#like he wants to Kill and everything about his personality fits him Wrong and inside he is consumed by a darkness he can't name

[shitpostingkats]

I don't know if it's intentional; but it is genuinely saddening that Yusho is a better dueltainer than his son.

I'm in the home stretch of Arc-V episodes, and now that we actually get to see Yusho duel it's obvious that he's just more... entertaining than Yuya. He's got this fun "silly uncle who pretends to pull a quarter from behind your ear" charm, much better charisma, and wears the morals he preaches far more naturally than Yuya, in places where pacifism makes sense, instead of some of Yuya's duels where it just felt like naivety. He just makes the whole ringmaster shtick feel more natural, and totally an extension of his character.

Idk, Yusho showing up and being active in the plot just drives home how desperately borrowed Yuya's aesthetic is.

[velvetmud]

i wanna see what happens when the reader is tempting joel, all innocent smiles whilst she drives him over the edge with her subtle teasing

I got pretty colorful and into it w this one the possibilities were just endless 🤩 set pretty early 2000s, joel is late thirties and kind of a huge lovesick creep in this and sarah’s (alive) and a teen

warning(s): explicit 18+, dirty talk, age difference, phone sex, cum play stuff

-

Joel wouldn’t call it being a peeping tom, okay? He wouldn’t.

But if he wanted to occasionally check up on his shirtless neighborhood crush while she’s waltzing around in her panties through that perfect, square little bedroom window next door, who the fuck is he to look away when he knows he’s struck gold?

It’d be foolish, downright idiotic not to admire her while she’s taking care of that soft skin after a hot shower, steam smelling like fresh body wash whenever she cracks the window open to air it out. Joel always ducks his head just in time, sometimes nearly falling as he shamefully rights himself and attempts to act busy with the old paperwork still sitting on his desk.

Tonight’s been pretty ordinary. No sign of her buying curtains for her room anytime soon.

She stuck to her daily routine and he’s watched on from a swivel chair in his home office space. It’s gotten to a point where he thinks he almost knows her inside out, knows little things no one else might ever get to see - like how adamant she is about skin care whether she’s waking up or going to bed, knows the movie posters she hung up on her wall, knows what she looks like getting ready in the morning, how she’ll button her pants while a toothbrush hangs out of her mouth.

How some days she’ll stare in the mirror and pick apart her reflection with a noticeable frown, and others she lightheartedly tries out some funky different hairstyles he admittedly has had a good chuckle at.

Joel took note of plenty other things too. Like the color of her panties. How much the style of clothes she wore changed throughout the week. One day she might wear boxers and a wife beater. Another night she’ll be in offensively tight fitting cami tops with panties in the prettiest sets of colors he’s ever fucking seen.

In all honesty, he understood his amusement in her and every little thing about her wasn’t the smartest, nor healthiest. He tries to shove those thoughts away, ignore everything wrong with what he’s done. With how much he likes to watch those intimate, personal moments when she’s in the comfort and privacy of her own room.

She wasn’t much older than his own daughter Sarah, and Sarah barely just started actually talking to him about boys in her class. As much as it kills him.

By the looks of how often his inappropriate neighborhood crush goes to bed alone, and how rarely she’s spent the night elsewhere, she must’ve been shy enough to keep to herself, unlike Sarah. Never took any boys home from her community college she went to down the road. Never got home late and snuck in through the same window he watches her through. Just a kind, innocent girl who doesn’t know how much she was admired from afar. Or not so far, he remembers, adjusting himself in his sweatpants as she reentered her bedroom only two walls and a few feet in between.

Judging by that red little bra sitting snug around the swell of her breasts and the matching skimpy panties, she was gonna be home alone tonight. Free to do whatever she pleases without the eyes and ears of her parents. Shit, he’s gonna be glued in this twirling desk chair for the rest of the night if he has to. Sarah got ready and washed up for bed half an hour ago, leaving nothing left for him to do except lock the door and get his cream and tissue ready.

Guilt tries to gnaw his subconscious, but the opposing argument wasn’t nearly compelling enough to possess him to stop. Not when she struts in and parts her hair to the side, inspecting herself in the mirror. He could tell she felt a little sexier tonight.

It wasn’t going to be one of those other nights, ones that make him want to crawl up to her bedroom window and grab a hold of her. Let her weep and rant in his chest until she’s all done and he can console her. Go on about how sweet, how gorgeous he knows she is, how ridiculous it ever was that she could see herself any other way.

No, no no. Tonight he already teetered on the edge of crawling up to that open window, peel those panties down her legs, all the way to her calves with his teeth instead. Make her hold on to that headboard of hers for dear life while he gave her what she deserved. He could picture it now, all the squirming she’d do while he made a mess in her sheets, or the pretty colored pieces of lingerie.

Stuff that slutty little bra in her mouth to muffle those cries, snatch those used up panties and inconspicuously shove them down deep in one of his back pockets. Keep it to wrap around his dick later, or maybe drape across his face. Cover it in cum with a low growl of her name.

By the looks of it, sometimes he wonders if she was a vixen that could read minds. Like now, with the way she started rubbing a dainty fingertip down her front through the lace, lying on her back in bed. Teasing herself, softly and gently, like how he dreams of doing to her.

“Damn. Already got started without me,” he mumbles aloud to nobody except himself, licking his lips in anticipation. Pulls his boxers to the side, mirroring her actions when she pulled her devilish colored panties to the side and expose that pretty pussy out in the air. The view is perfect when she readjusts in the bed so her back is to the window, flaunting that nearly naked ass right towards him. An ass that Joel only ever daydreams of getting to run his tongue along. Spank.

“That’s it. Make yourself feel good, baby. Know you need it. Know you’re getting there.”

Joel can’t help his commentary, like he’s making a director’s cut while he watches her bend over and fill herself up with a finger. Her face says that that one finger just isn’t going to cut it, isn’t nearly big enough to fill, to satisfy. He wished he could remedy that for her, shove and pistol even just one of his fingers inside. Thick enough to equal to two of hers, and longer too. Could reach deeper places. He’d do it for hours just to feel the squelch, feel her warmth.

A hum leaves his closed lips while he runs a hand up his stiff length, taking a long deep breath. He tries not to even blink unless he has to, unwilling to miss a second while she still has her lights on and those panties pulled to the side for him.

He’s tempted to really go there and grab the one and only pair of binoculars he’s ever owned, from what used to seem like a stupid last minute holiday gift from Tommy now seemed like it might come in handy. One of these nights.

“Goddamn, look at you,” he starts to pant, sweat built up on his temple as he finally rid himself of his boxers, tucking the waistband beneath his balls. His dick stands full and tall against his belly, veins bulging while his fingers squeeze and tease the tip.

Impatiently goes and begins stroking the base, slow and steady, not intending to get too ahead of himself. Ahead of her. He always aims to match her speed. Pretend he’s doing this with her, next to her. No walls separating them. He’d finally get a view up close, get to taste and kiss and feel and smell—

In the blink of an eye, she surprises him after keeping one of those fingers in as she turns and does something new. Out of the ordinary. She seems to wrestle her thoughts only for a short moment before picking up what looks to be her house phone from the night stand.

Just when she’s done dialing and holds it up to her ear, his own office phone nearly gives him a stroke from its boisterous ringing. He flinched and cursed as he attempts to ready himself, flipping his waistband halfway back up, only part of his cock poking out. Even if it nearly kills him to refrain from relieving himself.

Some unknown number glows on the screen, and though Joel knows it could’ve been anybody, he has a suspicious hunch that this call was something different. Clearing his throat, he answers as the Miller Residence.

“Mister Miller?” a small, breathy, feminine, and most of all familiar voice asks. He turns back around to his neighborhood crush through the window, seeing those deadly legs now sprawled out while she stares up at the ceiling, home phone tucked by her ear. She called him. In bed. Wearing those panties. Holy fuck.

“Hey, sweetheart. Joel is fine. You uh, you live right next door don’t you?” he gulps, a rush of guilt and shame filling his brain and his gut when he looks over and watches her spread them further apart, feet going briefly up in the air.

Closing his eyes, he pinches his temples as he tries composing himself, tries acting natural.

Like he wasn’t just watching her before and right when she fucking calls.

“Yeah, ‘m sorry if it’s too late. Fuck. You probably have work in the morning, don’t you? And Sarah….”

He doesn’t contain his laughter at her unwavering usage of the word fuck. His mind wants to flutter to thoughts of her saying that word in a whole other context.

“No need for any sorrys, sweet thing. Sarah’s too smart for her own good these days, little girl barely needs me around anymore. And I work from home now actually. Makes things easier.” God help him, it does. “Uh, but point is is I’m always open to…. talk. Or anything else you need.” he blurts, stumbling his way through what was supposed to be an innocent, neighborly sentiment. Come knock if you need sugar type of thing.

It’s creepy, and it’s cowardly, but he just couldn’t bear the thought of scaring her off from him permanently. She can talk to him about her life, her thoughts, her struggles — and shit, there really isn’t much left of her life he hasn’t already seen. Just not quite as up close.

He ducks his head to peek a wide eye through the window again, petrified of being caught. How humiliating it would be for her just to turn around, see the same middle aged dad next door that she’s on the phone with, then look down at his pervy stubborn dick just hanging out of his sweatpants for her to see.

Joel’s heartbeat races.

He can hear her smile in her voice while she responds, “Sarah’s a lucky girl, I mean, this goes without saying but…. she has thee coolest dad ever.”

He can’t do anything except bite his lip and stare down at his dick, pathetically holding his breath from the praise. On second thought it’s good she doesn’t see him up close, see how red his neck and ears get. Or the tent in his pants that he gets to hide under his work desk while she unknowingly strips in front of him almost daily.

“But thank you for saying that. Seriously, it means the world to me. I don’t really have many people to talk to most days. Sarah, she um, she actually gave me your guys’ number—“

Fuck. Who does Joel think he is?

“You meant to ring Sarah?”

He’s spiralling into hating himself again while he moves his head to stare through his window and catch a better look at her, a habit which felt about as dangerous as picking up a cigarette.

She’s stood up from her bed now, biting her thumb nail and then running her fingers through her hair. Still killing him with her bare legs, her bare back….

“No! No, Joel I meant to call you. I’m glad it was you who answered, cause I’ve been meaning to ask for your help with something.”

His eyes could’ve bulged out of their sockets and his blood pressure had to have been at a pretty questionable level by now. Turning around in his swivel chair, he itched the back of his neck and pulls his sweatpants the rest of the way back up.

“My help? ‘Course sweetheart. What’d you need my help with so late?”

There’s a subtle shift in tone to a more sultry, vicious one coming from her that he’s never heard before and almost couldn’t pick up on.

“I want you to turn back around and give me your opinion on this.”

Joel swears his heart floated up to his mouth right when he heard it. Turn back around. Since when did she know which way he was facing?

His mouth gapes open like a fish, and he raises his head in high alert but still has yet to turn around.

“What’d you mean—“

“By turn around I meant turn around. C’mon, don’t turn shy now. Might like what you see.”

He slowly turns that hundred and eighty degrees, unsure of what he’s in for when he risks another peek in her window.

She’s on her knees on the bed, facing his house. One bra strap had fallen down her shoulder, and it’s ethereal. Still clutching the home phone to her ear, he can see the giant grin filling her expression as she raises her brows up and down at him through the glass.

“How do these look on me? They’re both new,” she gave him a quick and playful little twirl, swiftly pulling all of her hair to one side.

Joel is blissfully at a loss, wondering if Sarah snuck him a stronger melatonin to put him to sleep and he’s dreaming. He’ll wake up any second like usual, drooling on his pillow with a full hard on he cannot escape.

Tempted to pinch himself, he blinks a few times with a barely there blank expression before clearing his throat to muster up the courage to form an answer. An honest to God answer.

“Looks perfect on you. You’re… you’re beautiful, baby. S’not fair to me.”

“It’s not fair to me that you pulled your pants back up,” she remarks.

Joel licks his lips, watching her nod her head down a little. Signaling that she can see what affect this has on him, how she didn’t have to bat an eye to already have him reeled in.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, voice hoarse.

She repeats all the gestures she’d been doing right before she called, running one of her finger tips in circles through the skimpy lace.

“I wanna see it again,” she whispers, like she’s just shared one of her darkest secrets. And maybe she has. “Pull it out for me.”

Her wish was his command, and up came his ass off the swivel chair to yank both layers back down again. His cock stood up, filled proud and tall as it could ever be. “Anything for you, baby.”

He hears her faint gasp of surprise when his pants are bunched up at his knees, showing off his full length and his thighs.

“Knew you were big, but Joel that is a monster. None of my toys could even compare.” she laughs, shaking her head in utter disbelief. Joel almost clams up not knowing what to say, nonetheless still gushing at her bluntness. In the back of his mind, he wondered what kinds of toys she likely has lying around her room right now.

Shrugging, he fists himself then grabs the tip with his pointer finger and thumb, aching for some semblance of relief from the fucking brick between his legs. When he’s rewarded with some precum building up on the tip, he makes the intentional move to moan low and gruff into the phone like how he would in her ear. “Not just about how big. S’about how you move, how much you pay attention to how she’s feeling. Foreplay too.”

“Sound like such a gentleman,” she teased, almost taking his breath away when she sticks her legs up, placing them on either side of the window, spreading herself out just for his viewing pleasure.

No one on else on his side or her side of their respective homes had their same view, granting them a decent amount of freedom to go wild. Joel scoots his swivel chair even closer to his window, prying his eyes to those now wide open legs that drove him to such foul temptation.

“Not that much a gentleman. Fuck, my god you’re perfect—”

Her hands travel up and down her thighs, and just looking at her from afar he still knows she smells good. She’s still teasing him, but fuck if Joel wasn’t enjoying every minute of it.

“Foreplay too, huh? What do you like about it? Little bit of giving, little bit of taking—“

“Giving. I like giving,” he interjects in a hurry, giving the thick base of his cock a couple satisfying, rigorous strokes. “No such thing as gettin’ too wet.”

His mouth starts to salivate as she nods her head through the window and drags those panties down a leg so they dangle at the heel of her foot. Spreads her lips apart with two of her fingers, wiggling back and forth to fuck him up even harder.

“There might be.”

It could be angelic or downright demonic the way she’s hypnotizing him, the way nothing and no one could pull him out of his daze as he stays on the edge of his chair, pulling on his cock like a prick.

“Think about eating that pussy all day, then fucking you all night. Hard as you want, fast as you want. Fuck, I could break that headboard of yours if you want. Would worship you any way you fuckin’ need me to, baby.”

His voice almost cracks towards the end, brown eyes drinking up her sprawled out form, her breasts busting out of that bra while she slips two of those dainty fingers back inside. Where his mouth ought to be.

“Yeah, I see you looking and jerking off while you watch me undress at night, Joel. What, can’t you handle seeing any girl walk around her room in some panties?”

She could easily just be teasing him, just shit talking to get him going, but he shits down that idea immediately. Any girl he could handle. He’s a grown man, capable of storing away his desires if the situation called for it. This wasn’t that kind of situation.

“Not just any girl,” Joel pants, forcing his wrist to slow down no matter how painful it might’ve been, locking eyes with her through the glass. “It’s you. Always driving me fucking crazy.” he grunts, almost sounding like it was some kind of complaint or deterrence.

“Never got used to watching you make yourself cum. Every night felt like the first time. Love seeing those legs shake,” he goes on, speeding up and tightening the ruthless grip he had on his dick. “Couldn’t help myself, baby. I’m sorry.”

She yanks a cup of her bra down to free her chest, feeding Joel another bucket of eye candy as he slides his wet palm down his length. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth as he admires her clenching desperately around her little fingers.

“Wanna hear if this is too wet?”

“Yes baby girl, wanna hear it.” he bobs his head up and down with a rapid display of enthusiasm, waning his orgasm off with a brutal level of self control. Not yet, Joel. Not yet.

He sees her take the house phone and lower it to where her fingers had been playing. She scoops her juices around and spreads it to her clit with her middle finger and he can hear it all.

“You sound soaked for me, honey,” he mutters, feeling like he’s lost and put in another realm that was so pleasurable he almost feels like he doesn’t belong. “Must be makin’ yourself feel real good, all spread out and filled up like that.”

“My fingers aren’t big enough.” she says, mirroring a whine while she brings the phone back up to her ear.

“You need mine in there too, don’t you? Fuck, I can’t wait to see what you look like all covered in cum. My cum.”

She’s all gasps and squirms and he gets to witness it all, any previous shame and worry shucked away by those heavenly whimpers of his name. “J-Joel, please—“

All the sudden it seems she wasn’t the one steering this ship anymore, now asking him for permission and instruction. Smitten as he is when she took charge, he knows he can deliver on his part too. Anything under the sun she wants, he will give.

“Add another finger, baby. You can do it, come on, you’re almost there. We’re doing this together now.”

His eyes stay glued between her thighs, speeding up the pace of his own while she does as she’s told and adds in another digit. Judging by her dropping posture and the steady growing speed with a good enough amount of relief that wouldn’t hold a chance compared to Joel’s fingers.

“That feel better, baby? Ready to cum with me?”

She doesn’t verbally answer with anything but a long gasp followed by a cry, and he can’t take his eyes off the slight shake in her legs and hips. He’s seen this enough from her especially to know these tell tale signs, know that she’s going insane from riding her fingers all the way down to each knuckle. Joel is captivated by the sight as he always is, wide eyed as he began nearing his finish right along with her.

And just like that, his neighborhood crush is cumming on her fingers thinking about him, moaning curses slurred with his name.

Joel fell behind her by only a second when his wrist and hips both start to stutter, and only at the last second he realized he’d forgotten to get himself a tissue. Thick spurts of his spend land all over the glass of the window, smearing together and undoubtedly leaving a splotchy mess behind. Something he’ll be cleaning at least before tomorrow morning to dispose of the evidence.

He whispers her name and tucks the phone further into the side of his jaw, feeling her stare piercing right through the glass. It brought tingles up to his spine remembering that this wasn’t a one way street anymore. That she likes this too, that she wants him too.

“You cum a lot.” she observes, zoning in on how it drips down the glass he’s always watched her through. “Fuck, you made me cum a lot. My sheets are fucked over here.”

Joel gives her a chuckle, wiping his shiny forehead off with his upper arm. He watches her, just like he always has, except this time with explicit permission. She takes some sips of water, ties on a silk, pretty robe, puts her hair back. Gives herself the aftercare he wished he could give her. Once he stretched and sighed in his chair, he feels this rather unfamiliar sense of warmth in his chest lingering. Tucking himself back in his sweatpants for the night, he wants to scoff down at the leftover mess of his window.

“Next time you’re free, come over and sit in my lap instead of that goddamn bed in front of that goddamn open window.” he playfully scolds, still considerably dazed while the stars he saw swimming in his eyes slowly start to fade out.

“I’m always free. I don’t do anything except get coffee, go to class and come back home.” she admits. “And also I like to watch my peeping tom neighbor jack off and cum all over his window,” she laughs. It’s so infectious he can’t help but join in, even if his cheeks turn pink and he briefly looks back down at his lap. “But for real. You’re the first one I’ve talked to in kind of a little while. It felt… nice.”

Joel sheds the last thread left of withering self control, couldn’t help himself any longer, and springs up from his office chair like he’s on a mission, looking around for a nearby pair of slippers.

