#listen it’s an au and snow is relevant to the plot

[staytheword]

a kiss at midnight

a kiss at midnight — one shot [ general masterlist ]

this series (and this blog) are 18+ !! minors, please do not interact!!

• changbin x female reader; felix, jisung and hyujin are also featured. (felix and jisung are sunshine twins and mc's cousins)

• non idol au, strangers to lovers. new years themed! a basic plot, just an excuse for some changbin smut. :) a lot of drinking, explicit language, explicit smut.

•  smut warnings (spoilers ahead) — dom!changbin, sub!mc, slight degrading, use of pet names (slut, baby), handjob, cockwarming, oral sex, deepthroating, throat fucking, unprotected sex, public sex, agrexophilia.

• word count: 8.5k

Your cousins, Felix and Jisung, organized a big party for New Year's Eve. There, you meet someone new, and the attraction is instantaneous. You planned on drinking, eating, and dancing all night — it now looks like you'll be flirting, too.

• author’s note: I wanted to post this yesterday, but... there was a power outage and I couldn't :( I guess it's still relevant today, though, right? There is not much plot in this, I'm sorry! It was just for fun, to laugh, to enjoy some Bin. I hope you will like it ♡ Happy New Year everyone!!

The automated voice of your GPS announces you’ve reached your destination. You step on the breaks and frown at the screen of your phone, attached to the dashboard. No, this can’t be it. You’re at a cul de sac. There is no house here. No other cars. Just trees and snow and an empty road. This can’t be your destination. 

“Fuck’s sake, fuck me,” you hiss between your teeth. 

You try to enter the address you’ve been given away, but it gives no new results. Apparently you are there. Did Jisung give you the wrong address? You wouldn’t put it past him. You sigh deeply, rubbing your temples. What are you supposed to do now? The roads are a little icy, it’s getting dark, and you have no desire to drive around in the middle of nowhere trying to find this mysterious house. 

You take your phone from the holder and call your cousin. After a few rings, a familiar voice answers - it’s not Jisung, but Felix. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

“Hey, where are you?” 

“In the middle of fucking nowhere!” you cry out. “Are you sure Ji gave me the right address?” 

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Tell me what?” 

“The GPS will only take you so far. He didn’t say anything about turning right and following the side road?”

You sigh deeply, pushing two fingers against your upper nose. In your ear, Felix lets out a chuckle. 

“I guess he didn’t,” he says. “Ok, listen.” 

He gives you a few more directions, which you try your best to remember, and you tell him you’ll be there in a few minutes - and if you’re not, that he calls you back because you’ve probably gotten lost in the woods. 

You put down your phone and accelerate slowly, making your way through the woods. The side road is mostly clear of snow, luckily, and when you spot a lighted house in between the trees, you sigh in relief. A few cars are parked there, and you can hear faint music coming from inside. 

Once you’re parked, you grab your bags from the trunk and make your way to the front door. The place is bigger than you imagined, looking modern and expensive. It’s apparently the home of a friend of Felix’s who is away on vacation for the winter and agreed that Lix hosted his party there. The whole thing had been Jisung’s idea, who wanted to make this New Year particularly memorable after a difficult year. He wanted all his friends in one place, and of course Felix had to make it dramatic and host a party of more than twenty people in a house that isn’t even his. 

Jisung and Felix, your cousins, are also twins. You grew up together. Your mother raised you on her own, had to work a lot, and so she ended up entrusting her sister to watch over you. This resulted in you spending way too much time with your cousins, the incarnations of chaos. 

A few seconds after you knock the door opens on Jisung, and he opens his arms wide for a hug but instead you gently slap the back of his head. 

“Oi, what the hell?!” he whines. 

“Forgot to tell me about the side road,” you say, still pulling him into an affectionate hug. 

“Oh, right… Sorry about that,” he chuckles. 

“I nearly got lost in the woods,” you cry out dramatically. “I could’ve frozen to death. I could’ve been eaten by a bear.”

As Jisung continues to apologize, you keep doubling down on the worst possible scenarios that could have happened. It’s certainly one aspect of your character that developed by hanging out with Jisung and Felix - a flair for the dramatic. 

A few people have already arrived for the party. Some of them you know, some you don’t - Jisung makes sure to introduce you and tells you where to put your bags. The house is big, but not that big, and all of you will have to share the different rooms with a few others. You don’t mind, it’s just for one night, and you’ve had enough sleepovers with your cousins to be comfortable sleeping in the same room as them. That’s if all of you even make it to the rooms - you can already bet people will be falling asleep all over the house in the early hours of the morning. 

You meet Felix in the kitchen, giving him a tight hug, admiring the blue highlights he’s had made in his dark hair, and start to help him get some food ready. 

On the speakers is a dynamic playlist, and you hum to the music, cutting pieces of smoked salmon to make rolls. Felix dances with you, his booming laugh filling your chest with warmth. 

A few more guests come in, a few passing in the kitchen, which you welcome with broad grins. As you are putting colorful cupcakes on a platter, the door opens and a familiar voice reaches your ears. You’d recognize that shrill laugh anywhere. You glare at Felix, who is carefully avoiding your gaze.

“You invited Daki?!” you hiss, squinting your eyes. 

Felix pinches his lips, trying to hold off laughter. “She invited herself, you know how she is. Besides she’s also our cousin, it would’ve been awkward to say no.”

“She’s not my cousin. You’re just too nice,” you groan. “I’m not going to be.” 

“Don’t be petty.” 

“Felix, she’s been mad at me ever since Hyunjin chose me to be a part of his team for that board game. And we were eight years old. I’m not petty, she is.” 

You exchange a knowing look, Felix letting out a sigh. 

“Speaking of Hyunjin, is he coming?” you ask. 

