and I swear to god, I almost altered my entire college course because of this movie. Amy Addams is brilliant, Jeremy Renner is so soft and nerdy, and again, it has an amazing take on time travel. I am very particular about how time is handled in Sci-fi, and this portrayal was one of my favorite. (Most of my physics studies have been dedicated to the theory of time, so like. Strong Opinions.) 

Fantasy

Stardust! It wasn’t until Good Omens can out that I realized Neil Gaiman is responsible for most of the stories I loved as a kid lol, and I had no idea he wrote stardust! But that is such a beautiful movie (I have a Stardust AU lol) and it’s definitely one of my comfort movies. Captain Shakespeare is one of the best characters ever, bless Robert de Niro. I would die for him. Fun fact, i had no idea Ipswitch was a real place until like. 2019. I 100% thought it was made up for the movie 😂

Alongside Stardust, I’ve always loved The Golden Compass. It’s fantasy, but also with that old-timey steampunk science feel, which is so fun and surprisingly difficult to find! 

Mortal Engines also has the same kind of feel, and it was such an epic movie in every sense of the word. I’m a little sad that after all the work that went into it, it didn’t get a dedicated following or fan base, because I feel there’s so much potential in it. But at the same time, fandom tends to gather around media that has plenty of flaws for us to repair with gold, and there wasn’t much room for that in Mortal Engines. 

I’m going to put Jupiter Ascending here even though it technically fits with the sci-fi, because that section is long as fuck and also this movie has such a fantastic feel. Mila Kunis? beautiful. The CGI? beautiful. Eddy Redmayne? One of the best villain portrayals i’ve ever seen. The whole oedipal vibe he had was immaculate, as was their portrayal of reincarnation, and just. The world building. GOD. I get so weak for through world building. Also the fkn intergalactic bureaucracy when they’re basically at the space DMV? One of my all time favorite scenes in movie history. 

Horror

I have very little room in my life for horror. As I said, I have strong movie opinions, especially when it comes to horror movies. I don’t like how most of them rely on cheap jump scares and overused gore and gratuitous rape scenes, instead of, y'know, actual good writing. 

Which is EXACTLY why I adore It: Chapter 1 & 2. It has none of those things, but still manages to be so terrifying. They are my favorite horror movies, and I’m saying this as someone who has genuine childhood trauma bc of the novel. Like. I couldn’t shower/take baths alone until I was almost 10 T_T When I was 6-7 and saw kids play by storm drains, I would run over screaming about how Pennywise was going to get them. Like, I had issues man. I was terrified to see the first one, and wouldn’t go until I could go with my best friend after she had already seen it, so she could warn me when something scary was about to happen 😂

And, one of my favorite aspects of the movie, and the thing that gave me Mad Respect for Any Muschietti? The way he filmed Bev and her father. They have a character who is literally being molested, but they never once have to show it. And yet their interactions are still so viscerally upsetting to watch. Sexploitation puts me off of most horror, and the fact that Muschietti doesn’t use it here, even when it would be actually somewhat justified? *chef’s kiss*. I love him. 

I love horror as a concept, I’m just really picky about it because I expect the writing to be good. I don’t like short cuts. But in a lot of cases, even if I don’t enjoy the movie itself, I love to watch analysis videos on youtube! I love to see the philosophy and symbolism in different horror movies, even if i don’t like to watch the movies themselves. It’s a fun hobby. 

Misc. 

Then in general, some other stuff I love in no particular order:

The Internship (Bless Dylan, Stuart is such a bitch and I love him) 

American Assassin (ofc. The writing itself is eh, but Mitch is my man) 

Dylan’s episode of Weird City. (I actually have a lot of feelings about this one. Jordan Peele is another amazing writer/director, I really need to catch up on his works.) 

Dorian Gray (*chef’s kiss*)

Rogue One (Makes me cry every time) 

WARCRAFT (Obviously this is a fav. It made me so happy, words cannot express.) 

Coraline and most other stop motion animation. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for that. 

Literally anything associated with Tim Burton. Fun fact, when I was 12 and in middle school, I planned to decorate my future house inspired by tim burton. Like, i had Plans. 

Most adaptations of Alice in Wonderland!

So! this got long as fuck! But you said you like that kind of thing lol 😂 I had kinda Eh sleep since I was up so late lmao, and I kept waking up (as usual, rip). And I’m so mad I go up for nothing! The dude I was supposed to show my listing to never showed, and is refusing to answer my calls >_> It’s been 2 hours now, and I still haven’t heard from him. But whatever, I already have a full price cash offer on the house so who cares. And that means I can play WoW all day, now!