“Where you going? Gonna up and ditch me?” she asks, disguising her sinking feeling of potential rejection with sarcasm. Joel picks up on it and stops it right in its tracks.

“I’m not ditching you. Not gonna hang up the phone either. Come down just a sec, will you baby?”

She gives him a slight nod through her window, appearing more balled up and shy now that she wasn’t sprawled out touching herself for him. Giving him a memory to think about when he was in bed, if he was bored at work, or even waiting in line at a fucking grocery store. He still debates whether or not he should pinch himself just in case he’ll wake up and feel a wet spot in his boxers like some rabid, hormonal teenager.

It took no more than a dozen eager steps to reach her front door, and even if his nerves were trying to get in the way, it’s when she swung opens the door and falls right in his embrace that he knows this isn’t a joke, this isn’t a dream. This robe was just as soft as it looked from far away, her hair smelling even sweeter than he’d been picturing. Her pink cheeks and red lips entice him for more.

She invites him inside her vacant living room after both of them briefly scope out the neighborhood for wandering eyes. He does what he’s been meaning to do since he started watching her undress through his window and smacks his lips together with hers, tasting her chapstick and her minty mouthwash. It’s everything he thought and somehow more, getting to trail his hands down to cup all the places on her he liked. She eggs him on with the throaty little noises that she shyly let out into his mouth.

He moves onto her neck when she pulls away to breathe first. “You’re too sweet and pretty to be lonely, you know that?”

“And you’re too hot to be sitting at home staring out your window at me.” she retorts back.

“Checking in on you,” he corrected.

“Whatever. Oh, can’t forget your souvenir,” she reached into one of the pockets of her robe to fish out those used lace panties she’d been playing with herself in.

“Thought… thought those were new,” he whispers as if someone might hear or see him accepting a pair of panties from his twenty year old neighbor.

If this were happening to any other man he knew, they’d brag about it to anyone with ears. Joel wasn’t interested in boasting. To simply put it, he wanted this all to himself. Keep her all to himself.

She offers him a shrug. “Keep them. Plenty more where that came from, but I got a hunch you already knew that,” she wiggles her eyebrows, snorting out a laugh.

Joel snatched them up without another word, doing what he’d always imagined to get to do, shoving them in the pocket of his pants to revel in later. He tosses his head back and just groans, knowing now that she possesses plenty of ammo to tease him for as long as he’s alive.

“Well, I’d keep that pretty mouth shut until you buy some goddamn curtains.”

-

thank you for support + love these past few weeks especially but also in general!!!! it makes me cry but in the happy way:)

masterlist + buy me a ko-fi

[jb-nonsense]

Okay, so I know everyone loves the joke about pre vampire Astarion judging based on vibes, but I do feel like his more...Foppishly flippant persona is one he put on after being turned and enslaved by Cazador. You see peeks of his previous personality in dialogue, such as this one linked here

I don't think he was a corrupt magistrate in the way people tend to think. Silly, accepting bribes all the time (maybe every now and then, though, don't get me wrong) and just only getting the job due to nepotism.

We've seen Astarion already have prejudices against gnomes, Gur, and other minority groups. It's not far to say that he allowed these to sway his rulings or even have him push for a ruling, such as what he may have done with the ruling that the Gur killed him for. Hell, he might have even refused a bribe from Cazador and that's what put him on Cazador's radar to set him up to kill. (Or something. I do feel like Astarion did a thing that annoyed Cazador and he wanted to "put him in his place.")

I do have this question and this is going to bring some speculative thoughts.

Why is a guy who was probably a high moon elf so prejudice and cut throat? Moon elves aren't known for being prejudice and cruel, in fact they detest cruelty and unfairness. Sun elves were a bit more prejudice and believing in elf superiority, known to act first when dealing with drow and ask questions later, but I hesitate to consider Astarion a sun elf due to the fact we see the other spawn. Their colorations didn't change except their eyes.

The only reason I can think of is if his family wanted to leave behind the free spirited, traveling attitude of their moon elf brethren and wanted to reach for some higher status, and found a way to do that in Baldur's Gate. Astarion does mention a moon elf noble house in Evermeet, so he isn't so disassociated with his people as some might suggest.

"House Nightstar was a moon elf house led in 1367 DR by the twin sisters Halaema Nightstar and Saelihn Nightstar. (x)"

So taking in this guy's possible family ambitions to maybe be up in the high elf pecking order as some of the sun elf houses....

Astarion would have been a serious magistrate, albeit a highly biased one.

He would know the laws like the back of his hand, and yet would bend them to fit what he wanted them to be in his rulings. Yes, this is the law, but wouldn't it be better if we kept the vagrants out? Yes, I know this is the typical standard, but we should be more severe on these people so they know not to step out of line. He would do everything by the book, but some of the rulings would be viewed as severe due to who he was working with.

And would he enjoy the power and influence of the job? Yes. He would have indulged himself outside of the office. But inside the office, he'd be cut throat to gain the next level to build up the family power level.

I welcome other thoughts, because my ADHD just ran out of steam.

[pricetagofficial]

How Far We Fall -D.G.

Warnings: Language, angst, mentions of death, child loss, therapy, trauma, attempted murder, poor Tim is caught in the middle of this

Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader

Masterlist

Word Count: 1.6K

A/N: You guys voted for the angst, well you got the angst. I don't actually remember how I came up with this. All I remember is that I wanted to write pain, and well here I am!

I am not sorry, you guys wanted this.

Dick couldn’t believe what he was looking at, here you were in front of him with a dagger to his younger brother’s throat, Tim’s throat, and a murderous look in your eyes. 

He watched as Robin squirmed in your hold, desperate to get away but one wrong move and his throat would be slit and there would be no going back. 

Batman tensed beside him, ready for a fight to save his youngest. Somehow, you had gotten past their security and wormed your way into their lives. Somehow, you fit in so well they didn’t even think twice before accepting you. 

That was their mistake. 

“Y/N–” Dick held a hand out, the glove of his suit palm up as if he was trying to convince you to come back to him. “Let him go, and we can talk about this.” 

“Talk? You want to talk?” you scoffed. “Fine then. Why don’t we talk about the reason why we’re here.” 

After years of planning, this was your moment to get back at the Batman. Back at him for everything you’ve lost because of him and his senseless no-killing rule. If he didn’t have that rule, you wouldn’t be holding his youngest at knifepoint threatening to take his son from him, like he took your daughter. 

How could he have been so blind? So smitten with you, the idea of who you were, Dick gave you everything including his secret identity without so much as batting an eye. 

“Y/N, please–” he pleaded, trying to keep his voice from breaking, “He’s just a kid–” 

“So was my daughter!” you screamed, voice echoing off the walls around you. “She was barely a year old and it’s your fucking fault!” 

Dick stopped in his tracks at your words, what were you talking about? After living with you for the last six months, he would have noticed if you had a kid. 

“What are you talking about?” Dick asked, his eyes not leaving you or Tim. 

Your jaw tensed as your eyes flitted past Dick and stared at the man responsible. “Two years ago, October 31st.” 

Halloween, two years ago? Dick looked behind him towards Bruce; he was in Bludhaven at the time, but he heard how bad it was. The Joker and Mad Hatter decided that blowing up a city block or two and dosing them with gas was a good trick-or-treat gift. Bruce struggled hard and kept Robin inside that night. He was about to open his mouth when Bruce spoke up. 

“You were there,” his voice rumbled through the air making your nerves stand on end. 

“Of course I was there.” you hissed. “I was trapped in the rubble for 4 hours, another 3 before they found her.” 

Dick didn’t miss the way your voice wavered, nor the way your grip loosened on the knife. Tim didn’t seem to either, before steadying himself on his feet. 

“I lost the most important person in my life because you can’t keep your fucking city in check.” Your grip on Tim’s cape tightened, pulling him back into you. “And now I’ll take someone important to you.” 

Batman let out an audible growl before Dick jumped between him and yourself. 

“Y/N stop! Think this through!” 

“I have thought it through,” you spoke, voice unnaturally calm despite the circumstances. “You were my original target, Dick.” 

Dick’s blood ran cold at your words, you were planning to kill him? 

 You laughed. “But somehow you wriggled your way into my heart and I couldn’t kill you, so I had to improvise.” 

“So you kidnap a child to prove a point?” 

“I’m fourteen,” 

“Not now, Tim.”

You hardened your gaze, “There’s no going back for me, Dick. This is where it ends.” 

Daring to take a step towards you, Dick pulled the mask off his eyes. 

“Nightwing–” 

“Bruce now is not the time.” Turning his attention back on you, Dick kept a calm look on his face despite the terror coursing through him. He failed one brother, he couldn’t fail another. 

“Come back with me. Let Tim go and we can go home and forget this ever happened.” 

You scoffed. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know how this works. The second I let the kid go, he’s going to go running to you while Batman leaves me a bloody pulp for the police to find.” 

Dick sighed, dropping his head before he looked at you once more. “You’re right, we can’t just forget this. But we can get you help, get you to the right people.” 

Pressing the knife to Tim’s throat, you felt him tense under your hold. “I’m not going to that hellhole you call Arkham.” 

Taking another step, Dick shook his head. “No, not Arkham. But the second you hurt Tim, I can’t stop them from sending you there.” 

Swallowing hard, you took a look around. What were you doing? Dick had a point, Tim was a child no matter how many times he pointed out to you how old he was. Were you really going to kill him because Batman was responsible for the death of your baby?

Meeting Dick’s eyes again, you could see why he removed the mask. It was so you could see the expression in them, the longing, the hope that you would let his brother go and take his hand. 

The blue in his eyes stood out in the darkness around you, almost matching the blue of his suit. After all this, did he really think the two of you could go back to what you were before? He really trusted you enough not to try something like this again?

“Trust me, Y/N. Please?” 

Hearing those words, you dropped the knife. 

Immediately, Tim darted forward past Dick to Bruce. Dick was on his knees, catching you as your weight gave in and you collapsed into his arms. 

Unable to stop the tears, you cried into Dick’s chest. “It’s not fair!” 

Running a hand through your hair, Dick held you as you cried. Placing a kiss on the crown of your head, he closed his eyes. 

“I know baby, I know it’s not.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Months passed and true to his word, Dick got you the help you needed without going to Arkham. Your relationship was strained but on the mend. No matter how much he promised it would all be okay, you knew they wouldn’t forget let alone forgive the fact that you tried to kill Tim out of revenge. 

You lost count of how many times you apologized to him and Bruce, knowing it wouldn’t change a thing. Not for a while at least. 

Keeping your part of the promise, you sought help professionally at least once a week. Your session that afternoon wasn’t bad, but it was exhausting. Recounting the events of that Halloween to someone again drained all the energy you had left within you.

You were currently standing on the balcony of your apartment when you heard a soft thud behind you. Hearing the sound of light footsteps behind you, you felt a pair of hands rest on your shoulders. 

“Hey, what are you doing up this late?” 

Dick’s voice was tired but laced with worry, worry for you and your sleeping habits. He must have just finished his patrol for the night. 

Placing a hand on his, you smiled softly. It meant a lot that Dick stuck around when anyone else would have left you by this point. You felt a pair of lips brush your cheek before you were pulled back into his hold, warm and safe. 

“I’m okay, Dickie.” you hummed. “Just thinking I guess,” 

You didn’t have to see the look on Dick’s face to know that he was frowning. 

“You should be asleep,” he started. 

“I tried,” 

Dick sighed and rested his head on your shoulder. “I know it’s hard when I’m not there, but you have to try.” 

“Dick please, don’t start this tonight,” you begged, turning to bury your face in his chest. “I don’t have the energy for it.” 

Wrapping his arms around you fully, Dick held you close. The nightmares must have been bad this time if you were refusing to try again without him near you. Placing a kiss on the top of your head, Dick led you inside. 

“Alright, let me just get changed and we can catch some z’s together okay?” 

Nodding slowly, you let go of him but kept a grip on his fingers. The only time you let go of his hand was when he had to pull off his suit. Once he had sweats on, Dick pulled you along to the couch and rested you on top of his chest. 

Slowly you melted into his warmth as he turned on the T.V. letting the old reruns play as you listened to the sound of his heartbeat. 

Now that Dick knew the full story, he could see all the symptoms and signs you gave him from the very beginning. It was surprising how he missed them in the first place, with the way you left things around the place it was almost as if you wanted to be caught before it was too late. 

After a while, he heard the soft sounds of your breath against his bare chest and smiled softly. This was the only way you could sleep, with him next to you. Dick promised he was going to help you, and help is what you were going to get. 

Of course, Dick got the biggest lecture from Bruce, for the millionth time about why we don’t flaunt secret identities around. But Dick knew he could trust you. What he wanted to know was if you could trust him. 

Dick knew that death and loss made people do crazy things, he had been down that path before when his parents died, and again when Jason died. It was a hard one to come back from, but Dick planned on being there for you every step of the way, for as long as you would let him.

@bluejay-the-geek @niggxrette @offendedfishnoises @restwellsoon @littleredwing89

[raz-writes-the-thing]

Your Time (TWD One-Shot)

Negan Smith x GN!Reader / requests are open / 18+

Summary: You reminisce over your relationship with Negan and look towards the day to come. Based on the prompt "memory."

Fic type: reflective smut lite, violent in nature, extremely deranged relationship, these hoes do not be healthy in the head

EVERYTHING: @winchxters (send an ask to be added to a tag list!)

TWD: @nervoussystemss (send an ask to be added to a tag list!)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"Aw, come on, babydoll, don't play coy with me," Negan's lips spread into a smirk, his eyes boring holes that felt as though they were digging right down into your soul. "I know you love it when I play the big bad wolf."

He was right, of course. Negan was always right. Before the sky fell and the world turned entirely to shit, you'd considered yourself a decent person. Maybe even a good person. But that was before and this was now.

Negan had found you a year or two into the shit. He'd found you curled up, covered in grime and ready to take out the Achilles of the next person who looked at you wrong. Negan had seen past that, as he usually did. He saw past the right now and into the what-can-be of a person. It was one of his many talents.

He'd seen you for what you were. A bloodthirsty killer with a thing for reassurance and praise. Negan knew he could use that. Sure, you'd tried to fit in for a while. Be the goody-two-shoes who baked for the soldiers and wore cute cardigans (not that cardigans had anything to do with being sweet. You could certainly still kill a person in a pastel cardi if you pleased).

Eventually, though, you grew bored with your own charade. You'd spent a good long while out in the muck, killing and maiming and stealing from other survivors. Your fingers began to itch for an outlet and once Negan was made aware of this little urge resurfacing, he was sure to provide you that sweet escape.

Traitors, thieves, enemies. He let you at them all. You were his best investigator, and yes, while you were severely fucked in the head, you were his. He was yours, too. Negan loved your ferocity, your drive. He loved that you were unapologetically violent and cruel, and you made a pretty match for his Saviours leader personality.

Now that wasn't to say you were always itching to rip someone a new one (and sometimes literally). Like Negan, you needed a break here and there. You could be sweet, caring, and more than affectionate when you were in the mood. Just like Negan. It was one of the reasons you both got along so well, from what you could tell.

The couple who decompress with cuddles together after ripping a prisoner's fingernails off stays together, after all.

"Maybe," you ventured, walking your fingers over his bare chest as you both looked up into the stars. God, he was so... firm. So strong. He was perfect for you. You didn't need him to protect you, and you both knew it, but it felt nice that he could if you wanted him to. "I had fun tonight."

"Me fuckin' too, darlin'," Negan replied, a rumble of affection emanating from his chest. Fun could mean a lot of things, but tonight, fun meant having fucked each others' brains out while the latest batch of fuckwits cried over the loss of their friend about eight feet away from you both. Morbid, yes, but also, very hot.

You pinched at Negan's nipple teasingly, giggling at the way he swatted your hand with a hiss.

"Don't be mean, doll." He pulled you closer by the hips and planted a hot, wet, open-mouthed kiss on your lips. He forced himself to pull away for a moment. "We got work to do tomorrow. You ready for that?"

You nodded, rolling your hips over his groin. Negan sucked his lower lip into his mouth, eyes glinting with heat. "Play the damsel," you relayed, grinding down on him again in harsh circles. "Get inside, scope the place out and sneak out after dark."

Negan's fingers flexed on your hips, his hips rolling up against yours now as well.

"Uh-uh," he tutted. "I think there's something missing from that plan of yours."

You pouted, bringing your hips to a halt. "Don't kill anyone."

"That's right, baby. Don't kill anyone. Your time will fucking come, sweetness, don't you worry about that."

If nothing else, you knew Negan to be a man of his word. If he said there'd be time for your hobbies, you sure as fuck believed him.

[kneelingshadowsalome]

This is my third time in your inbox, I'm so sorry 💀💀

Can we get more insight on Konigs childhood? You mentioned abuse from his father. What exactly did he do to Konig and his mother? Why did he cut his face up? Why did his mother not leave him? Where are his parents now? Was his childhood the reason he joined the military? Will he fully open up to the reader abt it?

Ty for tolerating me 😭🙏🏾

Please. My inbox is always, always open and I love these questions! (Like... someone wants to hear my ramblings about mentally unstable, fictional men?? You are godsend, my friend 💖)

Thoughts on König's childhood:

CW/TW: emotional, verbal & physical abuse, talk of personality disorders (by someone who is not a psychologist lmao), aggravated assault/murder, self-hate

So, I wrote König as a sociopath (otherwise known as antisocial personality disorder) with borderline pd. He's also neurodivergent (prob. ADHD). Now I don't know shit about these things but I tried my best to do some research on different pds and neurodiversity and thought this potpourri might fit well in König's character profile.

Unlike psychopaths, sociopaths are made, not born. So his dad had a definite hand in creating one out of König. He thought his only son (K is an only child in my canon) was a freak because he was bigger than "normal" kids, tall and lithe and on top of everything else, behaved oddly. König was bullied at school which made him even more asocial and anxious, which in turn made his dad project his own insecurities onto König even more. He needed to imprint it on König that he's a freak by cutting him.

There was a strict routine and order in his childhood home: dinner was to be served at 6'o clock sharp, every piece of clothing had to be pedantically ironed, no tv past seven, etc. Any misstep on these rules and there would be violence, mainly verbal and emotional but at times, physical too. König's mother was never enough, nothing she did was ever enough. König for sure did everything wrong by simply existing. For a boy of his size, he learned to become surprisingly invisible at a very young age.

Sometime during his teenage years, he started to have enough. He started to rebel, learned how to walk tall and straight, started to jog and train inside his room, do 100 pushups every morning. The idea of joining the army was born during these times as well, and becoming a sniper was soon König's biggest dream.

He enjoyed when his schoolmates, even some of the teachers, began to fear him (if you cannot be loved, better be feared than ridiculed). He was the odd, silent, big freak who was only getting odder, bigger and more silent every day. People at school literally feared the day König would arrive at class with a gun.

His father started to cut him even more when he began to show signs of independence and grit. At some point König realized he could easily beat his own dad if he wanted to. At 15 he started to go to the gym, and a year after, when he saw his father yell at his mom about something utterly insignificant, he finally snapped, took a simple kitchen knife and drove it to daddy's ribs (16 times).