“Yes, but later,” Felix tells you. “After he gets off work.” 

“Fashionably late, as always.” 

Hyunjin was your cousin’s neighbor when you were young, and he ended up spending a lot of time with you. So did Daki, for that matter. She was Jisung and Felix’s cousin from their father’s side, and your nemesis since that fateful board game many years ago. She had a crush on Hyunjin at the time - well, she still does - and when he had chosen you to be his partner instead of hers, she had looked at you like it was your fault. You still remember her telling you, some time later, that you did it to steal him away from her. 

You had laughed because you had never been interested in Hyunjin that way, and somehow that made it worse. Ever since, everytime you met, Daki made it her job to provoke you, flirting with your boyfriends, making sure to eliminate you from games, that kind of thing. At first you fought back, but you had gotten tired. At this point, you just found it ridiculous. 

When she comes into the kitchen to put the drinks she brought in the fridge, she is closely followed by Jisung who is already giggling. When he sees your face he bursts out laughing, running away as you slowly turn the knife in your hands. 

“Hi Daki!” you say, giving her your fakest smile.

She gives you a similar one. “Y/N, it’s been so long!” 

Fortunately she does not acknowledge you more than that and you turn away, grimacing, leaving Felix to take care of her. Instead you chase your other cousin down to give him another slap behind the head, and you steal his beer for good measure. You’re not going to let this ruin your evening. 

Jisung throws an arm around your shoulder, his grin taking half of his face. You sit down on the stairs, sipping his beer, looking around, while Jisung answers a message on his phone. People are spread around the room - a few are chatting around the fireplace, others are already busy playing a card game. On the couch next to the fireplace, a bit further away, is a gorgeous looking girl with long chestnut hair, Yuna, who your cousin has a crush on, talking with a guy with wide shoulders. You don’t know either of them, but you find yourself staring at the guy in question. 

Dark hair, almost black, unevenly brushes his forehead. Glistening eyes of deep brown, plump lips in the shape of a heart that are slightly pouted. He wears silver jewelry, a simple chain around his neck, two small hoops on his ear, a bracelet that moves as he explains something. On his shoulders, a fitted beige sweater that hints at an impressively muscled chest, tucked at the waist in a pair of black pants. You eye him up and down, all the way to his elegant leather shoes. 

His sleeves are rolled up a little, his smirk leans on the left side of his face, and from where you sit you can hear the hints of a rough, loud voice.

You slap Jisung’s shoulder, getting his attention. 

“Who is that?” you ask him, nodding towards the stranger. 

Jisung follows your gaze. “Oh, you haven’t met Changbin?” 

Changbin. That’s his name. It suits him.

You glare at Jisung. “No, but I want to.” 

Your cousin lets out an amused laugh. “We work together. He’s the one that came up with the concept I told you about?” 

“Really?” you say, unable to hide the interest in your voice. 

“Keep your panties on, please. But don’t worry, your favorite cousin will introduce you. It’ll give me an excuse to flirt with Yuna.” 

You roll your eyes at the “favorite cousin” appellation - he and Felix have been at it since you were old enough to understand the concept - but give him a thankful nod. You follow Jisung, who taps Changbin’s shoulder when you get close enough. Both him and Yuna look up. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jisung says cheerfully. “Bin, I wanted to introduce you to Y/N, my cousin.” 

Changbin glances at you with a smile, turning on the couch to get a better look at you. You wave at him with your most charming smile. It wouldn’t be much of a party if you didn’t get to flirt a little, right? 

“Oh, the infamous cousin,” Changbin chuckles. “I actually heard a lot about you. But then again, Ji talks a lot.” 

You laugh, ignoring Jisung’s complaints beside you. “It’s nice to meet you. I actually heard about you, too. I love that city lights concept you came up with.” 

Changbin’s face lights up, and you feel your heart flutter a little. You can’t help it - he’s incredibly charming, his smile even more. Jisung clears his throat next to you as you stare at Changbin, and him at you. 

“Hey, Yuna, want to get a drink?” 

The latter chuckles, nodding at Jisung. “Let’s go.” 

They walk away, and you point to the spot on the couch next to Changbin. “Can I sit down?” 

“Please,” he says. 

You sit, unable to stop looking at him. Of course Jisung would not have mentioned how hot his colleague was to you, but he is exactly your type and your cousin knows that. He’ll have to get another slap behind the head for that. 

“So you grew up with Ji, huh?” Changbin asks, leaning back on the couch. 

You nod. “Yup, him and Felix. My mom worked a lot, so my aunt watched over me.” 

“That must’ve been… exhausting,” Changbin chuckles. 

“I’m not that much better than them, to be honest,” you laugh. “Sometimes I might even be worse.” 

Amusement flashes in Changbin’s eyes. “I’m sensing good stories here.” 

You smile, unabashedly flirting. “You want one?” 

“Please.” 

So you tell him about the time the three built a fort when you were about ten and you had designated yourself main architect. You had made them build the whole thing, and then had pretended to throw a fit and destroyed everything. You played the same game two more times until you were “satisfied,” leaving your cousins frustrated and exhausted. 

Changbin listens attentively to you throughout, laughing, and you quickly grow fond of the sound. It’s playful, makes you laugh even more, and you get so immersed in your conversation you almost forget about the rest of the party. 

You notice a little scar on his chin. A beauty mark on his right ear. 

You talk for a while, sitting close to each other, when Felix appears from the kitchen and asks for your help. You apologize to Changbin, who tells you to go. 

“We’ll talk later,” he tells you with a wink. 

When you head to the kitchen, your legs feel a little wobbly. You’ve been smiling so much your cheeks hurt a little. 

You help Felix bring the food to the big table, which is set like a buffet. When you catch a glance of Changbin staring at you, you almost drop all the plates in your hands, because he is looking up and down at your body almost hungrily. If you were the type to blush, you would be scarlet right now. 

