Just gonna have to wait and see, right? Just wait and see! Just gotta wait and see! Who knows, we'll just have to wait and see! It's anybody's guess, we'll just have to wait and see! The future is exciting, we just gotta wait and see!
After the dust cleared, it was dead silent. The air was thick with moisture from the dark clouds looming above them all. Someone, probably Raphael, yelled out something Two didn't quite process, his ears still ringing as his vision slowly cleared.
A faint blue glow flickered in the near distance, not too far from where Two was slumped on the ground. More muffled shouts rang out as Two attempted to collect himself, staggering to his feet and trudging over to the source of-
No.
Just the image alone was enough to bring Two collapsing back to his knees. Stupid, he thought.
"H-hey..." One's weak voice just barely got through to Two, snapping him right out of his thoughts.
He stared down at the dimming blue glow, watching it flicker and fade in and out. How the hell are you still here, breathing?
His thoughts became flooded in his head, even more so as he felt his arms cradle his brother's near-lifeless body.
"Did we win?"
Two felt his jaw clench at One's question, feeling frighteningly close to grinding his teeth until they were flat.
Did we win?
The question echoed in Two’s head, as if that would better help him process this moment. In any other instance, he would have deflected and scoffed at such an empty, meaningless question. Did it matter? he thought as he titled his head up, looking around briefly at the wasteland that surrounded them. It was over, that much was apparent.
"Yes,” he huffed, looking down at his brother in his arms as he continued, “Now, shut it and save your strength. Your heart-"
"I know," One croaked out in between a few sputtering breaths, interrupting Two in more ways than one. Two tried to ignore the cast-off of blood coming from his brother's mouth, despising the sickening feeling settling in his stomach as it hit his chin. One smiled weakly up at his brother, his eyes dull and unfocused.
How dare you, Two thought to himself.
His eyes flickered from One's exposed heart, bleeding out and hardly beating, and back to his brother’s face. His brother looked beaten, bloody...broken. It wasn't a look he saw from him often, if at all. It was that damn smile that he watched waver as One's heart beat softer and softer. What cruel irony, Two couldn't help but think, a metaphorical expression brought to life by his stupid, thoughtless, idiotic brother.
Two could still fix this. Even as he held his brother tighter against his own plastron and felt his shirt get soaked by the horrid mix of blood and empyrean; he thought to himself how he'd be the one to fix this.
There was no other choice left.
“Good…” One let out the softest of chuckles, “…we…we can s-start over.”
Something in Two’s own chest faltered, even just briefly. It was enough to shut out the feeling of One’s pathetic coughs and wheezes against him. He watched how One's eyes dulled further, his gaze wandering away from Two's face.
Starting over? That wasn’t ever an option, not one that Two had ever weighed in his mind. He wasn’t sure if that was even an option now. After everything he had done, everything he sacrificed, worked for…his brother still wanted to burn it, bury everything down and out of Two’s reach. One wanted this win, he wanted the impossible.
“Impossible…” Two muttered under his breath.
He heard yet another faint chuckle. And then the dense silence that followed.
i love the bit from oct 17 2020 when tommy and quackity trapped wilbur in a cobblestone box to keep him from pressing the button... wilbur punching through the blocks with his bare hand to try to get to the button... tommy frantically replacing the block in front of him yelling for quackity to do something... the moment when tommy stops, blocks the exit, and tells wilbur to do it. press the button. but then theyd die with him. quackitys like "wait, wait-" but tommy holds his ground and wilbur. ohh wilbur. "why'd you have to make it so hard?"
okay but you can see the moment percy's heart shatters into pieces once he learns that grover was also annabeth's protector. because this child grew up watching as his peers chose schoolyard taunts over compassion. watching as his dad chose freedom over fatherhood. watching as his mother chose to protect his life by sacrificing her own. but when his mom dies, he holds onto the notion that at least he's not alone. at least he has grover. but that worldveiw wastes away when he learns that he is, first and foremost, grover's assignment. that he was no one's first choice at all.
i keep trying to think of funny/poetic ways to talk about all the things i'm feeling right now but i honestly can't so. i'm really sad about what happened with my partner. i know he was an inconsiderate prick about it and that i didn't do anything wrong and i couldn't have prevented it but i'm just really fucking sad.
does anyone else get so upset when you think about all the things that happened to your f/o... all the things they went through? all the things they haven't healed from? the pain that they may still be enduring? how you can do your best to help them but you can't protect them from everything. so you just love them the ways they needed before, how they deserved. and you see them happy because they finally accept, at least in some ways, that they do deserve it. they deserve love like all beings do
The crooked, creaky door of the cluttered infirmary storage room pushes open and slams shut in the span of a second, just barely allowing someone to dart through. Nico jumps, banging his head on the shelf he’s hiding under, chomping full force on his lip to bite back a shout. The shadows, on lucky reflex, bend around him and shroud his face. The rest of him he tucks further into the forgotten corner between two filing cabinets, holding his breath.
Under the unflattering light of the single swinging lightbulb, Will looks dull.
A thin headband attempts to hold back his frizzy hair, although it does very little. Curls stick out oddly and many shorter hairs are plastered to his temples and the back of his neck. His skin is unusually lacklustre, even pale, except for the high flush around his cheekbones. The bruising under his eyes rivals Nico’s. He has been wearing the same scrubs for the last two days.