His mother had a tiny mental breakdown after that. She didn't want her child to get into trouble, but seeing such a violent murder was the last straw for a woman who had tried to keep the peace by playing by this crazy tyrant's rules. The reason she hadn't left was because she feared he might kill them both. (Also the breakdown was far more severe than the one reader had after the break room incident, and it def. brought back some not so fond memories)

König got the minimum penalty for the crime because he was a juvenile offender. His mother forgave her child quite soon and deemed that her husband was evil and that König did the right thing for freeing them from such a man.

Things got better after that, but his mother was forever damaged from everything that had happened. She began to blame herself for not divorcing her husband sooner, for then he would still be alive and König wouldn't have suffered so much in his hands. One of the reasons König started to wear the hood was because he didn't want to remind his mother of what had been done to him. Instead, the mask only caused her only more pain. She started to avoid her own child, even fear him, feeding into König's insecurities and anxiety even more.

When König finally joined the army at the age of 17, it was to get away from home and pursue his dreams to become a sniper. He thought it might be best for his mother, too, if he wasn't around the house to remind her what had gone down and how her only child was not only a monster, but a murderer, too.

König's childhood is so filled with trauma that he has pretty much distanced himself from it. The geographical distance helps too, and he's not keen on taking reader on a vacation to Austria, for example. But he will open up about his past if and when he sees it's safe to do so. Sadly enough, the thing that bugs him the most about it is he fears he might look weak in reader's eyes. He's been in a survival mode for so long that he doesn't quite understand that he was a child at the time, and should've received love and care.

Btw I totally got inspired by @random-thot-generator 's gospel truth on how König's first kill was his own father! Also the Conan t-shirt as his (first) mask is my canon now

[yellowbluemoonshine]

Hi,

I see you finished Monster and are quite versed in Johan. Can you help me understand the depth of his character better? I feel like many people miss the point of it. Also I'd like to know why you like him so much.

Oh, there is so much to say about him but i will try to make it short as possible.

Lets Talk About Johan;

First of all, i heard his character as some 'evil' mastermind so i wasnt really interested in his character until i experience the story by myself. I wondered why this series is popular so i decided to give a chance. I tought Johan was like Afo (from Bnha) but he turn out to be a lot like Shigaraki lol.

What makes a character depth is if they are not one-dimensional, that there is a more than how they seem from surface. And Johan fits well since he is mysterious character who is seen as angel, monster, devil, basically anything but human but they end up failing to understand him because if he was so simple, police would've catch him a long time ago.

At the start of series, he seems like your usual dangerous serial killer which fits the psychological thriller theme of story. And one of the best thing in series is his connection with Tenma. A doctor saves his life and this dangerous killer starts to view him as parent figure. A killer who see no worth in life and the doctor who thinks every life is equal, especially saving Johan is the reason he starts to to be able to live his life as a real doctor. Only to learn the child whom he saved turn out to be serial killer.

Tenma feels responsible for this and goes to journey to kill Johan. During this journey, we aldo discover some hints of what made Johan the way he is. The irony is we get the hints and a lot of characters perspective of him, everyone except Johan.

Is his messages about 'the monster inside of him' serious or not? Tenma assumes Johan is enjoying this at first, then he assumes Johan has multiple personality disorder. And later when he talked with other doctor, he assumes Johan is just playing with him because thats what most serial killers do with police. This is interesting because all of those end up being wrong. Johan doesnt enjoy from killing people. Johan doesnt have DID. Johan didnt write those messages to play with them. We know this because we later learn that he is unconciously imitate the fairytale stories he read as child.

Meanwhile, he has fanclub. A lot of murderers admire Johan because they view him as destruction Buddha. Just like others, he is seen as monster but why though? Its not like he is the only killer in the world. And personally, a lot of characters are more 'evil' than him so the thing about Johan is; he treats human life as nothing. Not just other people but also himself. Thats what makes him so scary to everyone. He doesnt even do it out of joy, money, statue. He looks like the devil in human form. He spreads misery to world. (Thats why he burns library when they said "its humanity's treasure" LoL.)

To people, that is scary. When they look at Johan, his eyes, the see someone who has no identity (nameless world). They see someone who treats life like as a game. Which explains why many people are afraid of him.

Some also want to use him, such as they want him to make second Hitler and he is like 'Nope'.

I think the main reason i love Johan is that he is like a magician. He can create a beautifull illusion. He is someone who can touch people's hearths because how well he understands them. Which is why he is seen as angel when people dont know he kills people.

This is also why he can use other killers for himself. He can see their vulnerabilities. Because even a killer is still human and they might need acceptance, to be understood by someone. Johan can give it to them. And they wish they were like Johan because they think everything would be a lot easier for them to kill others, like some kind of edgy teens. They fail to understand the person they want to be is extremely miserable.

On other hand, Johan can use his skills with curing people. Such as him waking Suk's mother, he made her remember her son again. Though he does things with ulterior motives, same skills can be used for good things. He can make people happy or miserable by little things. With a little magic or just skill.

And even though he is villain, he has very relaxing voice. He is very elegant. He listens other people. This fits perfectly well with his manipulative character.

We also never know when he is sincere or not because when you think he doesnt he actually seem to care, such as when he cried for Karl. Apperantly, tears were real. He is always in his world, its so funny when you think about he is some kind of mastermind.

Also his interaction with kids is so interesting. I think he geniuely enjoys being around them. Otherwise, why would he bother to spend time with them, why would he know so much about child's rights, why would he look for picture book for a friend? This is the same guy who encourage kids to rooftop game (and the scene where he was projecting on Milos) which is messed up. It gives me chills. His nihisilism, him viewing life as game end up resulting him expressing love as twisted.

----

Later, everything changes when Johan finds certain book in library. Basically, Johan's character doesnt necessarely stay same during the series. He changes his motives from unconciously imitating nameless monster stories to find actual monster who ruined his life. Even though he does messed up things, everything about his character makes sense with that scene. Johan geniuely believed that he is nameless monster. Johan geniuely believed that he doesnt exist.

Everything about him makes sense because it explains why he doesnt think death as much of it. Because if someone doesnt exist, they cant be killed. If someone doesnt exist, they cant be responsible for killings. He is detached from reality. Its not that he didnt feel. Its that he doesnt view it as real the way other people does. Because Johan isnt there. This is the tragedy of Johan's story. He doesnt have name. He doesnt have identity. He feels as he doesnt exist.

The famous 'monster' tape everyone after is about a child unable to see the difference between fairytale story and reality. 'My name is Johan. My name is Thomas. My name is Hans. My name is Otto.' He is them but he is neither of them. Johan views Anna as his half, as Anna is the real one and he is fake copy. He killed people as child, not because he is evil but because he geniuely thought that monster is coming after them. He cant even separate his own memories from Anna's. He takes all bad memories both to protect Anna and other reason is to become someone. He wanted to have identity, he wanted to live so bad but he didnt have on his own so he took it from others, just like the nameless monster.

This is also why Johan is also affected by Tenma's saving him. He probably wondered Tenma wouldnt save him, if he knew he was monster. He was kinda right because Tenma regretted his decision but he was wrong because Tenma couldnt shoot him and he saved him the second time. He showed him that he has right to live, he has right to exist, and that he has a name so he is not monster. This is why Johan can open up his worst insecurities. And they really give father-son energy and i think thats cute. I am glad that even after years Tenma visists him at hospital.

And we can guess what happened at the end thanks to Grimmer (one of the characters who deserves better), 'The monster become human at the end'. and Lunge said that if he were not a human being, he would not leave a trace, only humans leave a trace. For the first time we see Johan leave his mark. So Johan is no longer a monster, just a human. Also, his real name doesnt matter, he is Johan to us/all.

I love the messages of story. There is a monster inside all of us, but we can contain/heal it and after all, we are all human, our lives are equally valuable and stealing a person's name is the biggest crime, so having a name is very important. Story still has certain writing issues but generally, it is good story. Johan is well written character because his story is such a journey. We cant even really appreaciate the story without fully understand Johan. Every scene he is in meaningfull. And personally, i think his story is very empathic because of how tragic he is. Also sometimes he looks so funny and weird which makes him entertaining. He is such a good character.

Though you are right, anon. Many people still misinterpret the story, especially his character but anyway, there are still people who makes great analysis about him. Such as this analysis made by @cyanogoth.

Its ironic that most/some main villains have the most interesting and sempathic backstories, even though they are supposed to be 'big evil' or something but in reality, they are not really.

Anyway, he is fun to think about, i love him, lol.

[sundrop-writes]

Shared Trauma

Sub!Gar Logan x Dom!Fem!Reader

Summary:

Gar had a very hard day. You know you can’t take away the pain, so you try your best to distract him from it instead.

Sub!Gar Logan x Dom!Fem!Reader. Friends to Lovers. Smut and Angst. Set during Season 1, Episode 7.

Word Count: 3,600

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, and to make my masterlist complete when I post new fics for this fandom.

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: some emotional angst, mentions of trauma/PTSD - Gar kills someone for the first time and is very upset about it (as in the canon), friends to lovers, takes place during Season 1 Episode 7 (“Asylum”), descriptions of canon level violence, this is a smut fic, the reader character is implied to be fat, the reader character uses she/her pronouns and has a vagina, this isn’t a hard sub/dom relationship but there is sub/dom undertones, Gar is more submissive and the reader is more dominant, the reader calls Gar ‘good boy’ and he really likes it, tiddy sucking, p in v sex, unprotected sex, the reader rides Gar, creampie, quick/desperate sex. I believe that’s everything. Most of the focus here is on the emotional side of things and not the smut so if you wanna see more PWP, definitely let me know.

A/N: fic is titled after a Pierce The Veil song because I have been obsessed with the new album, and I think it really fits here. Having a trauma with someone, but it just draws you closer together and makes you seek comfort in them. I did consider making up a mission that wasn’t in the canon for this, but I am always drawn to how sad, wet, and pathetic he is after killing the scientist, especially if we’re doing sub!Gar - he seems especially subby and in need of comfort.

...

When you woke up alone, you weren’t entirely surprised. 

Of course you missed Gar’s presence beside you in bed. But you hadn’t exactly expected him to be sleeping peacefully after the day the two of you had. 

You and Gar were always the type of best friends to share a bed. Both of you sought the kind of comfort that could only come from cuddling close to the warm body of a safe person. Most often, you could only fall asleep beside each other. 

It had been that way since he had first been taken in by Doctor Caulder and he had come to you for comfort after he had woken up sorely missing his parents. On that first night, you had fallen asleep cradling him, and pretty much every night since then, the two of you shared a bed without question. 

The two of you were just intensely affectionate people, and you saw nothing wrong with expressing your friendship through those simple touches. It was just friendly, after all. 

The two of you always hugged each other tight and held hands while walking in public. There were many times when Gar put his arm around you or kissed you on the forehead, or times when you kissed him on the cheek. You weren’t shy about expressing your very platonic love for your best friend (at least, that’s what you had to tell yourself). 

The two of you weren’t romantically involved - you were just very close best friends. 

No matter what others thought when they looked at you, having those stereotypes in their minds about a guy and girl not being able to be ‘just friends’. Even if you wanted to play into that stereotype so badly with him - even if you wanted all of those people to be right. You would never risk ruining your friendship with him just because of some annoying crush. You were very good at keeping all of your stupid feelings trapped inside of your chest. 

Especially on days like this. When life got hardest, he needed you to be there more as a friend than anything else. And you needed him too. 

It was one of the reasons that he had gotten into bed with you that night, despite the fact that he scoffed at the very mention of trying to sleep. He wanted to be there for you. So you really weren’t surprised when you woke up and the bed was cold, void of his presence. Because of course, he couldn’t sleep. 

It had been a long, hectic, shitty day. 

After everything that had happened, you weren’t even really ‘sleeping’ yourself. 

You were drifting on the edge of consciousness, so exhausted from the day that your body was trying to forcibly knock you out. Between Kory and Dick screwing loudly on one side and Rachel and her birth mother chattering brightly and even crying on the other side, you had been having a very hard time falling asleep. That, and the horrors of the day still flashing through your mind. It made for a deadly cocktail that kept you awake. If not for the pure exhaustion of day’s events weighing you down - then you probably wouldn’t have closed your eyes at all. 

When you came back into a hard consciousness this time, though, you missed the feeling of Gar’s arm around your waist. You instantly missed the feeling of his pleasant warmth at your back - cradling you, making you feel safe. 

Before you even had your fully eyes open, you were out of bed yourself. It was almost an instinct, being so entirely drawn to him. You wandered out to the larger living space of the very expensive condo ‘safehouse’ with your socked feet on the cold floor. You clutched at your own arms under the loose sleeves of your oversized sleep shirt as goosebumps formed on your skin. 

You wondered in the back of your mind what the weather was like outside and if Dick had turned on the heat before going to bed. Then you had to wonder if adjusting the thermostat was even a concern in anyone’s mind after such a long day. It was probably only on your mind now that you were missing your human heater. 

You found Gar sitting on the couch. 

He had his oversized green headphones on, his phone screen providing the only real light in the room - aside from the everpresent glow of the city that leaked in from the tall glass panels that could be called walls in the ultra modern house. He was holding the screen inches away from his face as he slumped back against the unused couch. 

He was likely making an imprint of himself that would be the only ‘lived in’ essence of the overwhelming cold, expensive atmosphere of the place. From the sideways tilt of the screen and the way his thumbs were moving, you easily guessed that he was playing some kind of game. Something to distract his mind from the day’s events still playing there on repeat like a bad movie. 

He was wearing a pair of sweatpants that Dick had given him, dug out of a drawer of clothing that was apparently always kept in the place in case a need for it should come up. Just something else the ‘safehouse’ stocked, like food, medical supplies, and monetary currency from all different countries (because Bruce was rich and paranoid enough to be prepared for ‘any scenario’). 

Gar had paired the pants with one of your tee shirts. 

Something that was slightly big on him even with his natural muscle mass filling it out, bright tie-dye and worn-in cotton. It was purely you. Having the fabric draped over his body did make him feel at least somewhat at ease because it was soaked in your natural smell. It made him feel close to you even when he had gotten out of bed. 

He hadn’t wanted to bother you with his tossing and turning or the bright glowing light of his phone screen when he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep properly. 

He felt your presence in the room, but he didn’t look up until you crept further toward him, steering into his hazy peripheral view. He shrugged off the headphones as he looked up, locking eyes with you over the top of his phone. Your heart ached as you saw that expression so well illuminated by the sharp white light from the screen. He had the face of a kicked puppy, big wide eyes staring you down. Especially because he was making a clear effort not to let his mouth curl into a deep whimpering frown. 

You knew that the events of the day had been particularly hard on him. 

Of course, there was the obvious. The mental exhaustion and fear of being kidnapped and held hostage. The pulsating adrenaline of wondering if he was going to come out alive, on top of the worry he felt for you, Rachel, Dick, and Kory. The intense physical torture he had suffered at the hands of ‘scientists’ controlled by a doomsday cult. 

But on top of all of it, he had experienced something far worse. Something that you knew was far more taxing on his mind. 

He had killed someone for the first time. 

You feared that he was too gentle for killing. Even with the amazing power he wielded. 

Gar - someone who protested eating meat because he hated the idea of an animal being harmed for the sake of his nutrition. Gar - someone who always scooped up spiders and household pests to bring them outside because in his opinion, even the smallest of creatures deserve peace. 

You knew that he was someone who never planned on using his powers to truly harm anyone. 

But the moment the choice had been presented to him - to use his powers to harm someone, or to let you be harmed - it hadn’t really been a choice in his mind at all. 

You had been backed into a corner. You thought you had been clever, breaking out of the room they had locked you in with nothing more than an earring as a lockpick. But without a weapon and without a plan, Gar saw them threatening you and became blind with rage. 

Before he truly knew what was happening, he tasted flesh. 

A very large part of him didn’t regret it. He would choose your life over the life of someone unknown - someone who was going to hurt you - any day of the week. He knew that, if given the same choice, he would do it all over again. 

But there was another part inside of him that kept gnawing with guilt. Another part that said he was wrong, that said there should have been some other way. Something inside of him that said he was now just the villain in someone else’s story - that he wasn’t any better than the people who tried to hurt you in the first place. 

In a lot of ways, that voice said, he was worse than them. 

That voice made it difficult for him to sleep. 

“Can’t sleep?” You hummed out, approaching the couch to come and sit beside him. 

Gar did little more than shrug in response to the question. He didn’t want to admit the weakness aloud. He didn’t want to tell you that he was warring with guilt over something that the others - especially you - didn’t seem to struggle with. 

You both already knew the answer. It had been a hard day for him. Of course sleep was far beyond his grasp. 

In a silent, but comfortable exchange, Gar locked his phone and set it aside, entirely uncaring of saving his progress in the game while you sat down beside him. You slid onto the couch with your butt half nestled on top of his hip and your legs strung across his lap. He reached one arm in front of you, draping it over the thickness of your thighs. In a very natural move, he lazily wrapped his knuckles around your bare skin. 

Neither of you bothered to acknowledge your lack of pants - the fact that you were only wearing underwear with your oversized sleep shirt. You were so used to each other at this point that casual states of undress didn’t really need to be acknowledged. 

He drew mindless patterns into your skin with his thumb and slung his other arm over the back of the couch, bringing you into his lovely natural warmth. You laid your head onto his chest, easily cuddling into his side as you indulged in the familiarity. With his phone turned off, the darkness ruminating through the room was a silent cloak that enveloped the two of you. It made it much easier to fall into that routine of comfort that the two of you always embraced. 

You would explicitly deny that his touch on your bare skin felt like a deadly trail of needles erupting with fire - in the best way possible. Now was not the time for your lust to be breaking through. He was your best friend, and he was clearly in need of comfort. 

“I missed my human heater.” You mumbled out quietly, nuzzling into his side affectionately. 

He let out a hazy breath - some attempt at a laugh in response to your affectionate nickname for him. It was something he knew well about your friendship. You had a constantly chilly body, and he would always be there to warm you up with his blazen hot skin. Just another perk from his mutation - even when he got stuck out in the snow, he never ran cold. 

Now that you had acknowledged that wordless question (the reason you had gotten out of bed, why you couldn’t sleep), it was Gar’s turn to do the same. 

It hung in the air over his head and turned into a stony silence in the quiet, dark room that made each of his breaths seem particularly heavy beside your ear. It was a tension that built upon itself for a few moments. You weren’t going to ask, even though you had a feeling you virtually already knew the answer. You wondered if he was going to come out and admit it before you simply dragged him back to bed and forced him to stay there out of your own selfish need. 

But then he finally broke the silence by saying the words. 

“Whenever I close my eyes… I just keep seeing his face.” 

His words were tentative, a quiet whimper released into the room after being trapped in his chest for too long. Like electricity, shocking and impossible to avoid, you felt his pain surging through you. It caused your throat to clench painfully. You shifted slightly, turning so that you could get a better look at his face. Even in the dimness, the sad glassiness of his eyes practically glowed. 

“Gar,” 

You called out his name, your own voice giving away a depth of weakness that you held for him. Before you could help it, you were reaching up and cradling the side of his face with a cupped palm. Even though your hands were cool, the feeling was intensely comforting to him - just because it was you. He couldn’t help but lean into it, leaning on your hand as though it was the only thing in the world holding him up in that moment. When he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force some of that terrible guilt away, he accidentally forced the tears out and let them leak freely onto your hand. 