But you’re not. Instead, you have to refrain yourself from just walking over to him, dragging him over to the nearest room and making out until you can’t breathe. Your thoughts derail as you walk back to the kitchen. 

It’s been forever since you’ve felt such an instant attraction with someone. It has happened before, with one of your exes, a colleague at work. But like this? You aren’t sure but it might have never been this strong. All you want is to look back at him. See that lust in his eyes again. Know everything about him. You feel like you could run away to the other side of the world in this instant, take the biggest risks, a leap into the unknown, and he’d be holding your hand, laughing with you.  

What if you did drag him to a private spot? What would he say? Would he kiss you back, slide his fingers under your blouse? You would feel his muscles against your hands, bite into his full lips, push him inside you…

“You all right, cuz?” 

You look at Felix, who is frowning. 

“You looked really out of it just now,” he says. 

You bite your lip. “I’m fine, don’t worry,” you answer, although you can’t stay impassive.  

Felix’s mouth breaks into a grin.

“What were you thinking about, huh?” he giggles. “Or rather, who were you thinking about?” 

You nudge him, smirking to yourself. 

“Leave my dirty thoughts alone,” you tell him. 

He gasps. “So there IS someone… Tell me, tell me, please.” 

“No way,” you laugh. “If I tell you, next time you talk to him you won’t be able to stop giggling. I love you, Lix, but you’re the worst at keeping secrets.” 

He pouts, gathering forks to put on the table. 

“If you tell me your secret, I’ll tell you mine.” 

“What?!” you say. “You have a secret?” 

“I do.” 

“What is it?” 

“Only if you tell me who you were thinking of.” 

You squint your eyes, trying to decide if your cousin is making all of this up just to get the name out of you. It just isn’t Felix’s style, but you never know. As you’re trying to make up your mind, Jisung appears, sliding in the space between you.   

“What are we whispering about?” 

“Y/N was just going to tell me who she’s daydreaming fucking the brains out of,” Felix says with a sleazy smile. 

“Oh, Changbin?” Jisung says. 

You give him a furious look as Felix bursts out laughing. “JI, FUCK’S SAKE…” 

“Oops,” Jisung chuckles, putting a hand over his mouth. 

You slap his arm repeatedly, pouting. “Now I’ll never know Felix’s secret.” 

“What secret? That he hooked up with theatre guy?” 

“JISUNG,” Felix yells. 

It’s your turn to laugh hysterically, shaking your head. Eventually the three of you are snickering like you’re twelve again and looking up porn on the internet - you just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. 

“Never mind what I said, Lix,” you say, wiping tears from your eyes. “Ji is definitely the worst at keeping secrets.”

You’re eating too much, you’re drinking too much, you’re laughing too much - but is there such a thing as too much when it comes to those? It’s what parties are all about to you, anyway. 

Another thing you’re doing too much is flirting. You’ve always enjoyed it and clearly, so does Changbin, because like other things, you indulge in it a little too much.

There’s really no other way to say it - Changbin and you have been eyefucking each other since you met. Sitting beside one another, or being on opposite sides of the room, it seems like your eyes have constantly drawn to the other’s. At one point you thought he would be the one to take your hand and drag you away from the crowd, but neither of you have made a move yet. There has been some hand brushing, a few suggestive looks, even a seductive eyebrow raise or two. You gather that both of you are enjoying the tension that is rising, the what if that is surely turning into a when, waiting for the right opportunity. 

That has made an already wonderful evening even better. The food is delicious, the booze is plentiful, and Daki has barely bothered you so far, too busy glancing at the door, clearly waiting for Hyunjin to show up. She’s made you a few snarky comments but you can’t be bothered by them when Changbin stretches his arms, flexing his biceps a little, his shirt embracing his pectoral muscles. You’d rather focus on that.

Music is playing loudly, people are getting decidedly drunk, midnight is approaching, and you agree to play a game of poker with your cousins, Yuna, Changbin and a few others. Daki joins you seconds before the game starts, sitting next to Changbin. You can guess she’s noticed you and him flirting, and that she will try and get his attention to annoy you. Too predictable, Daki. She’s probably bored because Hyunjin isn’t here yet and she can’t annoy him. 

You are right, of course. You haven’t been playing for two minutes and she’s already whispering things in Changbin’s ear. However, the latter isn’t responding to her at all - he even shoots her annoyed glances, which makes you snicker. You try to focus on your own game, but it’s too entertaining to see Changbin repeatedly shooting down her attempts to flirt. When she giggles hysterically, leaning against him, Changbin directly takes her hand and puts it away from him, giving her a look that clearly says leave me alone. 

You bite your lip so hard it almost bleeds, trying not to burst out laughing. You’re not petty, but this is almost better than sex.

As you end the first round, Daki finally seems to give up on Changbin. You hope she will just go away, but of course she stays for another round and changes her target - you. 

When you make a raise, she laughs mockingly. 

“I think Y/N has good cards, guys,” she says. “Look at her face, it’s just so obvious.” 

You ignore her, keeping a straight face, but of course that only makes her laugh harder, and she points at you. 

“Aw, look, she’s trying to bluff. That’s cute, Y/N, really.” 

You keep ignoring her - her words aren’t getting to you. You notice that Changbin, however, is getting angry. He scrunches his nose, tilting his head to the side, as if he’s trying to stop himself from telling her to shut up. You try to smile at him to reassure him, but he’s too busy damning her to hell with his eyes. 

As if he wasn’t already so damn attractive. 

Daki continues taunting you, inciting the others to ruin your game, but except for those who don’t know you, none of them are having it. The atmosphere is tense. You will thank them later - for the moment, you focus on playing, because you have a plan and it is working perfectly. 