With one last look at the closed door, nothing but garbled voices filtering through the heavy wood, he slumps. He drops his face into his chapped and bleeding hands, heels pressed into his eyes, and holds them there for ten seconds, twenty. Slowly, with trembles so minute they are at first glance unnoticeable, his shoulders begin to shake. The long fingers flexed and tensed around his forehead curl tightly, and he twitches, whole body trembling, teeth sunk hard into his bottom lip to stop his chin from quivering.
It does not work.
The first sob is quiet. He catches it quickly, forcing it back down, breathing heavily through his nose and out his mouth to beat it back. The second follows quickly, though, and it’s harder to choke down. When his face crumples, his resolve goes with it, and his knees hit the floor, sharp crack swallowed by the stillness of the room. He curls forward until his nose nearly hits his knees, hands sliding through his hair and over his ears and settling finally clutching together in the dip of his chest, bouncing with every heave of his chest. It’s quiet, his crying, enough that every dropped tear can be heard as it hits the dusty floor. The only time his sobs are ever audible is when he opens his mouth, trying desperately to soak up enough air to catch himself, to carry himself through.
Mute horror holds Nico’s tongue hostage.
He’d escaped in here the second Will had been called away this morning, dragged for the umpteenth time to handle a crashing patient or a complicated hymn or to soothe someone’s nerves. For the past two days he’s been doing his best to monitor Nico and a handful of other front liners who’d exhausted themselves in battle, but his focus has been split and the infirmary has been crowded. Whenever he runs off to put out whatever fire had cropped up — sometimes literally — the whispers start, the glances, the skin crawling up Nico’s back. Nico can hardly tell anymore what’s the shadows and what’s the people around him, watching him out of the corners of their eyes like they’re waiting for him to bust out a scythe and a black hooded cloak and start reaping.
The storage room is supposed to be an escape. Out of the way and forgotten as it is, it is supposed to be the place he can hide for an hour, escape the heavy gaze of the rest of the camp, collect himself before braving it all again.
Clearly, though, he’s not the only one who thinks so.
There’s something disorienting about seeing Will Solace cry. In the few times Nico has spoken with him during his visits to camp, he’s been a barely-contained explosion of energy, whether talking Nico’s ear off with updates about people he barely knows and references he hardly understands or cussing him out for overextending himself. He’s used — as much as he can be to someone he’s only beginning to really get to know — to his wildly flailing hands and widely playful grin, his loud drawling voice, his painful, constant brightness.
His hands, now, clench until they’re bloodless, trembling. There is no hint of his wide smile or twinkling eyes, because his face is hidden by all the hair that his given up on the pretence of the hairband, and the only sound from him are his gasping breaths and swallowed-back sobs. Nico watches him because he cannot look away. He flinches because every cry, every rough, scraping inhale, sounds like shattering rock, like an iceberg breaking off a glacier.
A quiet beeping startles them both.
For a stretch of time Will is motionless. The beeping continues, steady and soft, bouncing off the cluttered shelves and fading before they echo. After the third round — and Nico counts, if anything for something to do besides watch the chafed skin on Will’s hands crack and bleed with every flex — he drags himself upright, nails drawing lines in the thick dust of the floorboards, and rests back on his heels. He breathes for a moment, shuddering, hands pressed flat to his face; in, beep, beep, beep; out, beep, beep, beep. None of his breaths are ever steady, but he wastes no more time, swiping under his eyes and pinching his cheeks to restore his face to some of its usual colour. He grips onto each board of the shelf to his right as he yanks himself upwards, hand over hand, until he’s stretched, finally, to stand, although there remains a slouch to his broad shoulders.
The beeping continues, emanating from the watch on his left hand, growing softer or louder as he trails his fingers over the shelves from one end to the other, from the first, the second, the third. He pauses finally on a collection of bottles, turning them carefully to read the labels, then tucks them each gently into his already bulging pockets until he is left with what he must carry between his fingers.
The shadows bend to cover Nico again as Will turns, unknowingly facing him, and pulls himself suddenly straight-backed, chin set high, shoulders squared. He smiles, wide, fractured, squinting his eyes deliberately. The beeping stops. He breathes, in, smile, out, nod, and turns, striding, back to the door, opening it with flourish and swiping the dust off his clothes.
“Found them! Sorry it took so long, I really had to look —”
The door swings shut behind him, cutting off the rest of his sentence.
Nico stares at it with bile churning in his too-empty stomach.
i think kirishima comes home from the barber’s one day with the ugliest haircut you’ve ever seen on him ☹️ and he’s bouncing around sooooo happy with it, you just don’t have the heart to tell him it’s terrible ☹️🥲
he refused to show you any of his pegs, 100% positive you would love it. bless him because all he really wanted was to surprise you 🥺, hyping it up the weeks leading to the day, too—
“it’s gonna look so good, baby, can’t wait for you to see it,” he kisses you, right as he’s about to head off for his appointment.
you didn’t know it then, eyes sparkling and absolutely smitten as you reply, “looking forward to it.”
so now, as he turns around in front of you, arms open wide as if showing off the pièce de résistance; the absolute cherry on top, he asks, “what do you think? d’you like it?”
and you give it a good look, raising your eyebrows in an effort to look pleasantly surprised (but truthfully just shocked). you can feel the corners of your lips twitching, muscles turning nervous at giving away how you really feel about it.
you take a deep breath and blink, stepping closer to him as you reach up to run your fingers up the nape of his neck and through the strands of his freshly styled hair.
he waits, anticipatory.
two truths sink in at this very moment:
1) it’s just hair. it’ll grow back.
2) you must love him. a whole lot actually, because—
“i love it, it brings out your smile,” you look into his eyes, catching how he beams at you. a sparkling red.
you’ll find a way to let him know about it eventually.