“Oh, baby.” You cooed out. 

You were entirely unsure why the nickname popped out. The sound of it on your own lips even surprised you. It was something you had never called him before. But he didn’t stop you, didn’t seem to find it unpleasant, so you continued. 

“You did what you had to do.” You told him with certainty. “You saved my life.” 

That was something infinitely valuable to him. But he wondered if somehow, he had diminished his own value in the process. 

More thick tears slipped down his face and you thumbed them away upon instinct. He swallowed thickly before he spoke again, though this time his words were heavily entrenched in those tears. 

“What if that man had a family?” Gar sniffled quietly. “What if-?” 

“Of course he had a family, Gar.” You quickly cut him off, knowing that his words were quickly spiraling into a deep, putrid guilt. 

That guilt was definitely something you felt the need to save him from. 

Upon hearing your words, he looked at you with sharp hurt in his eyes. Clearly, he had been expecting you to argue against his point, rather than confirm it. But you had a completely different line of thinking in mind.

“Everyone does.” You continued on. “Everyone has people who miss them. But you can’t waste your sympathy on some fictional family you’ve made up for the guy in your head. Having a family and being missed doesn’t give people the right to attack others and get away with it. The possibility of being missed doesn’t mean that people can go through life without seeing the consequences of their actions.” 

Gar let out a quiet huff. It was a sound of defeat - a signal saying that your words had punctured his surface, but hadn’t quite set in yet. 

When he didn’t say anything in reply, you continued. 

“You’re my family.” You told him firmly. 

You used the hold on his cheek to fully turn his head toward yours, and you gently angled into him so that your foreheads were pressed together. Gar closed his eyes and basked in the soothing feeling as you continued talking. 

“And I’m yours. And I really, truly don’t care about who lives or dies outside of us. I don’t care what happens as long as we’re safe. And we’re together.” 

You wanted to add on a verbal exception for the others - for Rachel, and Dick, and Kory, and likely Rachel’s mom just for her sake. An exception for the people who had quickly also become your family in the short time since you had met them. But you had a feeling that Gar knew about this exception in your mind without you having to voice it. 

Gar swallowed hard again, and this time you felt it bob harshly through him while pressed so closely together. You felt him let out a harsh breath before he spoke again. 

“I guess… I guess I’m just worried about what you think of me now.” He spoke the words so quietly, as if his fear even crept into voicing this. “I don’t want my favorite person in the world to be afraid of me. Or… to think I’m a bad person.” 

“I’m not afraid of you.” You quickly argued the point, a slight laughter on your lips at the mere thought of it - at the mention of being afraid of someone like him. 

Yes, he could turn into a giant green tiger, and yes, seeing him use that power to its full extent for the first time had been… jarring. But you would never be afraid of someone who cried during Pixar movies and said it was ‘inhumane’ to kill the animals in Minecraft for food. 

“I could never be afraid of you, Gar.” You easily added on. “You’re not a bad person. You’re such a good person. You’re so good. You’re such a good boy.” 

Those words struck a cord deep within his soul, and a whimper escaped his lips before he could stop it. 

“Say that again.” He told you, so pitifully that it almost sounded like begging. “Please?” 

“You’re such a good boy.” You repeated yourself, running your thumb along the soft skin of his cheek once again. “You’re a good boy, Gar.” 

In a moment, the air shifted. 

The magnetism between the two of you came to a fierce head, and the desperation, the vulnerability that the day’s events had brought forward morphed itself from pain and sadness into something the two of you knew well in the presence of each other - pure wanting. But this time, both of you were exhausted and completely lacking the energy to have any self control to hold it back. 

“Y/N-” 

He barely got out a whimper of your name before you pressed forward that extra inch, stealing his breath as you pressed your lips to his. It was a perfect moment - a beautiful culmination of everything you had ever wanted since meeting him. You definitely weren’t going to waste it. 

He moaned into the kiss and you echoed it back, gulping in breaths through your nose so you wouldn’t have to pull away from the soft cushion of his lips, not even for a moment. When he reached for a greedy grip on the back of your head, filthy and wanting, gently nibbling on your bottom lip - your instincts took over. You blindly swung a leg out, climbing over his waist, and he let out a sharp hiss at the feeling of your weight being planted in his lap. You were beautiful and whole as you sat down on top of him, a perfect reminder that this wasn’t just a dream as his cock quickly swelled to life under the heat of your core where it brushed against his borrowed pants. 

“Please-” He whimpered into your mouth, barely able to get the word out before you sucked his bottom lip into your mouth, making him moan out shakily in the most beautiful way. 

You planted your hands on his shoulders, easily taking control of the situation - not that he cared. He felt like he belonged under your controlling grip, under the pleasant weight of your body as his hard cock throbbed underneath your perfect weight. In a blur of heady kisses, swapping breath with the only man you had ever wanted like this, you got your underwear off and got his pants around his ankles. He shoved your shirt up over your breasts to possessively latch onto one of them with his mouth as you reached down and lined up his pulsing cock with your wet, wanting cunt. 

“Oh-” 

He let out another beautifully pathetic whimper as you sunk down onto him in one smooth movement. Your tight, wet heat quickly surrounded him and made his head spin. You felt so full that it almost choked you, but the hot pangs of electricity that shot up through your pussy easily spurred you on. You wasted no time before you began a brutal pace, bouncing on his lap as if he was nothing more than a toy for your own pleasure. The slap of skin on skin was irritably loud in the otherwise silent room, accompanied only by Gar’s harsh, animalistic pants and your choked-off moans as you struggled to comprehend the fullness of his nearly overwhelming cock. 

You both needed it. You needed the intense sting of pleasure to push out the worries of the day. 

With Gar’s hands gripping at your waist as if you might slip away at any moment and his face buried in your breasts, you almost didn’t hear the quiet murmur of his request when he managed to get the words out beyond that blinding pleasure. 

“Say it again,” He choked out past his harsh breaths. “Please!” 

It took your cock-drunk brain a moment to comprehend it, but when the gears fully churned, you instantly knew what he meant. 

“You’re a good boy,” 

You moaned out, reaching a hand up to pet through his hair. You took a fierce grip on those green locks, never once faltering in the harsh, unforgiving rhythm of your hips as you continued to piston yourself up and down on his cock. 

“You’re a good boy, Gar.” 

“Oh - fuck!” Gar grunted into your chest. 

At the sound of your voice saying this, declaring that he was a good boy - he abruptly came inside you.

[frozenjokes]

A Collection Of Encounters From Bloodied Waters To Murky Bogs [1/2]

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this chapter of the mumbomaid au series is a lot different than the others, so please check the ao3 link for CWs

What do you like? (Not Evil)

His Makers had asked the question over dinner one night, during one of very few excursions Joel was allowed onto the mainland, heavily supervised of course. A treat for their creation, their experiment gone wrong. In Joel’s humble opinion, if you weren’t ready for your [Inexplicable Creation] to have zero moral compass and a lust for blood, then maybe you shouldn’t go about playing god, but ah well, he was here, and his Makers were still trailing after him, failing miserably to fix the mess they made.

Joel liked the mainland plenty, but there were too many people, too much noise, too much talking- god, if one more person tried to speak to him unprompted when he couldn’t retaliate- urghgrhgghggggrhghghrhh (<- the noise he would make instead until left alone). But other than that, he liked walking on ground that didn’t sink below his feet, he liked studying the parts of the city, committing them to memory, then rebuilding them below his island, terraforming the inside into a massive upside down hellscape. He liked to eat new food; anything he didn’t have to make for himself was quite the treat. Though, when he had said all these things, answering the question, that didn’t seem to be what his Makers were looking for.

“I don’t like you.” Joel had said afterwards, pushing the envelope on just how much push-back they would allow for excursions like this before sending him back to his prison. There was no point at which Joel wasn’t skating on thin ice with them, which was quite frankly unfair, since as far as they knew he hadn’t even done anything in years. Regardless. The answer was swift and cold, all five of them speaking at once.

“We know.”

They didn’t like Joel much either. Honestly, Joel wasn’t even sure why they kept him around. Well. They didn’t keep him around technically; Joel didn’t know exactly where he was from, but it certainly wasn’t some fuckass island in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it wasn’t even from Earth. Whoever his Makers were, they certainly weren’t human, and no uncanny valley disguises could hide that. Whatever. When he was first created, he caused way too many problems in the space he was allowed, and when they’d dropped him into human civilization.. Well. Given they often cited those four hours of Joel’s unfiltered access to humanity as their Greatest Mistake, you can take a guess on the kinds of things Joel got up to in his brief stint of freedom.

Still, they did not kill him. Joel didn’t understand why, especially when every time they spoke he was told he’s more trouble than he’s worth, but apparently he was worth something, or it wouldn’t make any sense to keep him.

So instead, he was bound to an island. A large piece of land with as little human interference as possible, with enough stimulation to keep Joel at least marginally enriched. Enough so that he wouldn’t be trying to kill anything and everything that crossed his path, including but not limited to his Makers. Little did they know, at least 75% of that enrichment came from scheming on how to escape. Well actually, they very much knew in the beginning, but that’s besides the point. Layers upon layers of spells and magic were dedicated to keep Joel bound to this place, to keeping his power, his control over the earth, strictly locked up. That way, Joel could do whatever he wanted within the confines of the area, and if he wrecked it, he would be the only person affected. And he had wrecked it. Multiple times in fits of great anger he had leveled the entire place, destroying everything he had built, everything he owned, centering all of his power on destroying his prison, sinking his island, but, ah..

It didn’t work. No matter how thoroughly he ripped this place to pieces, the ties keeping him bound did not come undone. Not that Joel had any reason to think they would. But in the early days, delusion was his biggest predator. And he’d pay for it too, laying in the watery wastes of a leveled home, freezing and miserable. His Makers took pity on him a few times, restoring the island to its natural state, only for Joel to wreck it the next day. Their patience with him quickly ran dry. If Joel wanted to ruin this place, then he would have to be the one to build it back up. And he did. Many times he did, and many more he destroyed it all again. Digging, clawing for anything he’d missed, for any physical traces of spellwork he could snap under his fingers.

He almost drowned several times looking for it. For sigils, boundary lines, cores- anything, until coming to the conclusion all fragile spellwork was buried deep underwater, places he would never be able to reach.

The ocean was an area of deep frustration from Joel. His brain was a catalog of ancient magic, recipes and enchantments written on the walls of his mind. But there was nothing for water. He couldn’t breathe it, couldn’t live in it- it didn’t make sense.

“You are made from earth,” his Makers had said to him when his frustrations were bared and red-hot, angry ripping like lacerations through his skin. “You have no dominion in the sea.”

His Makers didn’t smile, but Joel could feel the sneer in the words regardless, the triumphant finality of the phrase searing like the snaps of a whip at his back. You are stuck. Trapped. There’s nothing you can do.

Joel would say it had taken a while for him to accept that, but he never actually had, planning, scheming, waiting for the right series of events in which he could tear this whole place down. However, it had taken a while for him to mellow out. To come to terms with the fact that force was not the answer, not yet, and if he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life sleeping in the mud, then he had to grow up and put himself in a position where he wasn’t being supervised so closely.

Honestly, it hadn’t been difficult. His Makers were just as sick of him as he was of them, and it wasn’t like Joel could do much damage in this isolated state. Most of the time they spent supervising was just to make sure Joel didn’t accidentally kill himself, but Joel didn’t want to die, he only wanted to leave, so when he stopped wrecking the island every few days, his Makers were relieved to leave him to his own devices. And from then on, from an outsider’s point of view at least, Joel did very little. He cultivated the land into something beautiful, though it was often quite waterlogged, more swampy than anything. He built murals on cliffsides, carved figures from the rock, told stories in the landscape with painstaking detail. Sometimes he’d make miniature towns referencing the little of the world he’d gotten to see, then destroy it all to spite his Makers, who seemed to love his work. They had firm schedules with him; what days of the month they were visiting and what they would all be doing and for how much time. Always prompt, always rigid. In other words, deadlines to finish his latest projects, so they could blow up in the faces of his Makers’ praise.

“This is what you were meant to do,” they would say to him, bright eyed even as the dust of destroyed artwork still billowed into the sky. Nonsense. He would do whatever he pleased.

It had been a long time actually, since he’d last destroyed his art. Years, even, to the point where he was running out of space to create (though, he had plenty underground, underwater, but as far as his Makers knew, that was a place he could not reach). But it wasn’t for them. Never for them.

He just.. had someone else now. Someone who enjoyed his work, who liked to critique and contribute, who would be sad to see it all go. Not that he cared how Etho felt, it was Joel’s damn island, and he could do whatever he wanted with it, but Etho was lucky, because Joel just so happened to like his ideas.

Etho. Yes. His loophole.

Years and years and years spent studying the spells that bound him to this place, chipping away at their weaknesses, finally paid off when Etho washed up at his rocky shores, practically skewered on the sharp rocks that had taken so many ships in years before. That’s why Joel was out in the storm in the first place; waiting, longing for a stray ship blown away by violent winds and currents, smashing against the treacherous rocks, doomed by an island that did not show on their maps. The survivors would crawl upon his beaches, trapped, and Joel would leave them to panic over the sick and injured, before one by one, he’d hunt them for sport. Pick apart their bodies, string them up by open rib cages for his Makers to see on their next visit. He’d serve his Makers human flesh and blood, he’d spit it all in their faces, and then they would leave him, firmly reminded of the monster they’d created.

But he hadn’t killed Etho. No, mermaids were even rarer than ships; in fact, Joel had only ever seen one before Etho, washing up on his shores long dead. Etho was still alive, just barely, but Joel had saved him, stitched him up with dirt and vine until he could drag the barely breathing body home. Maim the both of their souls, bind them, rip his own freedom right out of Etho’s chest.

Joel made a pendant, something he could manipulate with little force, the inherent power of their combined souls enough of a catalyst to funnel his control. To switch places. To switch species.

If Joel was a mermaid, there would be nothing stopping him from digging, searching, discovering the physical sources of his entrapment and crushing it under webbed fingers. ‘No dominion over the sea-‘ please. Joel could take whatever the hell he wanted.

And he did find it. Deep under the water, then buried further, the massive lines drawn under the surface. Leaving the designated area would not kill him, no, and he could even stray briefly, but soon enough, his insides would come to a boil, his skin beginning to melt from his bones, just as gruesome and agonizing as it sounded. Joel wasn’t actually sure if any of the horror he experienced was actually real- it didn’t kill him after all, and he had tested those limits thoroughly, but that didn’t really matter. It felt real. It scared him enough to stay put. And now, beneath his hands, he had the power to destroy it.

He didn’t though. Breaking the sigil would only alert his Makers to his attempt at freedom, and he wasn’t ready. There were still so many spells, so many layers- escaping in body was a massive piece of the puzzle, but there was still the catalyst of his power, torn out of him just like a soul. It could not be destroyed, or even separated from Joel for too long; it was his life as well as his magic, the great power that had made it possible to create him in the first place. He would wither without it, almost certainly, and regardless, he was hardly more than human in its absence. Truly, he’d rather be stuck here for the rest of his life with magic then live freely without.

So in short, he needed it. And he wasn’t dumb enough to make a move without it either.

Returning to the surface in his new body, lost in his own scheme, Joel was reminded of the newly made human he’d left, healed and conscious and very afraid. That would be a problem, wouldn’t it. He couldn’t keep this form without a living Other. His Other. In Joel’s rush of adrenaline, he hadn’t thought about that; what he’d do with the leftover body. He hadn’t thought about it before then either, his sole focus on taking the water into his own hands, swimming deep and breathing salt. But this was his responsibility now, wasn’t it? Any mistreatment of the mermaid (now human) would be reflected back on his own skin.

Alright. Joel could do that. (In the beginning weeks, Joel was very much doubting he could do it.)

The transition was.. rough. Joel named him Etho, and this Etho was not the least bit cooperative or even grateful to Joel for saving his life. Communication was a certified nightmare, even with the spells Joel spun to help them understand each other. Etho nearly starved to death when Joel refused to let him eat raw fish, and when his Makers came to visit on one of their scheduled days, Etho attempted to run (swim?) away the second he regained his fins, Joel just barely able to catch him in a fist of earth before Etho went beyond his reach. That was a bad day. Struggling to focus on keeping Etho trapped while humoring his Makers, tasting dirt and starting to suffocate whenever he lost his focus for too long.

Joel didn’t.. he wasn’t the kind of person that had regrets, alright? Not pertaining to other people, certainly not. But he was not proud of what he did that night after his Makers had left him, dragging Etho back by the tail and shedding his blood at the cost of Joel’s own until he hardly had the strength to heal them both. If given the choice, he would not do it again.

Etho did not try to escape a second time.

But after that hiccup, things started to improve. Joel did a lot of experimenting, a lot of limit pushing, his greatest discovery coming when he ventured outside of his sigil with fins and gills, hoping for a short foraging trip that turned much longer when he realized there was no burn. No melting skin. No pain. Joel didn’t come home for days. He didn’t even remember what he did besides swim and catch fish and swim and swim really far away, but he wasn’t even thinking about why, because none of it mattered! He was free. And he didn’t even need to break the sigil to leave.

Now, he knew at this point in theory that he needed his catalyst, his magic, to survive, but he only knew in practice when his existence began to wither away, first just particles no bigger than dry skin floating off into the water, then his scales growing brittle and cracked, his fins splitting until he trailed blood wherever he went. Getting back to the island was a stressful couple of hours. But he made it, of course. Basking in those waters had never felt so beautiful.

From there, the whole ‘soulbound’ thing got a lot more exciting. Joel wanted to know every limit he could push and why; how this bond he’d tied worked in its completion and the holes he’d poked in his Makers’ spells because of it. Excitement pushed him to do the same thing as before, but in his human form, and the result was the same- he was free. That is, until he started melting a couple hours later. Apparently, species had everything to do with this, somehow. Odd loophole? Regardless, that was a bad trip home; mistaken in his freedom, Joel had traveled much further than he probably should have. Must have been a crazy hour for Etho too, whew. Joel may have failed to warn him of that possibility.. whatever, he was fine.

Speaking of Etho, the following weeks saw a vast improvement to their communication! Once he stopped being a total Debby Downer about his new life, Etho was a curious kind of guy, eager to know and learn. He was interested in the limit testing as well, anxious to know if he could leave the island for long periods of time, and it turned out he could in both his human and mermaid form. Joel was genuinely shocked by that, quite confused about how this spell worked now, but Etho didn’t question anything, simply relieved for whatever reason, as if he’d ever need to leave. Etho wanted to learn English as well, he really wanted to learn English, and while Joel didn’t particularly see a point when translation between them worked well enough with the aid of magic, he had time to kill. That is, until he discovered teaching was frustrating and Etho sucked, so all in all, they did not make much headway in that department, though, Etho was clever, and picked up quite a bit through insisting Joel speak to him in English most of the time. He asked questions like a motherfucker, but it wasn’t that big of a deal in the end. It was honestly a miracle they kind of got along in the first place, and Joel was sure whatever grievances Etho had with him were quite a bit worse than ‘talks too much.’