It ends up between you and Daki, of course, as you planned. You stare at her as she reveals her cards. A flush. 

“Not bad,” you say. 

“I’m so good at poker, Y/N, don’t worry!” she laughs.

“Yeah, like, I don’t know,” you say, putting on a fake confused expression as you put down your cards. “Isn’t this better?” 

Everyone looks at your cards. You have a flush, too - except it’s a straight one. The tension evaporates as the table erupts in screams and applause, and you finally break into a grin. Felix and Jisung jump on you, making you fall backwards, while Yuna gets a bottle of whisky to pour a few shots. You just get a glimpse at Daki’s defeated face, not giving her your attention. Instead you focus on Changbin’s shining eyes and amused smirk. 

You raise your shot glass to him. 

Hyunjin arrives not long after, holding the hand of his new girlfriend. She has red hair and the most beautiful smile. As you hug your old friend, you take a look at Daki, who looks like she’s just been slapped. Karma’s a bitch, huh?

You can’t help but snicker. That might be a little petty, but you’ve been drinking and you don’t care. Daki’s hurt your feelings more times than you can count in the past, and you feel like her having a shitty evening barely grazes the idea of payback. Unluckily, she catches you laughing and heads towards you, fists clenched, eyes full of rage. 

“What are you laughing at, you fucking bitch?” she spits at you.

You raise your hands. “Woah, calm down, will you?” 

“You think I’m pathetic?” she chuckles mockingly. “Have you seen yourself acting like a fucking slut all night? You think that guy’s going to be interested in you? You’re just a skank and everybody knows -” 

“What the fuck’s your problem?” 

You and Daki turn your heads towards Changbin, who has appeared next to you. His jaw is clenched, and he’s looking down at Daki with disgust. 

Daki scoffs. “This is none of your -” 

“Leave her alone,” Changbin interrupts in a dry voice. 

“I’m not going to -”

“Fuck off.” 

His voice is so commanding that Daki pales a little. She straightens her back, shoots you a last malicious look and walks away. You breathe out, shaking your head. 

“Fuck,” you sigh. “I thought she was going to hit me for a second there.” 

Changbin shakes his head, giving Daki a dirty look. 

“You guys have history or something?” 

“Yeah,” you sigh. “A long one.” 

He gives you a nod, sensing you do not want to talk about it too much. Instead you smile at him, sliding a hand through your hair. 

“Thanks for the intervention. I appreciate it. I’m too drunk to be the bigger person, so it would have ended badly.” 

He smirks, leaning towards you. You get a whiff of his cologne and it makes you a little dizzy. Fuck, he smells good. 

“I have an idea,” he breathes in your ear. 

You frown, giving him a questioning look. He raises an eyebrow. 

“On how you can pay me back.” 

The words send your thoughts reeling. Oh, fuck. Is he finally going to do it? Take your hand and lead you to an empty room to ruin you? You hope so. You so desperately hope so. 

Are you a little too horny? 

“Yeah?” you ask, your voice a little weak. 

“Follow me.” 

He takes your hand and guides you through the room. Your heart is pounding, your eyes fixed on the back of his neck. Is this happening? It’s going too fast and not nearly fast enough. Your mouth is dry, your legs weak, and -

Changbin goes to the kitchen. You frown when he stops at the counter, looking at the numerous bottles of strong alcohol that are stored there, carefully choosing one. You’re confused - but clearly, you misread his intentions. 

He shows you the bottle of tequila rose, and you chuckle. 

“You want me to take a shot?” you suggest. 

He grins. “Jisung came to work one morning with the worst hangover I’d ever seen. Said it was the fault of homemade shots with tequila rose in them. Made by you. I don’t know why, it stuck in my head, and I’d like to try one.” 

“Oh,” you laugh. “You mean the Hot Lips.” 

You don’t miss Changbin glancing at your mouth, looking perfectly satisfied with the turn of events. “Is that what they are called?” 

“It is,” you answer, taking the bottle from his hands. “Give me that. You’re not ready for this. Your liver will hate you tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait.” 

You get busy gathering the ingredients while Changbin gets the shot glasses, and you talk about that infamous night with your cousins. You, Felix and Jisung had gotten so ridiculously drunk on your shots you had gone outside in the freezing winter to build a snowman at three in the morning wearing no shoes. You were horribly sick for nearly a week after that. 

Changbin stays close to you as you pour the right ounces of the ingredients. Tequila rose. Grenadine. Soda. A little vodka. A little whisky. And a little surprise of your own. 

“Just a little bit of lemon to soften the sweetness,” you whisper to Changbin, giving him a wink. “Don’t tell anyone.” 

He’s standing so close to you you can feel his breathing in your hair. 

“I wouldn’t dare.” 

You turn to face him, keeping your eyes in his. You hand him his shot, filled to the brim, and take yours. 

“See you on the other side,” you tell him. 

You cheer and take the shot. The taste is almost overwhelming in your throat, and you let out a sharp woo. Glancing at Changbin, you realize he’s closed his eyes. He shakes his head and groans. 

“Damn, fuck, that is strong,” he laughs. 

You bite your lip, trying not to laugh too much, but his eyes are glimmering with mischief. He puts down the shot glass, licking his lips slowly. His eyes find yours again, and he takes another step towards you. You’re just drunk enough for your inhibitions to have disappeared. Changbin smells good. Changbin looks good. 

“Delicious, though,” he states, staring at you intently. “Just the right amount of sweet. Just the right amount of rough.”

You swallow, mouth parted. You’re not even sure what he is talking about, at this point.

“I can see why it’s addictive,” he smirks. “Can I have another?” 

“As many as you want, baby.” 

The nickname escapes your lips but he doesn’t seem to mind it. On the contrary, his smirk deepens and you feel the warmth pooling between your legs. You must already be soaked at this point. Fuck, there’s no one in the room. What if I sucked his dick in the kitchen? Would he like that? 

You chuckle to yourself, and Changbin looks at you questioningly. 

“I was just thinking about sucking your dick,” you say. 

Changbin remains silent, and you realize that you’ve actually said this. Out loud. 

You gasp, your eyes wide. You stammer. “Holy fuck, I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that, it just -” 

“Why don’t you?” he interrupts, his voice low and husky, placing his fingers underneath your chin to lift your head. You meet his gaze, dark and lustful. “I wouldn’t mind you sucking my dick right now. I bet you’d look even more sweet with your mouth full.” 

You gulp, feeling your walls clench at the sound of his words. Fuck, you need this man to ruin you right now. You’re dizzy with arousal, and he gently takes your hand, guides it on his crotch. He places your palm around his hardening cock, and you can’t hold back a whimper. 

“You’re not going to leave me with this unattended, are you, baby?” 

Instinctively, your hand squeezes his cock, and you smile. 

“I wouldn’t dare.” 

Outside the kitchen you hear people bursting into laughter. The risk of someone walking in is so dangerously high it makes you dizzy, but you’re a little too drunk to care. And honestly, it makes the whole situation even better. 

Keeping your eyes in his, you unzip his pants, taking out his cock. It’s decidedly hard now, which makes you very happy. You kneel on the cold floor, looking up at Changbin. Slowly, keeping your eyes in his, you lick the length of his cock, smearing your saliva on it so you can lazily stroke it. He pushes the hair out of your face, biting his lower lip. 

“You look fucking good like that, Y/N,” he growls. “I fucking love that dress, by the way. Made me want to snuggle my dick between your tits all night.” 

You chuckle, kissing the tip of his cock. “Who knows, if you’re nice to me, your dream might come true.” 

“Nice?” he laughs. “I’m not sure I know how to do nice. But I can certainly fuck your brains out.”

“Sounds nice enough to me.” 

You guide his cock in your mouth, slowly taking it as deep as you can. Changbin breathes out, holding your hair. You start to bob your head up and down his length, swirling your tongue at the same time. 

“Good, that’s good,” he whispers. “Fucking good.” 

Encouraged by his praise, you accelerate your movements, and Changbin thrusts his hips sharply. Surprised, you gag a little, taking a deep breath. 

“Hm,” he chuckles. “Let’s try it again, huh? I know you can do better.” 

It’s like he knows exactly what to tell you - you can do better, and you want to prove it to him. So you take him in your mouth again, taking your hand off his base, and make sure you almost reach his pelvis. Changbin breathes a guttural growl, pushing your head against the kitchen island, trapping you there. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, yes.” 

He fucks your mouth and you feel your eyes tear up, but you adore the sounds he makes, the way his face scrunches as he throbs in your mouth. When he pulls back after a few seconds to let you breathe, you give him a broad smile. 

“This is so fucking hot,” you chuckle. 

Changbin smiles, grazing your cheek with his thumb. “You like this, Y/N?” You like the way he says your name, like he’s still learning it, tasting it on his tongue. “Well, maybe you are a slut, huh?” 

“For you, definitely,” you tell him. 

“That’s the attitude,” he grins. “Keep sucking, my little slut.” 

You go back to it. As you moan around his length, the kitchen door opens, and Changbin quickly pulls himself out of your mouth. Luckily, from where you are behind the kitchen island, you are not visible from the entrance of the kitchen, and the island is high enough to prevent the person from seeing what is exactly happening. 

“Oh, Changbin,” the person says, and you realize it’s Felix.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

“Have you seen Y/N?” your cousin asks, his voice slurry. “It’s going to be midnight soon, and we always celebrate together, and…” 

He rambles on, clearly drunker than you. That might help prevent him from suspecting anything, you tell yourself. Still, you bite your lip hard, trying not to move or breathe too loud. 

“I haven’t, sorry,” Changbin says. “Just fixing myself a drink. Maybe she went to get some air outside?” 

Felix gasps. “Oh, right. Good idea.” 

For a second you think Felix might have gone, but Changbin remains immobile, and when you look up he’s giving your cousin a broad smile. 

“You need help with something?” Felix offers. 

“Nope,” Changbin quickly replies. “All good.” 

“Cool,” Felix says. “I’ll check outside, thanks, Changbin.”

You see him wave, and the kitchen door closes behind your cousin. You breathe out, and you look at each other for a second before starting to laugh. 

“Fuck, that would’ve been awkward,” you say. 

“He’s so drunk I bet he wouldn’t have noticed,” Changbin replies, stroking your hair. “You still good to go?” 

You smile. “Fuck, yeah.” 

“Oh, you like that, don’t you? The risk of being walked on. I can see it in your eyes.” 

You don’t deny it - instead, you take his cock and slap it against your tongue. Changbin throws his head backwards and guides himself back in your mouth. It fits back easily, and you secure your hands on his thighs. 

“How does my cock fit in your mouth so well?” he breathes. “My good little slut.”

You let him fuck your mouth, feeling his thrusts getting a little more restless, and from the way he grips your hair, you know he is close. 

“I’m gonna come,” he grunts. “Look at me, Y/N.” 

When your eyes flutter up to meet his, Changbin lets out a shaky breath. You hold his penetrative gaze as he buck his hips and empties himself in your mouth. He manages not to make too much noise, clenching his jaw, and when he relaxes, you take his cock in your hands and proceed to lick him clean. You trace his length, lick your lips, and he twitches a little, coming down from his orgasm. 

“Did my little slut swallow everything?” he asks hoarsely. 

You nod, showing him your tongue. He chuckles, putting his cock back in his pants. You look at his face, smiling, and he brings you up to your feet. 