Actually, during this exercise in Having Company For The First Time In His Life That Wasn’t His Makers Who He Hated, Joel discovered he quite liked talking. In fact, he liked talking a lot more than Etho did, telling Etho of his escapades, his art, his past crimes against humanity, his plans for future crimes against humanity- everything. Joel had so much to speak about, so much he never even realized he’d longed to share. And Etho listened, he asked questions (mostly stuff like ‘what does murder mean’ and ‘do humans not cannibalize each other sometimes,’ but still), he was so engaged! He didn’t want to participate in the games when the next ship crashed at Joel’s shores two months later, but that wasn’t much of a bother. Hunting as a mermaid was very exciting, and Joel took quite a bit of joy in feeling truly like a swamp monster. Etho thought hanging the bodies up like that was distasteful, but when Joel had told him it was only for his Makers to see, Etho hadn’t pushed. Etho never wanted to ask about his Makers, which was good, because Joel didn’t want to speak about them.

And his art. Etho loved his art. Now, Etho did not use words like ‘love’ or any other words of praise, but sometimes Joel would catch him staring at a mural or a carving, or even the statuettes Joel made from time to time. On month six, nearly the anniversary of their meeting (not that Joel was keeping track), Etho had been particularly entranced with a mural Joel was working on, the flats of rocks sticking out of the cliffside like tiles, painting a picture of the sea. When Joel had approached him down the channel, still preferring to traverse the world in his mermaid form whenever possible, Etho had spoken about it for the first time.

“Do you like color?” he had said in his limited English. The mural had no color; they typically never did. Joel had access to naturally colored rock, but those were typically harder to get his hands on, and he often found he could tell the stories he wanted perfectly fine in shades of gray.

“It is hard to have,” Joel had responded simply, “Bad to get.”

“I found [some]. At [the] beach. I think..” Etho didn’t seem to have the words, so he walked confidently toward the piece, and Joel noticed a small bag at his side for the first time. Without a thought and entirely without asking, Etho started to mess with a school of fish in one of the corners, plucking out the fish tiles and systematically replacing them with the red rock he had found at the beach. Joel had only been able to watch in utter bafflement as Etho messed with his work- seriously! The nerve on that guy! But when Etho had turned around, he hadn’t looked the slightest bit deterred by Joel’s expression.

“Need [a] word,” he said, running his fingers over the tile, then over his own rocks, “This versus this. Adjective.” Etho did the motion again, expectant.

“Smooth versus rough,” Joel told him in time with the movement.

“Repeat.”

“Smooth versus rough.”

“Make [mine] smooth.”

At this point, Joel gave up on trying to tell Etho with his face that he was not happy, because clearly Etho didn’t care. Whatever. Sure. I’ll make your dumb rocks smooth. Joel brought his hands to the dirt, easier for channeling precise work, and cut Etho’s red rocks cleanly through the middle so he could use the other pieces as well. A little flashy, not how Joel typically operated, but the thrilled look on Etho’s face was entirely what he was aiming to see.

It seemed a fire had been lit in Etho, and he began replacing the other sea creature with colored pieces, Joel making sure the other knew how entirely exasperated he was by sighing loudly and flicking his fins, none of which Etho paid any attention to. But he still cut the rock to match in texture, locking the stones in place so they wouldn’t fall as Etho fiddled with them, and after about an hour, all Etho’s color had been meticulously placed, not nearly enough to get to every animal, but enough for the proof of concept.

“It’s better,” Etho had said when he took a step away. Joel would have loved to snap back, to criticize it, to call him too blind to actually know, but, well.. it was better. It was pretty damn cool, actually. Etho had a good eye for contrast.

“It’s fine. I’ll mess with it. But you’d better be prepared to gather all this yourself, because if you can’t keep up, it’s getting scrapped. Good luck with the green, god damn. You’re never going to finish that turtle with those little pebbles.”

“Translate.” Joel did so, and Etho looked deeply pleased. “I will.”

After that, things were nearly always well. Etho liked to contribute to Joel’s projects, and Joel liked to work with him. Months passed like this, a quieter peace. Joel thought less and less about escape as months turned to a full year, his secret mermaid giving so much of the freedom he longed for, as well as.. a friend. How silly of a thing that was. If you had told Joel years ago that he would value the company of another person, Joel would have laughed in your face, and then probably smashed you to bits under a rock or something.

But he.. he loved- no. He really. Really liked Etho. He really liked Etho. And Etho liked him too! They liked working together, drawing out concepts for future projects, and when Joel began his foray into the underwater spaces of the island, mapping them for future plans, the two of them would take turns diving inside, and Etho was an excellent second opinion. The things they created together.. Joel valued them more than anything he’d ever made before.

That is, until Joel found out that Etho didn’t like him very much at all, actually.

One year, four and a quarter months. It was a sudden revelation, spoken like it was nothing at all. Etho had mentioned offhandedly that he wanted to see what life on the mainland was like, that he thought he might be ready for an excursion of that caliber. He’d spent quite a bit of time at the surface before the soulbind, he was intrigued by humanity, and he wanted to see it for himself. He knew enough English to get by, and wanted to know what was out there.

“Why?” Joel had asked, and he remembered the edge to the question. It was an annoying idea, one Joel hadn’t ever considered Etho asking.

“I said why.” Etho told him bluntly, not even looking up.

“You have everything you need here. It’s dangerous out there, just as much for people as it is for mermaids. There isn’t much on the mainland anyway, nothing you’d like.”

“You talk about it fondly. I’d like to see it.” Etho frowned momentarily, snapping his fingers to warm them up, a silent indication that Joel needed to ready himself to translate. ‘Seems like the main danger to humans are people like you, and after all this time, I’d say I’m an alright judge of character. I want to know what humans are really like. You tell me all sorts of stories, but I don’t believe you actually know.’

“Of course I know.”

Etho narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, an expression Joel hated, an expression that made him feel too vulnerable, too seen. Etho lifted his chin, “You want me to stay.”

“I- yes, I’d like that,” annoyance prickled the edges of Joel’s tone, a defensive anger locked and loaded.

“You like me.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I thought so,” Etho said simply, his expression unchanging. Even after all this time, he still hadn’t picked up that human mannerism, every twitch and change in his face entirely biological, entirely unconscious. Etho met Joel’s eyes evenly before whistling again, snapping in time, ‘Then we’re on the same page.’

Joel hadn’t been ready for that. “What?” he said stupidly, and Etho might have smiled. Barely there, completely without thought. That was worse.

“You like me,” Etho said.

“I don’t,” Joel replied, just as curtly. Etho was not convinced.

“You do.”

“I might. What of it?”

“You want me to like you.”

“You do like me.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I don’t like you, Joel. I never have. I never will.” Etho closed his eyes, breathing agonizingly deeply, “Wow.”

“You can not just ‘wow’ me, Etho, use your damn words.”

“I don’t think you want that.”

“I do.”

“Fine,” Etho snapped his fingers a few times, and Joel braced himself, ‘You are foul. Selfish. Cruel. You treat me with less respect than the dirt under your fingers, but maybe that’s an unfair comparison, because you actually like the earth. I’m not a person to you. I’m a tool, and you wouldn’t dream of letting me think otherwise. The worst part is, I don’t even think you know. I don’t think you have any idea. That’s how little I mean to you; your behavior is so second-nature that I bet if I asked, you wouldn’t be able to name a single way in which you’ve slighted me in the past week. So yes. Wow,’ Etho raised his hands in a lazy gesture of sarcastic awe, ‘Wow, because I never thought you’d be bold enough to ask me to stay. Wow, because it never occurred to me you didn’t know how I felt, or that you could form attachments to people in the first place. Wow, because I never thought I’d get the chance to hurt you. So there we have it. I hope it cuts deep.’

Joel burned under his skin, thoughts racing too fast to pick one out and spit the words at Etho’s feet. “So that’s it?” he found himself saying instead, voice far more even than the shrieking in his head, “You just want to hurt me.”

“More than anything.” Etho’s glare was like daggers, a challenge, never wavering, “So, Joel. Can I go?”

Joel flipped his pendant, initiating the change without another word, “Better hurry. Mainland is west.” And Etho nodded, making his way toward the little cottage where they both lived. Together. Not anymore.

Not an hour passed before Joel had leveled the entire island. All of it, above and below, stomping the land into dust until he was up to his neck in the water, until there was nowhere left to stand, until his arms and legs refused to swim any longer. He didn’t remember being lifted from the sea. He wasn’t even sure how his Makers knew he was in trouble- could they sense the state of the island? His distress? Maybe it was simply intuition that had saved him from a miserable drowning death, so focused on ripping his world apart, he hadn’t even realized the water was over his head.

He remembered being limp in five sets of hands, refusing to open his eyes. Refusing to stand, to speak. Maybe it felt like companionship to be held. He didn’t remember much else; they must have set him to sleep, their miserable creation that they did not love.

His Makers must have known something was wrong. It had been many years, six maybe, since Joel had destroyed the island so completely, so violently, to the point of nearly killing himself in the process. He woke up the next day in a bed, to a restored world, to a gentle breeze through the open window. He did not move. He did not speak. His Makers did not know what to do with that; this had never been a problem before. Their creation was brash and violent and angry, it was never sad. And yet. And yet. He sensed excitement from the voices out his window, his Makers, delighting in the newness of the feeling. The evolution of his character.

‘He’s changing.’

‘He’s developing new ranges of emotion.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘How can we recreate this?’

‘How can we ensure this continues?’

He heard it. All of it. Not that his Makers tried to hide their curiosity. They frenzied like sharks at his bed, asking questions he refused to answer, offering food and drink he refused to eat. They offered to take him to the mainland, cheer him up, and Joel had screamed at them to get out. They did. Then returned the next day. Their speculation circled around Joel keeping some sort of secret pet, finding attachment to one of the animals in the swamp, and that it had died recently, sending him into this state of mourning. They speculated his depression was so intense because he’d simply never felt it before. Maybe they were right. On both counts. His Makers offered him new ‘pets’ from frogs to alligators, all of which he promptly killed if not stopped, and for the most part, he was not. From this, they came to the conclusion he was simply too sensitive to accept a new creature into his life.

But the worst. The worst.

A storm, one night. The type of wind and pelting rain that drove mist off the ocean, that would typically get Joel so excited. Standing out by the shore, listening for the telltale crack of a wayward ship against the rocks..

He hadn’t gone. He hadn’t left the house in days. But a cheeky nudge and a grin too wide told him exactly what his Makers had staged that night, either manipulating an actual ship to crash, or just zapping a couple of unfortunate souls right from the mainland to this cursed place.

They wanted to know what he’d do. They wanted to know if he’d grown morals, if he’d spare them. An experiment. Once again, as clear as day, he was reminded exactly what he was to his Makers. Fine then. He’d show them just how much he’d grown.

So Joel made tea. He let his Makers watch him, paying them no mind. He sat as if he was alone, ate a small breakfast, and closed his eyes. He took his time.

Joel was not the kind of person who played with his food. He did not draw out pain when it wasn’t needed, more interested in the adrenaline of a chase than a scream. But today wasn’t about him, was it? Today, he had an audience. He dressed in his best clothes. He walked to the beach. And methodically, he ate each one of them alive. No need for gratuitous detail. But each of the three felt his teeth before they passed, not by his hand of course, but once his Makers had seen enough. They got their answer. They left him for the day when he began to dance with the corpses, singing, screaming his loathing for the entire world to hear. And then his Makers were gone, the act was dropped, and Joel returned to his room. He did not change out of his clothes.

The same night, he woke up with a gasp, something distinctly sharp set with ripe intention at the base of his thigh. For a moment, Joel thought he’d done something- pulled a muscle or maybe cut himself, but just as he was removing his pants to check, a real line was cut, the knife piercing harshly, as if it had been met by resistance and rubberbanded past it. It didn’t hurt at first, at least not as much as his shoulders, fuck, his arms, something was seriously wrong with his arms, like if they bent any further, they’d snap entirely-

And then his skin started to peel. The pain he felt seemed deeper than what was happening to his own body; the cut was so sharp, so precise, only the knicks where his scales connected were bleeding- ah.

Sleep did not leave him stupid for long.

He grabbed only a robe as he ran out the door, thinking immediately to change, to make Etho human and make whatever they were doing stop, but Etho would need water, which he almost certainly didn’t have. Etho would also need time, and neither of them had that either- How in the hell was Joel supposed to reach him? He couldn’t just teleport off the island like his Makers, he couldn’t teleport at all! ‘No dominion over time and space,’ WHATEVER.

He did have a boat. It was for fishing close to the island, it even had a motor, but that wouldn’t be fast enough, not nearly. However, he didn’t ever use a boat to traverse the water, did he? He simply brought land with him to walk on top of it, far less of a hassle than a boat, but his magic didn’t extend nearly far enough from the island to just walk there. But maybe, maybe, with a combination of magic and his boat for the rest of the journey..

If Joel had the luxury of more time to consider what he was about to do, then he may have tried a different plan, but he didn’t have time, did he, so rocketing himself across the ocean in a tiny fishing dinghy was his best option. At the very least he wasn’t thinking about his skin being methodically peeled off when he was launching himself as fast as his magic would carry him toward the mainland, fearing for his life for a second reason tonight and nearly passing out from the intensity of the acceleration (and therefore being flung into the ocean and subsequently drowning), but as his magic grew weaker, so did the speed of his vessel. The deceleration was just as terrifying as it was a relief, however, Joel wasted no time starting his motor.

It wasn’t fast enough. Thirty minutes passed before Joel even saw land, and even by then his legs were a horribly bloody mess, though Joel was unable to tell how much skin had been stripped away. He just had to hope whoever had done this wouldn’t end it before he arrived, but if they had kept Etho alive this long, it must be on purpose. Maybe it was the English.. Maybe Etho had convinced them, or maybe they were too intrigued to let him die. Even with all of Joel’s magic gone, the pendant at his chest, the tiny catalyst was still enough to draw that line between him and his soulbound, to tell Joel exactly where Etho was being kept.

He closed in on a small dock housing several boats with an attached market, no longer open for business at this time of night. Not a worry. Charged by his island catalyst, strength was among many of his born talents. Joel’s dinghy crashed into an empty spot on the dock, surely damaging the boat and definitely damaging the security of the deck, but Joel cared very little, stepping out from where his boat was lodged between posts.

He kicked the long glass window in with bare feet, uncaring as alarms blared, lighting his face in a harsh red. He did not speak to the man who ran up from what must have been basement stairs with a pistol, but Joel must have been a sight, long dark hair, bloodied shirt, open robe doing nothing to hide his raw, bleeding legs. The stranger hesitated for far too long, missing his shot when Joel lunged for his throat. Joel only took the pistol, leaving the damn bastard to choke on his own blood. The other he caught in the face as she ran up the stairs, emptying the pistol into her chest and stomach, then stepping over her on his way down.

Joel did not have to call Etho’s name. He was right around the corner, laid out on a tarp and sobbing without sound; Joel knew the hitched heaving of a chest well enough. His arms were tied at the wrist, bent horribly behind his back, so Joel undid those binds first, the relief in his own aching arms immediate. Etho’s face was covered in some sort of cage, probably to protect from biting. It looked like it was locked by a key.. well, Joel didn’t have time to look for that. There was.. nothing he could do about Etho’s tail for now. At the very least, the scum that did this cut around the fins, keeping them mostly intact. Suddenly, the fronts of Joel’s legs bleeding harder made sense as mirrored by Etho’s injuries. No matter.

“I’m going to have to hold you by the base of your tail. I won’t be able to get you up by just your chest.”

“No- Joel, no. Don’t touch it. Don’t touch me.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to,” Joel huffed, eying the tarp intently now. That would be better, surely. Still, Etho resisted as Joel wrapped him completely, snapping in what Joel was pretty sure was a blind attempt at biting, and suddenly he was a bit more grateful for the cage across Etho’s face. It fucking hurt as Joel lifted him, both of them making some sort of strangled gasp, but this had to have been better than skin against raw skin, so Joel made his way up the stairs, hoping to get out of here before any law enforcement arrived.

“Wait,” Etho hissed, apparently not sharing the same sentiment, “Go back. Go back.”

“What? No!”

“Go back. My scales. You need to get them. Please. Please get them.”

“I’m not getting your bloody scales! What are you, insane? We need to go.” Joel snarled, but Etho was insistent, breaking his arms free from their loose cage to snatch at Joel’s shirt.

“They can’t have them.”

“The humans that did this are dead.”

“Another will find them. Take them. Sell them. Joel. They’re mine.”

“For goodness fuckin’ sakes Etho, I’ll get you damn scales, just stop yapping about it,” Joel turned, unsure even as he moved why. This was a waste of time. In fact, the more time they spent here, the more both of their lives were endangered. But there was something about the way Etho relaxed in his arms, even despite the pain. The way his breathing slowed, just slightly. Joel did not care to linger. It didn’t take long to find the scales, cut in one piece and drying in a back room, and Joel was back up the stairs in record time, hopping out the same window he’d busted through to get inside. It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes that had passed, but that was already too much time. There was no way they’d get far enough away, not in Joel’s dinky little boat.

Thankfully, Etho seemed to be a little more time cognisant now, eying the dinghy just as unhappily as Joel felt as he struggled to pull it from where it was stuck with his foot (to little success).

“Put me in the water. I’ll push far enough.”

Joel was happy to obey the first part of that request, struggling enough as it was with his arms so full, but by the time he was saying, “Wait, Etho, you can’t swim,” Etho’s raw skin already hit the cold water, pushing a barely restrained yell from Joel’s throat, while bubbles rose from the water where Etho was let go. Joel grit his teeth as Etho dislodged the dinghy, throwing the rest of his things into the bowl, then stepping inside himself. But before Joel could argue again, sirens blared in the distance, and Etho kicked off, taking the both of them as fast as he could manage to swim. Which is to say, quite fast.

Even injured, exhausted, and likely a little bit traumatized, Etho kept up the pace for a long while. He stayed submerged for the most part, which was probably for the best; Joel didn’t particularly want to speak with him and he was sure the feeling was mutual. But the cold water on Etho’s tail made everything feel a little better, his own legs stinging less than before, though everything was still so raw, and sitting without adrenaline to distract him from the pain was a certified nightmare.

Once land was out of sight, Etho did slow down, the boat now drifting as he took a chance to rest. That was fine. He deserved it.

Joel sighed, long and deep with his whole chest. “Let’s switch. You can sleep in the boat, and I’ll take us the rest of the way back. It’s a calm night, so might be forty-five minutes until I’m close enough to use my magic. It’ll be easier after that. Can’t heal us ‘til I get back home though, I need more supplies.”

Etho whistled something from under the water, but Joel didn’t catch the meaning. Too fast, too much to process, and he cared very little to learn much of the mermaid language (though after tonight, Joel could certainly see that changing). Given the lower pitches of the notes though, Joel got a reasonable enough idea the words aired on the more negative side of things.

“I can’t translate now. Surface if you want to speak to me.” Part of Joel tried to correct for the edge in his tone, but the more overwhelming part of him did not care to be civil.

Etho did so, releasing the dinghy to swim alongside it. “Stupid idea.”

Joel huffed, crossing his arms (both of them wincing at the soreness), “Is it, then? Tell me more.”