“Let’s fix you up.” 

He proceeds to put your hair back in order, taking a napkin to wipe the corners of your mouth and the mascara that dripped down your cheeks a little. Meanwhile you just take the opportunity to look at him. When he’s done, he eyes you up and down, and you pout. 

“What about me?” 

“What about you, sweet thing?” 

“I want to come in your mouth, too.” 

Changbin smiles, and you take his hand to guide it under your dress. You open his palm so he cups your soaked underwear. The contact already makes you moan, and you roll your hips against his hand. 

“I’m so fucking wet, Changbin…” 

He parts his mouth at the same time the kitchen door opens again. You twirl around, Changbin’s hand escaping the throbbing space between your legs. It’s Felix again. 

“I didn’t find her, so I -” 

Your cousin stops, staring at you, blinking, visibly confused. 

“I found her,” Changbin smiles. 

You grin at your cousin, who finally breaks into a smile and walks up to you, oblivious, rambling about the fact that it’s almost midnight and you almost missed it. You can feel it - you’ve been lucky not to get caught during the blowjob, and you can’t push it. Your drenched, aching cunt will have to wait.

“THREE, TWO, ONE… HAPPY NEW YEAR!” 

As per tradition, you, Felix and Jisung grab each other’s shoulders and start to turn in a circle. It’s something you’ve created when you were kids. You call it your manifesting circle, invoking good energy for the rest of the year. It’s bullshit, but you couldn’t see yourself not doing it every New Year’s. 

Felix smooches you on the cheek, Jisung runs away to find Yuna, and you feel someone tapping your shoulder. You turn to find Changbin standing behind you, a smirk on his lips. He takes your chin in his hand and guides your head upwards, kissing you deeply. Felix yells happily in your ear, but you barely hear him, drunk on the booze, drunk on Changbin’s tongue playing with yours. You wrap your arms around his neck, making out with him for what seems like hours, until you’re out of breath, until you can barely stand straight. 

When you look at him afterwards, his eyes are shining, and his smile steals your heart. 

“Happy New Year,” he whispers. 

The only thing reminding you that what happened with Changbin is real is that your mouth and throat feel a little sore - but other than that, you might have thought it was some kind of vivid, waking dream. 

You want to keep talking to him, but Felix really wants to dance with you and you can never say no to him, so Changbin just decides to do it with the two of you. You giggle excitedly as he rolls his hips seductively, and you and Felix show him a choreography that you created when you were kids. Changbin laughs so hard he holds his sides.  

When the three of you get too tired, Felix joins a board game and Changbin sits down on the couch next to you, his arm around your shoulder, not caring in the slightest at what people might say. You snuggle against him as you talk to Hyunjin, who wanted to talk to you about Daki. She has gone home, apparently. You feel bad for her, but not really. It never brings any good to be mean with no reason, Hyunjin tells you. 

You and Changbin keep close to each other, exchanging knowing smiles. His hand is resting on your thigh, and your head is leaning on his shoulder. You’re a little impatient for more, but it’s also thrilling. You want to kiss him. You want to know how his tongue feels against yours. How he would use his lips on your pussy. How his cock would feel inside you. You want to hear him groan again. 

Although he’s softer outside of sex, you’re not surprised by his dominating personality, and you find yourself craving it. It’s not always a kink of yours, but with the right person, it can reduce you to a trembling mess, which is exactly what you want to become in Changbin’s arms. There’s just something about him. 

So you slowly and discreetly pull on your dress so it falls higher on your thighs. Changbin’s eyes drop on them, and he slides his hand higher. You repeat the same game two more times, stopping before it gets downright inappropriate. Eventually you can’t focus on anything else, so you stand up and say you’re going to the bathroom. 

You’re hoping Changbin gets the hint. You don’t care much anymore - everyone is either too drunk or busy to notice, and you’ve seen people disappearing for a while inside rooms. Why not you? It’s the new year, open to all opportunities, and you’re not going to waste this one. 

You walk up the stairs, glancing back at Changbin who is staring at you, biting his lip. You just smile back, and you walk very slowly upstairs. You’re almost there when you hear footsteps behind you, and you barely have time to twirl on your feet that Changbin grabs your wrist and pulls you inside the bathroom. He slams you against the door, his eyes drilling into yours. 

“I think you might be having an issue with your dress,” he smiles. 

“Do I?” you ask innocently. “Maybe you should help me with it.” 

He chuckles, spinning you around. Your palms rest against the door, your ass facing him. Changbin hikes up your dress slowly, revealing your panties. He groans and slaps your ass, kneading the skin.

“My little slut,” he breathes. “Already can’t get enough of me, huh?” 

“I can’t focus on anything,” you admit with a chuckle. “I need you, Changbin, please…” 

You breathe heavily as he brushes a finger against the fabric of your panties, over your clit and your entrance. You are soaked. 

“Fuck, please touch me…” 

He slaps your ass again, drawing a sharp breath from your mouth. 

“You want to show me your pretty pussy?” he breathes in your ear. 

“Yes.” 

“You want my fingers or my tongue?” 

“T-tongue.” 

He chuckles, taking a step back, and you glance above your shoulder to see him kneel behind you. He grins at you, pulling down your panties. 

“Arch that cute ass for me, will you?” 

You do, and he hums appreciatively, spreading your legs to get better access. He starts by coating your pussy with his fingers, licking your juices off them, and then his tongue flicks you. 

“Fuck,” you moan, twitching a little. 

“You taste so good, baby,” he sighs. “I’m going to make you come so hard your legs won’t be able to hold you up.” 

You breathe out, aching for more of his touch, and fortunately Changbin obliges. His mouth comes to rest against your throbbing cunt, and he starts to eat you out hungrily. His tongue swirls against you, presses against your clit, teases your entrance. Changbin holds your thighs apart, massaging your skin, and as you whimper and pant against his caresses, his thumb circles your folds. 