“How do you think I’m supposed to get inside without..” Etho trailed off, lacking the words, so instead he resubmerged, shaking the boat violently back and forth and nearly throwing Joel from his seat.

“Okay! Okay! I get it, cut it out!”

Etho resurfaced, probably looking smug if Joel had to guess, even despite the fresh sting in both of their lower halves, “Do you know? It would hurt like..” Etho stopped, whistling a long string of words that Joel did not understand, but the meaning came through all the same.

“Bad idea then! Sorry.” Joel scoffed, drawing into himself, but Etho jolted, hitting his head on the rim of the boat.

“Sorry? Sorry?”

“What?” Joel snapped, losing his patience, but there was something teasing in Etho’s eyes, the fins at the side of his head waving in what was probably amusement.

“Never heard you [say that] before. Not after you taught the word.”

“Well don’t get used to it. That was sarcasm anyway, I don’t do remorse. Can’t believe you even remember what that means, ugh. You weren’t waiting for an apology, were you? You’re not getting one. I’m not sorry. Stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you. I know you.”

Joel jumped his seat, hissing at the sharp pain that followed the movement, but more alarmed by the words. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not sorry.”

“I know that!”

“I know it [too].”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know.”

“You don’t!”

Etho made some sort of face, like he was attempting to copy one of Joel’s many expressions of exasperation, but it didn’t quite look right, especially not on a mermaid’s face with no visible pupils and no eyebrows. Joel got a better idea when Etho dove back under the water, splashing pointedly (which fucking hurt), then whistling a string of words which Joel could very easily imagine being some sort of long winded complaint or insult. Whatever. Etho could think whatever he wanted (as long as it wasn’t thinking Joel felt any sort of remorse for any of his actions).

Things were.. Things were different between them after that. The entire next week Etho needed to be hidden away out of Joel’s great fear his Makers would somehow find him (they’d brought humans here, what would they do if they found a mermaid? What if they got the wrong message when Joel wouldn’t hurt him?) Even after it was safe for them to switch again, in his human form, Etho would never leave his room, locking himself inside nearly the entire day, any of his good humor suddenly vanished. Despite the night of The Incident being unpleasant, Etho hadn’t seemed particularly upset on the swim back, so after they were both healed and everything was back to normal, Joel had kind of just expected him to be.. fine? The contrast between Etho’s behavior was confusing, and honestly, quite frustrating at times. Etho did not want to talk. He did not want to be seen. He hardly even wanted to eat together.

And even to this day, years and years later, Joel had never asked how it happened. How Etho had gotten caught, how he’d been overpowered. Etho wasn’t stupid, far from it, and Joel knew him to be the careful sort, overly cautious. But Etho never seemed to want to speak about it, and Joel was too intimidated to ask.

Etho had only ever brought it up once, a month after the event occurred, when Joel was pretty sure Etho was never leaving their little cottage again.

Etho had approached him at one of the inland banks where Joel was working on carving a grand replica city into the side of a mountainous hill. It was certainly one of his bigger projects, each skyscraper getting special detail and attention while hardly taking up much more space than the length of his arm, but that was part of the fun. Joel liked imagining cities, he liked building them.

“Can you make fire.” The words weren’t phrased like a question.

Joel had jumped at the sound, surprise replaced by alarm when he turned around to see Etho holding the long mermaid scale skin, folded neatly in his arms. Joel had been flustered, tripping over his words like a complete idiot as he parroted the words he’d been told many times before, “I have no dominion in the sky.”

“What.”

“It’s- The sky makes fire. Lightning, heat, stars. That’s not me. I mean, there’s fire in the earth, but that’s deep, though, I guess there is a volcano nearby, but it’s been dormant for a while. Doesn’t mean I can’t pull magma from its depths, but I’d have to get pretty deep, and honestly, I don’t know if it wouldn’t cool before I made it to the surface.”

“You can rub sticks.”

“I can- what?”

“Everything [is] wet, but you can rub sticks. I can’t rub them good enough.”

“Stop saying that, it sounds weird.”

“You can rub sticks.”

“Sure! Yes! How does that make fire?”

“I’ve watched humans do it. They make-“ Etho frowned “-Pre-fire. You can do it faster.”

“Sparks? Smoke?”

“I don’t know. Pre-fire. Doesn’t matter. I want to kill my skin.” Etho held out his scales, gently pearlescent in the sun.

“Ah. I see. Kill with fire is ‘burn.’ You want to burn your scales.”

“Yes. Make a fire.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. I need it.”

There was a bit more back and forth between them before Joel allowed himself to be pulled away from his sculpting, but the annoyance was quickly replaced with a deeper excitement; Etho! Etho was here, and they were going to hang out, and it was going to be great!

Fire making turned out to be a horrible activity.

It was slow and frustrating and Joel had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. Etho had quite a bit to say, said in that carelessly blunt Etho way that drove Joel crazy sometimes, today being no exception. ‘Smaller sticks, Joel.’ ‘Might work better if the sticks aren’t alive, Joel.’ Joel couldn’t stop snapping the flimsy things Etho picked out for him, and both of them were getting pissy about it, Etho demonstrating how he ought to be rubbing the sticks together while Joel snatched them away with hands of earth, snapping them over his knee out of spite.

They did not end up making fire that day. Or the next. The third, Etho spent the day sulking in his room, but Joel was still thinking about it, about fire, and he tried by himself a couple times, imagining how impressed Etho would be with him once he succeeded, but alas.. that did not happen. They had to be missing something- surely humans didn’t just stand around rubbing sticks together for hours, there had to be a better way.

The fourth day, his Makers visited, so Etho had to leave. But Joel hadn’t stopped thinking about fire. He tried to ask them about it, how he could make it without magic, but this seemed to be an alarming question coming from him, which, maybe that was fair. But despite their hesitation, Joel still pushed, making up excuses for the night, wanting warmth, wanting light. His Makers did not believe him, not even a little bit, but regardless, with extensive Joel-proofing his request was granted; a small fire that could not spread, lighting itself when the sun set and extinguishing in the morning. Perfect. Well. He would have preferred if his Makers would have just told him how to do it himself, but this was well enough.

Etho knew when Joel’s Makers arrived and when they left, often returning sometime in the night or at least before dawn, so Joel committed himself to sitting by his new fire, hoping he’d be able to see Etho’s reaction when he came home. It was an enchanting thing, the fire. Joel had never realized how beautiful it was, how good the heat felt against his cool skin. He felt like he could sit here for hours, just watching, listening to the gentle crackle of the flames and enjoying the warmth. But he didn’t get too much time to enjoy it, distant splashing entering his periphery soon after he closed his eyes. Joel smiled absently.

“Joel?” Etho said, surprise evident, and why wouldn’t he be? Valiantly, Joel had delivered Etho his fire. Of course he was surprised, thrilled even. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”

“Waiting for you, obviously,” he grumbled, only a normal amount disappointed that Etho wasn’t celebrating the achievement of his flame.

“All night??” The alarm was enough to get Joel to open his eyes, and ah, the sky was starting to lighten, wasn’t it. Perhaps he had fallen asleep.. Hm. Couldn’t let Etho know that.

“No.” The two of them stared at each other for a moment, Etho’s bafflement just uncomfortable enough for Joel to break the silence quickly, “Well- Hurry! This goes out at dawn, so get your damn scales already.”

That seemed to snap Etho out of his stupor, the mermaid giving himself a bit of a startled look before apparently deciding not to waste anymore time. He could get in and out of the house just fine. Joel didn’t move from his place at the fire, not even looking back when the floorboards of their small porch creaked under Etho’s weight. To his credit, Etho was quick, out of the house in a flash and perching himself up beside Joel, cut scales held close to his chest. He sat there like that for a while, Joel’s anticipation beginning to make him irritable in the quiet.

“What are you waiting for? This won’t be lit for much longer,” he snapped, but Etho didn’t look very bothered.

“You’re right.” Without another word, Etho threw the scales into the flames. Joel had expected some sort of sizzle, maybe even a couple cracks, but the scales withered silently, browning at the edges and then blackening into dust, eerie in their quiet. Etho watched the fire intently, more intense of a look than Joel had ever seen from him before. And both of them stayed that way, sitting by the fire until it went out just as suddenly as it had been lit. All that was left in the pit was ashes.

Etho straightened up. “I have something. For you.” Etho bent over to pluck a small pouch off the ground that Joel hadn't noticed before, passing it by the drawstring into Joel’s hands. It was light, mostly empty, and Joel nearly dropped it when he saw what was inside. “Take one. Do with it what you will.”

“Your- Why did you keep these?”

Etho snapped his fingers, and Joel readied himself to translate. ‘Mermaid custom. We call it Tail Twining, usually reserved for when a mer takes a mate, but I will not have the opportunity to engage in this practice, nor do I particularly want to. Typically, mers will trade scales, decorate them with physical decals to make them stand out, then use a special glue to replace their lost scale with a new one from their partner. I like this practice, and while I don’t particularly like you, I appreciate how you’ve gone out of your way for me these past weeks. I do not respect you, but I don’t hate you either.’ Etho stopped for a moment, fins flicking, ‘You may not wear my scale on your tail when you have one. Otherwise, do whatever you’d like.’

“Oh.” Joel didn't know what else to say. What else was there to say? He did not particularly believe that he had gone out of his way to do anything, nor did he like the idea of that at all, but.. “My pendant. I’d like to wear it like that, stick it on there somehow.”

“Alright.”

There was a brief silence, Etho looking a little uncomfortable or maybe just bored, and Joel kinda feeling like his head was exploding. Mermaid scales weren’t fragile by any means, but Joel still sifted through the bag gently, looking for the shape that would fit best over his catalyst of twin souls.. Hm.. Joel didn’t want his Makers to see it, and he’d made this piece of jewelry from the earth anyway..

Joel started to fiddle with it, first enveloping his chosen scale entirely, encasing it in the middle of the iron, but he quickly scrapped the idea, wanting to see the scale at least a little bit. So he experimented, taking care not to warp the precious items beyond repair (and given how intently Etho was watching him, Joel was pretty sure he might be ripped to pieces if he accidentally cracked the scale). Eventually, Joel found a way he liked it, the scale indented securely in the back, safe from most eyes, but if Joel liked, he could bring his fingers to the pedant and the pad of his thumb would slot perfectly into the indentation.

“Is this okay?” Joel felt stupid the moment the question left his lips- of course it was fine, Etho had already told him it was fine, but Etho’s features only softened at the words, the strain behind his face easing.

“You understand.”

Joel didn’t get to respond, Etho turning around and swimming right away without another word, pouch of scales in hand. Joel wanted to bite back. Snap. But he didn’t really understand at all.

And another five months passed.. pleasantly. They weren’t ever really close anymore, not like Joel had thought of them in the first year. Maybe he just knew better now? Still, Joel wondered from time to time if Etho’s opinion of him ever changed or improved, but.. Joel never asked and Etho never said a word.

And then just around two total years of togetherness, of the both of them living here on Joel’s island, Etho told him once again that he was leaving.

Guess that was answer enough, wasn’t it.

Joel went with him to the mainland. He hadn’t insisted or anything, but he hadn’t needed to, because Etho had accepted him without a word.

Joel didn’t know entirely what happened the rest of that day, watching from the shore close to a main road, nor did he know for the rest of the week. He stayed as close as he dared, but Etho did not come back. He did not need help. He did not need Joel.

He wasn’t exactly how Etho managed it, but he found some of the good humans. Made friends, found a roommate of all things- it was good. From what Joel heard, it was good.

Better.

Five years that way, better. And it wasn’t that they weren’t in contact anymore; they texted all the time, communication having improved drastically when the two of them discovered phones. Hardly a week passed where Etho didn’t visit, and he’d spend a weekend some months. Joel treasured those days. But Etho didn’t really belong here, no matter how desperately Joel longed for his company some nights, sitting by the fire, staring, wishing he’d come home. Whoever made Etho did so gently, kindly. Whoever made him must have loved him very much.

Joel knew very little about how he was made. But he knew the fingers that molded him were cold and calloused, their excitement for their result overshadowing the gravity of what they were doing. Sharp fingers carved sharp edges, then reeled backwards when their creation bit back, when their creation, made in their image, was just as foul. Just as selfish. Just as cruel

‘A mistake’

‘We made a mistake with you’

‘We’re trying to figure it out’

‘We’ll make you better’

‘We’ll fix it’

No. It was too late. They couldn’t just take it back. Joel was already here. Already bad. He was made bad and he would spend the rest of his life making sure they knew it.

So.

What do you like? (Not Evil)

The question Joel hadn’t been able to answer, the question he was still thinking about tonight, sitting at his desk, pen in one hand and paper below the other. His Makers would be coming tomorrow to collect his answer.

Well. He quite liked the ocean.

[jedi-lothwolf]

Familiar chapter one

Fandom: The Bad Batch

Summary: Pabu was eerily familiar to CX-2. Clone Force 99 felt like someone to him. Why they mattered, he couldn't remember.

Notes: Spoilers for the episode Point of No Return

Chapter two: Research of the Past (coming soon)

  Why was Pabu so, familiar? That was the only question going through CX-2's head. It felt like he should care about it and its people; like somewhere deep down, he didn't want to be there to hurt someone.

    Still, he was there to find the target. A girl named Omega was an m-count target, so he had to take her to Tantus. It shouldn't feel so wrong. Just like fighting Ct-9904 shouldn't have felt like a betrayal to himself.

    Seeing the pirate was already so eerily familiar. Being in her presence made him smile and he felt warm. Her sweet but sassy voice, her beautiful hair, they seemed like they meant something to him. Maybe they had.

    CX-2' stood on the wall that separated lower and upper Pabu. There, near the water, was the Havoc Marauder. It was the ship that the group of rogue clones flew and from the information that the man had, lived out of. It was a modified Omicron-class attack shuttle. Ct-9902 had made the changes to the ship.

    Maybe there was a reason CX-2 hesitated to shoot the ship. By the ramp, Ct-9903 stood. The man had been named Wrecker, which fit him well. There was something unsettling about the thought of him blowing up, like he had personal feelings about. Maybe that was why he shot the ship's wing where he did.

    It was easy to see and it wasn't in his blind spot. Seeing him notice the explosive and grab the power droid and jump away from his home, made blowing the ship up slightly easier. It shouldn't have.

    Why was he so reluctant to hurt them? Clone Force 99 were traitors. The Bad Batch had killed imperial soldiers and officers, they had destroyed the empires properly. Killing them, would be good for the galaxy, yet CX-2 hesitated to do so.

    So he walked away. Finding Omega was his mission. Destroying the Marauder was to ensure they stayed on the planet. Making the call to be ready to burn the island and its people to the ground, was not one he had wanted to make.

    There was a place near the top of the mountain. Maybe, CX-2 thought, I should go up there. Maybe the girl would be there.

    The leaves of the tree that stood on the platform swayed. It was a beautiful and proud Weeping Maya Tree. Near the top of the mountain was a communal space. Walking inside, the man looked around for the target. The room was filled with artifacts.

    A jade tree sat on a shelf that almost made him smile. Shaking it off, his eyes scanned the shelves and landed on a stuffed Tooka doll and a pair of shattered goggles.

    CX-2 took a step back. Then he walked towards the shelf. With much kinder hands than he had been treated with, he picked up the goggles and stared at them. The weight of the glasses in his hands was uncomfortably familiar.

    Startled, he laid them back down. Looking at the doll, CX-2's breath started to catch and tears welled in his eyes. The name of the Tooka was on the top of his tongue and he knew it shouldn't be.

    When he woke up, Hemlock had told him who he was didn't matter. He had said that he had been an imperial soldier who had amnesia from his last mission. When he asked what his name was, he was told it was CX-2. Something always felt wrong about that.

    Removing his helmet, CX-2 placed it beside the googles. Picking up the stuffed toy, he pulled it closer to him. "L-" her name was the only thing he could think about. With his mission long forgotten, he tried to piece the rest of the tooka's name together.

    "Lula?"

    The room was silent. The lighting was warmer than he had remembered and all the noise of the outside had disappeared. Without the helmet, everything was blurry. However it felt like CX-2 could see clearer than he had remembered.

    The reason he hated the thought of hurting Clone Force 99, the reason he knew Lula's name, the reason the pira- liberator of ancient wonders was important to him; he had known them. The people had been something to him at some point in his life. But who were they?

    CX-2 needed to know. Still holding Lula, he stood there overwhelmed by his discovery. As his breathing continued to speed up, he sat on the floor. Clutching the doll he tried to think. Where did he go from here?

    The man could go back to the empire and complete him mission or he could lie and say that he had made a mistake, leave, and escape come his next assignment. Staying and fighting for the empire meant he would likely never get his answers. However, staying with them also meant he would survive.

    Standing, the man set Lula down next to the googles. Clearing the tears from his face, he placed him helmet back on his head and reached from his comm. Then he let his hand fall back to his side. If someone had already found her and he told them she wasn't on the island, he'd be killed for treason.

    Finding Omega became his next objective. While that may have already been his mission, now he only intended to keep her safe. Leaving the building, CX-2 sighed. In truth he was scared. He knew what Hemlock could and would do to him if he was caught.

    But he needed to know who he was. Learning who these people were to him meant betraying what he knew. Committing an act of treason didn't hurt as much as he thought it would.

    Walking though the streets of Pabu, he ordered the flame throwers to be put down. There was no need just yet to burn down the island.

    Almost twenty minutes later, CX-2 found the girl. She stood in the middle of the street, ready to give herself up for the safety of the people. Before she got a chance to give herself away, the clone grabbed her and pulled her away from the street. "Shhhh."

    Confused Omega was silent.

    "You are an adolescent. I am going to inform the others that I was mistaken in identifying you. Stay hidden."

    "What?" Was all Omega could think of saying.

    "You are a child, I will not subject you to the experiments of Tantiss. You will be safe here once I'm through with my tasks."

    Taking the alley, Omega asked "where is it?"

    "What?"

    "Tantiss. I need to know."

    "Where Tantiss is, is of no concern to you. I need you to stay hidden."

    Ignoring him, Omega asked again. "I'll walk into the street and give myself up right now. If you really want to keep me safe, you'll tell me."

    "One day you will know. Currently, it is safer this way. Accept the opportunity that it being given to you. It is not the time."

    "Then when is?"

    "When you have a plan."

    "I have a plan! I-"

    "Is it a good one?"

    Omega was silent. "Fine."

    "Find a place to hide."

    The girl nodded. While she was sceptical of the sleeper agent's intentions, at least Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair wouldn't be so worried.

    Walking away, CX-2 reached for his comm. "I had mistaken a similar looking civilian for the girl. The target is not here." He sighed. "Gather your men and be ready to leave."

    "Yes sir."

    Hoping this risk would pay off, the man pondered what answers The Bad Batch could have for him. Soon, he would have his answer. Maybe while he waited for his next mission, he should do most digging into who these people really are.