“Don’t fucking stop,” you cry out, feeling your orgasm building quickly. 

He doesn’t, only smiles against your pussy, and it’s the best feeling in the world. He kisses you, rolling his tongue on your wetness, and you only wish you could see him there, buried between your legs, his mouth and chin coated in you. 

You push your fingers against the door, biting your lip as your orgasm suddenly flashes through you. A cry escapes your mouth, your entire body shaking against Changbin who does not stop and even accelerates, guiding you through. When your muscles untense, you feel your legs give in, but Changbin quickly sits up to hold you up by the waist, pulling you to him with a chuckle. 

“What did I say, huh?” 

He groans in your ear, and you feel his hard cock against your ass. 

“I need to fuck that tight little cunt of yours. Just like it is now. Still throbbing, all drenched and ready for me.” 

“Do it, Changbin,” you nod, still hazy from your orgasm. “P-please.” 

He quickly undoes his belt and frees his cock, and brushes it against your still sensitive folds. You moan, Changbin breathing hard against your neck. 

“Ready, baby?” 

You nod, and he enters you slowly, leaving you time to adjust to him. He feels big and thick, but you’re so wet he slides in easily, not stopping until he is deep inside of you. Once he’s there, you both breathe out, chuckling in delight. 

“That’s where my cock belongs,” Changbin growls. “You good?” 

“Fuck, yes,” you sigh. 

You roll your ass against him, and Changbin takes it as an invitation to start moving. He draws his hips away from you only to thrust sharply, fucking you hard. Soon he’s pounding into you, and you’re moaning, and he’s holding your waist and burying himself inside of you like he’s going mad. 

Neither of you are going to last long, you can feel it. The teasing has been enough, and deep down you know this won’t be your last time fucking. 

“I want to fucking come inside of you,” he breathes. “Will you let me, little slut? Take my cum deep, keep it in you?” 

“Yes,” you breathe. “Give it to me. Fuck, I’m gonna come again.” 

He’s rubbing against the right spots and you’re rolling your eyes in your head. As your second orgasm flashes through you, you clench around Changbin and he lets out a low groan. You feel his cock twitch and then spurt inside of you, warm and heavy. 

He fucks you until you both ride out your orgasms, breathing heavily, his body laying against yours. Once your breathing steadies, Changbin removes himself from inside of you, and you feel his cum, mixed with your own, sliding down your inner thigh. 

You fall into his arms, letting out a long, shaky sigh. 

“Fuck… That was so good,” you breathe with a laugh. “You are so good at this, what the fuck?” 

“Right back at you,” he chuckles, pushing your hair away from your face before giving you a long kiss. “Let’s clean you up. We still have a party to attend.”

Felix is trying to explain a board game to you. He’s the worst at it. You really should just read the instruction manual, but you like hearing his voice, so you let him do it. Eventually, though, he just gives up. It’s way too late and you’re both too drunk to play such a complicated game, anyway. Instead Felix relaxes on the couch, and you lean against him. 

You talk about food, about family, about work - and then Felix catches you looking over at Changbin, who is clearly winning a game of beer pong not too far. 

“So, Changbin?” he asks, grinning. “Anything happened between you?” 

You smirk, and Felix breaks into giggles. 

“Tell me, tell me,” he begs. 

“A lady doesn’t tell,” you reply, poking his chest. 

Felix scoffs. “You, a lady? Please. I’m more of a lady than you.” 

“True,” you laugh. “Well… Yeah, something might’ve happened.” 

“Oh, that smile,” he says. “You really like him, huh?” 

You nod. 

Felix wiggles his eyebrows. “Why not go spend more time with him?” 

“Maybe later,” you smile. “For now I like spending time with my favorite cousin.” 

“Tssssk,” Felix chuckles. “I don’t believe you. You say that, but I know you tell Ji the same.” 

“Well Ji is clearly busy somewhere else, so it’s you I get to annoy.” 

You start to tickle him, and Felix gets distracted into another conversation topic, and you lose track of time, soothed by the sound of your cousin breathing, the music, the conversation around you. 

It feels like seconds later when you open your eyes, realizing you’ve been dozing off on Felix’s shoulder. Your cousin is deep asleep next to you, cuddling the plush mushroom he got from the gift exchange. He’s not the only one - a lot of people have gone to their rooms, the music is softer, and the place is a reassuring mess, with plates and glasses and pieces of wrapping paper everywhere.

Near the fireplace, Hyunjin is stroking his girlfriend’s hair, lovingly whispering things in her ear. You stand up on shaky legs, looking around for Changbin. He’s sitting in a corner with another guy, playing a quiet game of cards. You catch his gaze, and he smirks, waving at you to come. You drag your feet towards him, settling down on his leg. You nestle your head in the crook of his neck, and Changbin chuckles. 

You’re good there. You doze off a little again, and open your eyes when you hear Changbin’s friend say he’s going to sleep. You expect him to get up and walk upstairs, but instead he draws his hoodie on his head, leans against the wall and closes his eyes. You giggle, turning your face towards Changbin. 

“You want to go to bed?” he whispers. 

“Hm,” you nod. 

“Let’s go.” 

He takes your hand gently and you follow him upstairs. The first room is locked, another is already packed. The last one you find has two other people in it, so you head back downstairs and decide to nestle in an unoccupied corner of the living room. Changbin finds two blankets, laying one down on the floor, and another on your bodies. You snuggle against him, his arm enveloping you. You feel his breath in your neck. 