[trailerprk-princess]

—dating dean winchester | dean winchester x fem!reader headcanons

!!!: my work is not to be reused without credit/permission!

request rules

warnings: nsfw & mentions of drugs! minors dni! fluff & not edited

authors note: im really obsessed with him rn🫣 requests are open!

he is so desperate for your love & attention that its kinda concerning. he never got love growing up or has been involved romantically with anyone for long & he is used to one night stands that dont go anywhere. so its very refreshing to him to have someone being as equally in love with him as he is w u

he is very hesitant to talk about his feelings & past to everyone, including to those he loves. but you really get him to open up to you about those things. which is really good for him bc he learns that his dad was a shit father & he finally gets to know what real love is. & what it actually feels like to have someone be concerned & care for him. & he knows that he doesnt have to hide anything from you bc you wont judge him or think of him any differntly

when sleeping next to him, he finds it very hard to let you go from his grip. hes very touch starved & craves any touch he can get from u. whether it's spooning you, putting his hand on ur thigh, or just holding ur hand

he is a very conflicted person. almost in every episode he thinks something is wrong w him bc he "enjoys" killing. but it really is bc hes pushed aside every emotion he has ever felt & doesnt deal with them. him being with someone who is willing to listen to his vulnerabilities really helps him figure himself out

he is a VERY loyal person & boyfriend.

he likes to give gifts & is very close to being ur sugar daddy from how much money & gifts he gives u bc he thinks that the only way to keep u around is to give u everything u could ever dream of. which is very unhealthy thinking on his part

he needs CONSTANT reassurance. he needs to know that you will never leave him for someone better. believe it or not but hes pretty insecure. hes not insecure of his abilities in bed or looks but insecure of his lifestyle

he gets you little souvenirs from every state he visits! & now u have a whole bookshelf of knickknacks

type of person to tell u that he loves u within a week of dating. im half joking but he falls for people very easily

hes pretty controlling & protective of u, he just doesnt want you to get hurt. he will not let you go hunting with him, anyone, or alone. he needs you to be safe at all times. which yes, is understandable but you have to tell him that its toxic when it gets to the point hes too nervous about you leaving the bunker, your house, motel, anything really. & there's probably a tracking device in ur bra

he never smoked marijuana or says he does in the show. but everytime he sees a bong hes gets weirdly excited so i think hes a pot smoker. which is nice! bc hes very good at getting you strains of marijuana that r good for u & fit ur needs. he rolls ur blunts/joints for u!! & he even lights them for u as well! smoking weed is a huge part of his aftercare for u as well bc it helps to calm u down

he is very casually dominant! he orders for u, ties ur shoelaces for u, takes away ur soda if uve had too much, denies chocolate from u if u have too much cause he needs u to be healthy for him & eat right. he turns off the tv at the same time every night & makes u go to bed. he doesnt like it when u cuss & gets on to u everytime that u do cuss. he likes to pick out ur outfits as well. he also doesnt let u drink due to the fact his father was an alcoholic

he teaches u how to play pool & poker!! & even takes you out shooting every once in awhile!

he has the BIGGEST innocence kink known to man. he literally loves taking virginites

he literally has an angel kink. theres nothing that screams innocence/corruption kink more than that

he likes to dress you up as an angel too!! white lace lingerie & it would get him going more if he could get you to wear a halo headband!

his literal petname for u is, 'angel.' inside & outside of the bedroom. youre just so sweet & precious, how could he not call u angel??

literally just wants to corrupt u everytime he has sex w u. taking your innocence or making you look innocent while doing a not so innocent activity

a lot of people think hes a switch but i dont think so tbh. he literally has no control in his real life which would make him more likely to want control in the bedroom. not saying he tops everytime but theres no chance i can see him giving up his domination/control

but what i do know for sure is that this man is a FREAK

his list of kinks is longer than the amendments on the bill of rights

breath play, bondage, knife/gun play, impact play, corruption/innocence kink, praise/degradation kink, literally anything if youre down

i mean. he is horny 24/7 so it is for certain that he would try anything once or do anything sexually w u as long as u liked it

he LOVES to praise u! youre his 'pretty baby' or 'good girl' but he also LOVES to get praised too. he needs to know how good he is doing

but there are times that hes very degrading, usually when he has had a bad day. because u can be his 'good girl' one day & the next youre his 'dirty slut'

he is also a brat tamer! if your acting too bratty he will bend u over his knee

dean winchester masterlist

masterlist

[shinsouscatpisssmell]

Other woman

Pt.2

"Hey you there?!I-I'm pregnant." You sniffle into the phone. Eyes red and swollen from crying since you came home from the doctors' appointment. The one person who held your heart. The father of your future child was dead silent on the other end making the pit of anxiety that was in your stomach grow bigger. It makes your mind drift as you subconsciously rub your stomach.

To think it all started with just a few words.

"Hey you lost?" You look up at the the dark haired male who's hand is on your shoulder. Shaking you out of your thoughts.

"No, I just came looking for my friend. You might know him. He's name is Atsumu Miya? I'm trying to surprise him but I can't seem to find him." You place the picnic basket down and crack your back and hands from the heavy basket.

"You just missed him. He left like 5 minutes ago." You could feel his eye roll even though his face remained stoic as he huffed barely for you to hear it.

"Are ya serious? Imma kill that 'samu. Always givin' me the wrong information." you storm off to the double doors and tap your foot with heat to it pressing your phone against your ear.

" 'samu? Imma kill ya when i see ya just so you know. What do ya mean what do i mean? 'tsumu isnt here! Ya said they would still be practicin'. Im breakin all yer windows. What? Hes there? Ok ill see ya in 5. Better keep yer lips shut tight so this surprise aint spoiled. And fuck no my accent aint slippin." you press the end bottom and take a few breathes in and our before making you way over to the fox like man.

"thank you i found him. You can keep the basket...?" You pause for a name while handing him the brown woven basket.

"Rintaro. Suna rintaro" he said as he takes the basket from you making you smile.

"well rintaro. Suna rintaro. I better be going before I miss him again. I hope we cross paths again." Letting out giggles as you scamper away leaving the brown haired boy craving your presence more.

And more is what you gave.

It started when he asked for your name and number when you came with Osamu to one of his games. Looking so pretty in your jeans hugging your curves and cropped shirt. Soon becoming an inside joke between you two that pressed the boundaries of friendship and turned it into one of lovers.

"you're so beautiful (y/n). I want to marry you one day." he makes this promise under the moonlight laying kisses om your hands and rubbing your knuckles so tenderly like you were only his. Only meant to fit this two person sized puzzle.

It was two months later you started feeling sick. Throwing up with your tummy cramping from here to here and feeling like you would pass out. You waited to see blood appear due to it possibly just being the chance of your first day period cramps. It never showed up and a week past the day it was scheduled to start it never did.

This made you rush to the hospital with your two best friends in tow. asking the doctor if you had some sort of zombie disease making you throw up everything you eat.  He takes some of your blood and urine to test.

It seemed like hours before the test were done.

"all im sayin' is why did he have to take both yer blood and piss. Hes either a vampire or he has a piss kink.maybe both" atsumu comes up with his conspiracy theory as he gets smacked in the back of the head by osamu.

"He aint got no damn piss kink and he aint a vampire. Yer the reason why (y/n) asked that stupid ass question about zombie diseases." He clicks his tongue before going back to holding your hand rubbing it to calm you down.

"Well 'smau. Ya never know?! They're some real sickos out there that wants to get ahold of someone like , (y/n)'s, piss." He rubs the back of his head, "speakin of piss where'd Suna piss off too?"

"He hasn't been picking up my calls. I know he goes M.i.a sometimes but I'd rather have him here then piss kink boy." You laugh snuggling into Osamu's side as he makes you scoot over so he could sit on the bed with you.

"Watch. He's gonna come in here talkin only about your blood and it'll show yer doctor does indeed have a piss kink." He turns his nose upward and hmphs.

"C'mon and cuddle me 'tsumu. I need my piss hair friend to cuddle me with comfort." Osamu joining with you in laughing as his twin begrudgingly comes over grumbling.

There's 3 knocks on the door before you announce that they may enters. The doctor with the clipboard and a packet of stapled paper with material that clued to her side.

"We did some test on your blood and you're urine and congratulations ms.(l/n) you are pregnant." It felt like time stopped. The twins could feel you tense up.Atsumu coughing up a storm after swallowing his saliva the wrong way but still trying to comfort you while Osamu listened to what else the doctor said, " this is a packet of information on pregnancy. It contains what can and cannot be eaten,Exercises that would help , and trimester information. Right now she is still in first trimester and needs to be very careful with things and stress for they could be harmful to the babies."

"what about a-abortion?" you look at her with watery eyes as she look at your dishevled apperance.

"that is an option ms.(l/n). Take your time and consider it over and if you still want to go through it. We will set up a date when you come back." The doctor hands over the document and leaves the room.

You wait until she leaves to turn into a sobbing mess leaving stains onto Astumu's shirt who pats your back.

"cmon now (y/n). Ya heard the doc crying ain't good for you or the baby." you sniffle and dry your face letting the disgusted face of Atsumu make you laugh quietly.

"Are you gonna tell suna? He is the father right?" samu asked getting swatted by his twin.

"of cours' hes the father you tryna say my best friend hussy?"

"no you idiot. Im sayin' suna aint always around so maybe she looked for other people."

"yer calling her a hussy dumbass."

"piss hair."

"yer onigiri sucks."

And thats how you end up calling suna 12 times since you came back home. Silently crying as each time it went to voicemail was a stab in the gut while the knife twisted. You gave up after the 12th one just laying next to your phone bawling your eyes out until 30 minutes pass and you recieved a call for suna.

"Suna? Hey you there?" you called into the phone but only met with silence, "h-hey you there? I-im pregnant suna. I don't know what to do im ao scared. Please come over." you cry into the phone breathe hitching as you are met with a feminine voice.

"What's your name?" you could hear the crack in the female voice.

"my name is (y/n). Are you suna's friend? I-is he there?" you ask scarily heart pumping with adrenaline waiting for her awnser and soon flatlining when she gave it.

"I'm his wife of 2 yrs." she says and you stutter out a sorry and cry to her that you didn't know he was married.

"It's ok ,love. It's not your fault I put all the blame on him. W-would you meet me later this week? So we both can get some closure." You could hear her tears fall making your heart clench as you tell her yes. She hung up as soon as you could hear Suna in the background.

Now you where curled up with a pillow. Sitting alone with the thoughts of you were the home wrecker. The mistress. The other woman in suna's

An// this is a reupload 🫡

[beatrixblog]

Abalone Curse AU/HC

Im dying to talk about my au, so here it is.

So after he died, he ended up as a ghost, corrupted both physically and mentally by his own greed. He was forever bounded to the depths of the duskgloom sea, in his own sunken ship. He haunted the sailors who dared try to steal his treasures. Legends say that one can always tell his ghost from its cackling, and the appearance of a brute. Black Pearl could not leave the duskgloom sea in weariness of Abalone’s ghost escaping his confinements, so, she never did. Similar to Black Pearl, he starts sinking ships, but for a different reason. He sinks ships in search for any valuables or treasure, hoarding it in his sunken ship. He starts to loose what little of himself he had left, only remaining to be a hollow shell filled with only greed and rage.

This was supposed to be his punishment, but really, it was quite the opposite for him.

Things remained like that for centuries, a few hundred years even. (depends on when the events of a mermaid tale took place) Until, he was willingly resurrected by the Cookies Of Darkness, after hearing the legends of a brutish pirate captain, feared by all and that still haunted the sea. His physical state went back to normal..but his mental state? Not so much. He’s basically the same as he was before but more vengeful and aggressive. He attacks the Cookies Of Darkness at first, but is eventually stopped and (albeit very harshly) beaten to his senses.

But something with the resurrection spell went wrong. They accidentally resurrected someone else that was in that sunken ship.

Lord Oyster.

Abalone’s first reaction when he sees Lord Oyster is to choke the ever loving shit out of him, obviously wanting revenge. But ultimately, he manages to escape.

After managing to steal a ship from the republic, (without being caught) Abalone as well as a few other cookies of darkness members (most likely Pomegranate and Licorice), to go find and kill LOyster. He knew he had probably fled back to the republic, but he didn’t know where, since its obviously changed a lot since. However, when something goes awry and their compass leads them to becoming lost in the duskgloom sea, they encounter Black Pearl.

Once they encounter her, Abalone can only help but laugh that he is once again face to face with the mermaid that killed him, only this time, he’s got powerful allies behind him.

But, not everything goes as expected.

Black Pearl ‘spares’ Abalone, but instead, drags him under the water where she seemingly intended to trap him, before blasting him right in the chest with abyss magic. (Which obviously sent him flying back onto the ship.) Since the attack seemed to have not done anything, he brushes it off as a simple injury. But Black Pearl knows what she did. She hadn’t actually wanted to trap him, instead to immobilise him long enough that she could inject (or, fire) abyss magic directly into his body.

Now in my headcanon, abyss magic is highly corrosive when outside of a cookie’s body, but when inside, depending on the intent of the attack, it either corrodes their body, or, if they survive that, it curses them. Curses them with a form that reflects on their personality and nature. For some, it can be a blessing. But for some, it is a curse.

In Abalone’s case, he was cursed. And it was FAR from a blessing.

The form reflected his greed and frustration, so, the form took the shape of a massive crab monster. (Strongly resembling his mech.) The curse is usually triggered by greed, anger, or, in rare circumstances, the eclipse, due to the night he died.

And the more greedy he is, the bigger the form is. When in that form, he’ll just start taking whatever that he finds valuable in a fit of greedy pleasure. He’ll only really attack if you try to take something from him. Unless it is triggered due to anger, in which then he’ll just attack anyways.

And ofcourse, it hurts ALOT to transform. Abalone doesn’t understand why he was cursed, but he knows how. And ofcourse, being the selfish bitch he is, he doesn’t actually thinks he deserves it.

But in reality, it is a punishment.

When the curse his triggered, (credit to @bloomycali, she is where i got this headcanon from) he’ll start experiencing random bouts lf uncontrollable greed, aswell as his eyes turning like this.

[tenpintsofsundrop]

Shared Trauma

Sub!Gar Logan x Dom!Fem!Reader Smut Blurb

Based on this request from @danversxwasabi.

Concept: Gar had a very hard day. You know you can't take away the pain, so you try your best to distract him from it instead.

Word Count: 3,600

Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

If you want to be notified whenever I post a new fic, make sure to follow my library blog @sundropslibrary and turn on notifications there.

List of detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: some emotional angst, mentions of trauma/PTSD - Gar kills someone for the first time and is very upset about it (as in the canon), friends to lovers, takes place during Season 1 Episode 7 (“Asylum”), descriptions of canon level violence, this is a smut fic, the reader character is implied to be fat, the reader character uses she/her pronouns and has a vagina, this isn’t a hard sub/dom relationship but there is sub/dom undertones, Gar is more submissive and the reader is more dominant, the reader calls Gar ‘good boy’ and he really likes it, tiddy sucking, p in v sex, unprotected sex, the reader rides Gar, creampie, quick/desperate sex. I believe that’s everything. Most of the focus here is on the emotional side of things and not the smut so if you wanna see more PWP, definitely let me know.

A/N: fic is titled after a Pierce The Veil song because I have been obsessed with the new album, and I think it really fits here. Having a trauma with someone, but it just draws you closer together and makes you seek comfort in them. I did consider making up a mission that wasn't in the canon for this, but I am always drawn to how sad, wet, and pathetic he is after killing the scientist, especially if we're doing sub!Gar - he seems especially subby and in need of comfort.

...

When you woke up alone, you weren’t entirely surprised. 

Of course you missed Gar’s presence beside you in bed. But you hadn’t exactly expected him to be sleeping peacefully after the day the two of you had. 

You and Gar were always the type of best friends to share a bed. Both of you sought the kind of comfort that could only come from cuddling close to the warm body of a safe person. Most often, you could only fall asleep beside each other. 

It had been that way since he had first been taken in by Doctor Caulder and he had come to you for comfort after he had woken up sorely missing his parents. On that first night, you had fallen asleep cradling him, and pretty much every night since then, the two of you shared a bed without question. 

The two of you were just intensely affectionate people, and you saw nothing wrong with expressing your friendship through those simple touches. It was just friendly, after all. 

The two of you always hugged each other tight and held hands while walking in public. There were many times when Gar put his arm around you or kissed you on the forehead, or times when you kissed him on the cheek. You weren’t shy about expressing your very platonic love for your best friend (at least, that’s what you had to tell yourself). 

The two of you weren’t romantically involved - you were just very close best friends. 

No matter what others thought when they looked at you, having those stereotypes in their minds about a guy and girl not being able to be ‘just friends’. Even if you wanted to play into that stereotype so badly with him - even if you wanted all of those people to be right. You would never risk ruining your friendship with him just because of some annoying crush. You were very good at keeping all of your stupid feelings trapped inside of your chest. 

Especially on days like this. When life got hardest, he needed you to be there more as a friend than anything else. And you needed him too. 

It was one of the reasons that he had gotten into bed with you that night, despite the fact that he scoffed at the very mention of trying to sleep. He wanted to be there for you. So you really weren’t surprised when you woke up and the bed was cold, void of his presence. Because of course, he couldn’t sleep. 

It had been a long, hectic, shitty day. 

After everything that had happened, you weren’t even really ‘sleeping’ yourself. 

You were drifting on the edge of consciousness, so exhausted from the day that your body was trying to forcibly knock you out. Between Kory and Dick screwing loudly on one side and Rachel and her birth mother chattering brightly and even crying on the other side, you had been having a very hard time falling asleep. That, and the horrors of the day still flashing through your mind. It made for a deadly cocktail that kept you awake. If not for the pure exhaustion of day’s events weighing you down - then you probably wouldn’t have closed your eyes at all. 

When you came back into a hard consciousness this time, though, you missed the feeling of Gar’s arm around your waist. You instantly missed the feeling of his pleasant warmth at your back - cradling you, making you feel safe. 

Before you even had your fully eyes open, you were out of bed yourself. It was almost an instinct, being so entirely drawn to him. You wandered out to the larger living space of the very expensive condo ‘safehouse’ with your socked feet on the cold floor. You clutched at your own arms under the loose sleeves of your oversized sleep shirt as goosebumps formed on your skin. 

You wondered in the back of your mind what the weather was like outside and if Dick had turned on the heat before going to bed. Then you had to wonder if adjusting the thermostat was even a concern in anyone’s mind after such a long day. It was probably only on your mind now that you were missing your human heater. 

You found Gar sitting on the couch. 

He had his oversized green headphones on, his phone screen providing the only real light in the room - aside from the everpresent glow of the city that leaked in from the tall glass panels that could be called walls in the ultra modern house. He was holding the screen inches away from his face as he slumped back against the unused couch. 

He was likely making an imprint of himself that would be the only ‘lived in’ essence of the overwhelming cold, expensive atmosphere of the place. From the sideways tilt of the screen and the way his thumbs were moving, you easily guessed that he was playing some kind of game. Something to distract his mind from the day’s events still playing there on repeat like a bad movie. 

He was wearing a pair of sweatpants that Dick had given him, dug out of a drawer of clothing that was apparently always kept in the place in case a need for it should come up. Just something else the ‘safehouse’ stocked, like food, medical supplies, and monetary currency from all different countries (because Bruce was rich and paranoid enough to be prepared for ‘any scenario’). 

Gar had paired the pants with one of your tee shirts. 

Something that was slightly big on him even with his natural muscle mass filling it out, bright tie-dye and worn-in cotton. It was purely you. Having the fabric draped over his body did make him feel at least somewhat at ease because it was soaked in your natural smell. It made him feel close to you even when he had gotten out of bed. 

He hadn’t wanted to bother you with his tossing and turning or the bright glowing light of his phone screen when he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep properly. 

He felt your presence in the room, but he didn’t look up until you crept further toward him, steering into his hazy peripheral view. He shrugged off the headphones as he looked up, locking eyes with you over the top of his phone. Your heart ached as you saw that expression so well illuminated by the sharp white light from the screen. He had the face of a kicked puppy, big wide eyes staring you down. Especially because he was making a clear effort not to let his mouth curl into a deep whimpering frown. 

You knew that the events of the day had been particularly hard on him. 

Of course, there was the obvious. The mental exhaustion and fear of being kidnapped and held hostage. The pulsating adrenaline of wondering if he was going to come out alive, on top of the worry he felt for you, Rachel, Dick, and Kory. The intense physical torture he had suffered at the hands of ‘scientists’ controlled by a doomsday cult. 

But on top of all of it, he had experienced something far worse. Something that you knew was far more taxing on his mind. 

He had killed someone for the first time. 

You feared that he was too gentle for killing. Even with the amazing power he wielded. 

Gar - someone who protested eating meat because he hated the idea of an animal being harmed for the sake of his nutrition. Gar - someone who always scooped up spiders and household pests to bring them outside because in his opinion, even the smallest of creatures deserve peace. 

You knew that he was someone who never planned on using his powers to truly harm anyone. 

But the moment the choice had been presented to him - to use his powers to harm someone, or to let you be harmed - it hadn’t really been a choice in his mind at all. 

You had been backed into a corner. You thought you had been clever, breaking out of the room they had locked you in with nothing more than an earring as a lockpick. But without a weapon and without a plan, Gar saw them threatening you and became blind with rage. 

Before he truly knew what was happening, he tasted flesh. 

A very large part of him didn’t regret it. He would choose your life over the life of someone unknown - someone who was going to hurt you - any day of the week. He knew that, if given the same choice, he would do it all over again. 

But there was another part inside of him that kept gnawing with guilt. Another part that said he was wrong, that said there should have been some other way. Something inside of him that said he was now just the villain in someone else’s story - that he wasn’t any better than the people who tried to hurt you in the first place. 

In a lot of ways, that voice said, he was worse than them. 

That voice made it difficult for him to sleep. 

“Can’t sleep?” You hummed out, approaching the couch to come and sit beside him. 

Gar did little more than shrug in response to the question. He didn’t want to admit the weakness aloud. He didn’t want to tell you that he was warring with guilt over something that the others - especially you - didn’t seem to struggle with. 

You both already knew the answer. It had been a hard day for him. Of course sleep was far beyond his grasp. 

In a silent, but comfortable exchange, Gar locked his phone and set it aside, entirely uncaring of saving his progress in the game while you sat down beside him. You slid onto the couch with your butt half nestled on top of his hip and your legs strung across his lap. He reached one arm in front of you, draping it over the thickness of your thighs. In a very natural move, he lazily wrapped his knuckles around your bare skin. 

Neither of you bothered to acknowledge your lack of pants - the fact that you were only wearing underwear with your oversized sleep shirt. You were so used to each other at this point that casual states of undress didn’t really need to be acknowledged. 

He drew mindless patterns into your skin with his thumb and slung his other arm over the back of the couch, bringing you into his lovely natural warmth. You laid your head onto his chest, easily cuddling into his side as you indulged in the familiarity. With his phone turned off, the darkness ruminating through the room was a silent cloak that enveloped the two of you. It made it much easier to fall into that routine of comfort that the two of you always embraced. 

You would explicitly deny that his touch on your bare skin felt like a deadly trail of needles erupting with fire - in the best way possible. Now was not the time for your lust to be breaking through. He was your best friend, and he was clearly in need of comfort. 

“I missed my human heater.” You mumbled out quietly, nuzzling into his side affectionately. 

He let out a hazy breath - some attempt at a laugh in response to your affectionate nickname for him. It was something he knew well about your friendship. You had a constantly chilly body, and he would always be there to warm you up with his blazen hot skin. Just another perk from his mutation - even when he got stuck out in the snow, he never ran cold. 

Now that you had acknowledged that wordless question (the reason you had gotten out of bed, why you couldn’t sleep), it was Gar’s turn to do the same. 

It hung in the air over his head and turned into a stony silence in the quiet, dark room that made each of his breaths seem particularly heavy beside your ear. It was a tension that built upon itself for a few moments. You weren’t going to ask, even though you had a feeling you virtually already knew the answer. You wondered if he was going to come out and admit it before you simply dragged him back to bed and forced him to stay there out of your own selfish need. 

But then he finally broke the silence by saying the words. 

“Whenever I close my eyes… I just keep seeing his face.” 

His words were tentative, a quiet whimper released into the room after being trapped in his chest for too long. Like electricity, shocking and impossible to avoid, you felt his pain surging through you. It caused your throat to clench painfully. You shifted slightly, turning so that you could get a better look at his face. Even in the dimness, the sad glassiness of his eyes practically glowed. 

“Gar,” 

You called out his name, your own voice giving away a depth of weakness that you held for him. Before you could help it, you were reaching up and cradling the side of his face with a cupped palm. Even though your hands were cool, the feeling was intensely comforting to him - just because it was you. He couldn’t help but lean into it, leaning on your hand as though it was the only thing in the world holding him up in that moment. When he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force some of that terrible guilt away, he accidentally forced the tears out and let them leak freely onto your hand. 

“Oh, baby.” You cooed out. 

You were entirely unsure why the nickname popped out. The sound of it on your own lips even surprised you. It was something you had never called him before. But he didn’t stop you, didn’t seem to find it unpleasant, so you continued. 

“You did what you had to do.” You told him with certainty. “You saved my life.” 

That was something infinitely valuable to him. But he wondered if somehow, he had diminished his own value in the process. 

More thick tears slipped down his face and you thumbed them away upon instinct. He swallowed thickly before he spoke again, though this time his words were heavily entrenched in those tears. 

“What if that man had a family?” Gar sniffled quietly. “What if-?” 

“Of course he had a family, Gar.” You quickly cut him off, knowing that his words were quickly spiraling into a deep, putrid guilt. 

That guilt was definitely something you felt the need to save him from. 

Upon hearing your words, he looked at you with sharp hurt in his eyes. Clearly, he had been expecting you to argue against his point, rather than confirm it. But you had a completely different line of thinking in mind.

“Everyone does.” You continued on. “Everyone has people who miss them. But you can’t waste your sympathy on some fictional family you’ve made up for the guy in your head. Having a family and being missed doesn’t give people the right to attack others and get away with it. The possibility of being missed doesn’t mean that people can go through life without seeing the consequences of their actions.” 

Gar let out a quiet huff. It was a sound of defeat - a signal saying that your words had punctured his surface, but hadn’t quite set in yet. 

When he didn’t say anything in reply, you continued. 

“You’re my family.” You told him firmly. 

You used the hold on his cheek to fully turn his head toward yours, and you gently angled into him so that your foreheads were pressed together. Gar closed his eyes and basked in the soothing feeling as you continued talking. 

“And I’m yours. And I really, truly don’t care about who lives or dies outside of us. I don’t care what happens as long as we’re safe. And we’re together.” 

You wanted to add on a verbal exception for the others - for Rachel, and Dick, and Kory, and likely Rachel’s mom just for her sake. An exception for the people who had quickly also become your family in the short time since you had met them. But you had a feeling that Gar knew about this exception in your mind without you having to voice it. 

Gar swallowed hard again, and this time you felt it bob harshly through him while pressed so closely together. You felt him let out a harsh breath before he spoke again. 

“I guess… I guess I’m just worried about what you think of me now.” He spoke the words so quietly, as if his fear even crept into voicing this. “I don’t want my favorite person in the world to be afraid of me. Or... to think I’m a bad person.” 

“I’m not afraid of you.” You quickly argued the point, a slight laughter on your lips at the mere thought of it - at the mention of being afraid of someone like him. 

Yes, he could turn into a giant green tiger, and yes, seeing him use that power to its full extent for the first time had been… jarring. But you would never be afraid of someone who cried during Pixar movies and said it was ‘inhumane’ to kill the animals in Minecraft for food. 

“I could never be afraid of you, Gar.” You easily added on. “You’re not a bad person. You’re such a good person. You’re so good. You’re such a good boy.” 

Those words struck a cord deep within his soul, and a whimper escaped his lips before he could stop it. 

“Say that again.” He told you, so pitifully that it almost sounded like begging. “Please?” 

“You’re such a good boy.” You repeated yourself, running your thumb along the soft skin of his cheek once again. “You’re a good boy, Gar.” 

In a moment, the air shifted. 

The magnetism between the two of you came to a fierce head, and the desperation, the vulnerability that the day’s events had brought forward morphed itself from pain and sadness into something the two of you knew well in the presence of each other - pure wanting. But this time, both of you were exhausted and completely lacking the energy to have any self control to hold it back. 

“Y/N-” 

He barely got out a whimper of your name before you pressed forward that extra inch, stealing his breath as you pressed your lips to his. It was a perfect moment - a beautiful culmination of everything you had ever wanted since meeting him. You definitely weren’t going to waste it. 

He moaned into the kiss and you echoed it back, gulping in breaths through your nose so you wouldn’t have to pull away from the soft cushion of his lips, not even for a moment. When he reached for a greedy grip on the back of your head, filthy and wanting, gently nibbling on your bottom lip - your instincts took over. You blindly swung a leg out, climbing over his waist, and he let out a sharp hiss at the feeling of your weight being planted in his lap. You were beautiful and whole as you sat down on top of him, a perfect reminder that this wasn’t just a dream as his cock quickly swelled to life under the heat of your core where it brushed against his borrowed pants. 

“Please-” He whimpered into your mouth, barely able to get the word out before you sucked his bottom lip into your mouth, making him moan out shakily in the most beautiful way. 

You planted your hands on his shoulders, easily taking control of the situation - not that he cared. He felt like he belonged under your controlling grip, under the pleasant weight of your body as his hard cock throbbed underneath your perfect weight. In a blur of heady kisses, swapping breath with the only man you had ever wanted like this, you got your underwear off and got his pants around his ankles. He shoved your shirt up over your breasts to possessively latch onto one of them with his mouth as you reached down and lined up his pulsing cock with your wet, wanting cunt. 

“Oh-” 

He let out another beautifully pathetic whimper as you sunk down onto him in one smooth movement. Your tight, wet heat quickly surrounded him and made his head spin. You felt so full that it almost choked you, but the hot pangs of electricity that shot up through your pussy easily spurred you on. You wasted no time before you began a brutal pace, bouncing on his lap as if he was nothing more than a toy for your own pleasure. The slap of skin on skin was irritably loud in the otherwise silent room, accompanied only by Gar’s harsh, animalistic pants and your choked-off moans as you struggled to comprehend the fullness of his nearly overwhelming cock. 

You both needed it. You needed the intense sting of pleasure to push out the worries of the day. 

With Gar’s hands gripping at your waist as if you might slip away at any moment and his face buried in your breasts, you almost didn’t hear the quiet murmur of his request when he managed to get the words out beyond that blinding pleasure. 

“Say it again,” He choked out past his harsh breaths. “Please!” 

It took your cock-drunk brain a moment to comprehend it, but when the gears fully churned, you instantly knew what he meant. 

“You’re a good boy,” 

You moaned out, reaching a hand up to pet through his hair. You took a fierce grip on those green locks, never once faltering in the harsh, unforgiving rhythm of your hips as you continued to piston yourself up and down on his cock. 

“You’re a good boy, Gar.” 

“Oh - fuck!” Gar grunted into your chest. 

At the sound of your voice saying this, declaring that he was a good boy - he abruptly came inside you.

[gribok-art]

Hi!! U are the one of my favourite artist and tofu artist also! I really like ur works and wanted to ask if u have any headcanons for this ship and if u have than may u tell them ?👉👈

Thank you, this makes me so happy to read <3 !!

I have so many, bear with me for this long post. And they're just ones I remember at the moment. Sometimes I have headcanons I relate to that I think would fit them well, other times they're just ideas that suit them.

I’ll say a bit of everything, character and ship headcanons.

About Byakuya

- I like to think Byakuya is asexual, as for the romantic part, he'd be unsure.

- To add to it, he hasn't had the chance to explore his emotional side and feelings unlike most kids during teenage years. So it would happen during adulthood. I can imagine for simple situation he'd run it through his head or mimic but not for deeper/more complex situations. 

- I like to believe he was quite rebelious, stubborn, aggresive as a child, for a few reasons. One, with no parental attention, and having to fight for it against many other siblings (even outside of that killing game the Togami were doing), it could be one way to get it. Two, he'd experience things that are unfair, unjust, mean in his eyes, and it would upset and frustrate him. As an example maybe, honesty is important to him, yet his father would present himself differently in front of other people and talk about them badly behind their back. Also if as a child he never learned to express his feelings, they'd throw tantrums.

- Then his father's education would influence and shape him too much that it'd be normal for him, that nothing's wrong, and he'd bury those values and feelings inside, letting in his god complex. Of course they’d be resurfacing after DR1.

- I love to think about what kind of relationship he could have had with his butler. For short I’ll say it has the same vibes as Iroh and Zuko from ATLA.

About Toko

- Before DR1, during their years at Hope’s Peak, I like to believe Aoi and Sakura had more time to approach Toko, and outside of the killing game context, it was easier for her to trust them over time. They wouldn’t be best friends, Toko wouldn’t go out of her way to hang out with them, but she wouldn’t mind if they came around. Unfortunately they’d be witnessing her fantasy moments, and failing to show that Byakuya uses her. 

- I think she’d have an opposite path than Byakuya. After Despair Girls she would assert herself more, have little patience, stand up for herself as a woman, for instance hating when men talk over her, mansplain, not take her seriously etc. - I like to think since Byakuya's butler is still alive that he'd be her parental figure. Like a grandpa she's never had. He'll love and protect her and lecture Byakuya like a ten year old if he doesn't treat her well.

I have a little less about Toko I realize

And as a ship

- While Byakuya would be a perfect model to help her gain confidence and assert herself, speak up, be more “selfish”, Toko, as a romantic novelist, who I think has a great knowledge about emotions and relationships (maybe not how to deal with it, but know about it. I mean, how did she so precisely pointed out Komaru’s brother complex ? how would she even know this term ?) would help him get in touch with his feelings, put words on it, not judge and without viewing him differently.

- They’d be each other’s best confidents. Beside what I said before, they’d be the ones to relate the most to each other among the survivors (bad parents, high expectations, no friends/loneliness, trust issues, murders).

- If Toko is hypersexual and puts a lot of importance into the sexual part of love and relationships, Byakuya is the opposite, thinking it’s a waste of time, disgusting, not considerate of his person. They’d have to balance each other out if they really love each other. Toko learning to be loved for her personality and love him for his, Byakuya learning to be loved through physical non sexual touch. - With time and healing they could also be best friends. The kind that would tease and embarass each other. Changing Byakuya’s pen to a glitter one before a meeting, putting her favourite cup on the highest shelf.

Those are the big lines I follow to find stories for the ship.

For lighter/more fun headcanons

- They’d be both out of touch with memes. But Toko would know some from Komaru and show them to Byakuya. She’d slowly get better at picking ones he’d understand. And she was the only one so far who found one that made him chuckle.

- If he reads an interesting book he’d buy a copy and give it to Toko as recommendation. - They’d gossip/vent together about people they don’t like and saying the best one liners.

I don’t have more in my mind at the moment. I usually draw it whenever I come up with something if it’s short enough.

[avaetin]

‘Yours is green. It’s a pity they're the wrong shade.'

@haiseiscute333 @sunshines-child

Dark! Percy...?

He wants to kill.

He wants to rip a person apart.

He wants to destroy everything.

But, above all, he wants Nico di Angelo.

Cold, sea green eyes gazed at the saved image of Nico on his phone - that one image taken by the paparazzi of him at the concert in Melbourne, Australia, smiling warmly towards the camera, his cheeks flushed a rosy pink from the heat and his skin glistening with a sheen of sweat. He looked so soft, so sweet… like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. And, oh, Percy had a ravenous appetite for him.

Seeing him tonight, bathing in his presence… his voice… his scent… his taste… Percy could feel his loins stirring from the memory.

The industry’s darling - his darling - had the face of an angel, but his body was the greatest sin incarnate. So soft and slender… Percy knew from memory that Nico’s thin and delicate waist can fit perfectly in his hands. His legs - gods those legs - which Percy had only seen in the magazines of his summer photoshoots. They were hairless and had the most perfect proportions. Percy was more than willing to worship them for hours. They would look glorious, littered with his marks… wrapped around his waist… or draped over his shoulders. It was possible, Percy was certain. Nico did tons of ridiculous poses, Percy was aware of how flexible his body was. Then there were his lips, those sweet bow-shaped lips. Percy had loved kissing them; they tasted absolutely divine.

But most importantly were those warm, brown eyes, more beautiful than any jewels in the world. So, so beautiful. So, so gorgeous. So, so… expressive.

Percy lifted one of his hands, the hands that touched Nico’s hips, and licked his palm. He moaned underneath his breath, the sound guttural, as the memory of his angel’s delicious groan surfaced to the front of his mind.

‘Percy.’ He stared at his image once more, engraving those mesmerizing eyes and that enchanting smile to his memory.

‘Percy.’ He licked his lips as he envisioned how debauched Nico would look like underneath him as he voraciously plunged into his depths. Gods, Nico shouting in euphoric rapture as Percy filled his tight body and claim him as his would be his greatest symphony.

‘P-Percy…!’ It mattered little to him that his brother got a taste of Nico first. As long as Percy was the last. He was confident that he could pleasure his angel a thousand times better than Aeon. And when he’s delirious with ecstasy, he would ingrain the truth into Nico’s senses.

Nico only needs him.

No one else.

Especially not Aeon.

“Percy… What are you doing out of bed…?” Percy turned around and stared at the pitiful yet voluptuous body on the queen-sized bed. She was a gem too. It’s a pity though that she was gray when he only wanted and needed brown.

Pressing his lips to the image of Nico, he locked his phone and placed it on the bedside table before he rejoined Annabeth on the bed. Staring at the image of his angel and thinking about him made him aroused to the point of needing to vent it out. The warm body could be used. Annabeth could be used.

“Hmm… Percy…”

“Don’t talk.” Percy only needed a warm body. Hearing her talk and seeing her visage was ruining his pleasure. Even her scent and her flavor ruined his fantasies. But they would have to do for now. Until he could have the actual person in his arms, her warm pliant body would just have to do.

“Pity…” Percy whispered into her ears as he slipped once more inside her depths and immediately started pounding into her core. Even in the haze of pleasure, Annabeth knew what he was thinking.

‘It’s a pity they’re gray. Would be nice if they were brown.’

She would let him have her one last time - as a parting gift - before she would break the terms of their agreement come morning. She was done playing his unwinnable game; she would rather some other poor unfortunate soul did before she completely lose herself.

An exhausted smile curled her lips as an amusing thought formulated in her head. Yes, perhaps it was a pity that her eyes weren’t those warm brown hues he had been yearning for. Still…

‘Yours is green. It’s a pity they're the wrong shade.'