The living room is silent. All you can hear is the hushed whispers of Hyunjin and his girlfriend - but even those stop after a few minutes. The fire is nearly extinguished, the living room plunged in darkness. You feel warm and safe in Changbin’s arms - but you can’t bring yourself to sleep. All you can think about is how nice his body feels, how wet you are - and how you feel his cock hardening against your ass. 

“What are you thinking about?” you whisper. 

He lets out a breath. “Are you still wet?” 

His low voice in your ear makes you shiver. You nod. 

“Good,” he answers. 

His hand slips on your waist, feeling the fabric of your dress. You breathe out, closing your eyes to enjoy the sensation. His fingers go further up, cupping your breasts, teasing your nipples. You arch your back, pushing your ass against his crotch. Changbin starts to breathe heavily in your neck, sending strands of your hair dancing. 

You don’t even care that you’re in the middle of a room filled with people. You just want to feel him. Besides, nobody is paying attention to you. The room is dark, and you’re protected by the blanket. 

Changbin’s hand pushes up your dress, removes your panties. When his fingers finally find your still soaked cunt, you softly whimper. 

“Fuck, you’re so warm,” Changbin breathes. “Can you be a good girl and be silent, baby?” 

You nod again. 

“Just don’t stop touching me,” you tell him. 

He smiles against the back of your neck, planting a kiss there. You open your legs a little, facilitating his access. Changbin takes two fingers and pushes them on your swollen clit, tracing wide circles, exerting just the right amount of pressure. You shudder, biting your lip to keep from moaning aloud. 

But you keep breathing, holding it back to enjoy Changbin’s caresses. His fingers relieve the ache of your folds, and then he teases your entrance. When he plunges into you, caressing your inner walls, you have to grab his sweater behind you, anything to keep yourself from moaning his name. He starts to finger you, relentlessly. It feels so fucking good. 

“Is that good, Y/N? Do you love my fingers deep inside your cunt?” 

“Yes, Changbin, fuck…” 

“I can’t wait to replace them with my cock.”

You clench around his fingers, and he must feel it, because he chuckles. 

“Do you want that, huh? Do you want me to fuck you in the middle of a crowded room?” 

“I want you to fuck me, Changbin, please… Fuck, I’m gonna come -” 

He removes his fingers in a sweep, leaving you gasping. Changbin pushes a hand against your mouth, muffling the sound. 

“Can’t have you waking everyone up, baby,” he whispers in your ear. 

You feel him pull down his pants, the tip of his cock brushing your cunt, and you breathe against his fingers. He holds them there, pushing himself inside of you, stretching you. He feels big, he feels good, already familiar - and you fall back against his body. His chest feels firm, his arms big and strong. Although there’s not much space for maneuver under the blanket, Changbin still manages to buck his hips, filling you deep. His thrusts are slow and powerful, making your body shake, and the rest of the world becomes a blur. 

“Shhhh,” he breathes in your ear. “Do you want them to know I’m fucking you?” 

You can’t help but whimper a little against his palm as he fucks you deeper, slamming his hips into you, and then you’re coming, writhing in his arms. Changbin growls in your ear, fucking you even faster, and then you feel him come inside of you. You are still trembling, slowly coming down your high, and Changbin removes his hand. 

He sighs, and you let out a chuckle, turning to face him. 

“Do you think anybody noticed?” you whisper, and he smiles. 

“I don’t really care.” 

You smile back, rubbing your nose on his jaw, his neck. Your eyes are heavy, and you feel yourself drifting off. 

“Y/N?” he asks in your ear. 

“Hm?” 

“Will you go on a date with me next week?” 

You open your eyes just enough to see him look at you. You kiss him, gently, and put your hand against his chest. 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

• permanent taglist: @ughbehavior ; @upallnight-s ; @changbinluvr ; @rosexjimin ; @nasiaisan ; @lotus-dly ; @cb97percent ; @j-0ne25 ; @hwan-g ; @jhopesucker ; @tanyas97 ; @raspbinniecreme ; @septicrebel ; @imtoooyoungforthisshit ; @sikebishes ; @sai-kida134 ; @sstarryoong ❤️ (let me know if you want to be added/removed)

[avirxy]

It’s cold outside

[the-forgotten-and-exiled-ones]

An Age for Age

Diety AU

Disclaimer: Characters are all ocs that belong to me and @moonturtle6 The plot of this au isn't cannon or relevant to the show at all

The story is best read while listening to this score: https://youtu.be/V5MUIzto6Tc

Tw: Cannibalism

This takes place a month after the guardians defeat Chaac, Odin tells Opal that his time in the physical realm is ending and for them to contact the other guardians before trekking to the highest point in the mountains of Glacier Plains so he can lay himself to rest. Opal and the others began the long trek up the dangerous mountains. Odin possess Opal for the final time allowing his spirit to expel out so that his body seamlessly becomes one with mountain. They then reach the highest peak, Opal's body spasms and shakes as the last of Odin's spirit emerges from her mouth before taking shape of his head and resting the bottom of mouth on the ice covered stone.

The other guardians (Josel, Fenfir, Constance, Sybil and Amazonite) are then told to stay back for a moment of privacy between the dying diety and Opal. Odin then whispers his thanks and endless gratitude to Opal for allowing him to see the world change, for showing him how wondrous a budding familial relationship can become between a Serpentine who tragically lost her change and a human child desperate for a mother's love...for showing him the beauty of rising through the hardships and reuniting with her own people again. As he draws his final shaky breath Odin admits to Opal he's afraid of dying to which she replies knowingly "It'll only hurt for a second, dear one." With that the elder deity allows himself to grasp the hand of death and enter the spiritual realm once more.

A fierce blizzard appears out of nowhere, through the ferocity of the sharp winds and blinding snow and ice by sunrise all of Odin's body is completely encased and melded with the peak of the mountain. Opal stares at the encased head of a lost companion who had been with her since the very beginning of her long and arduous journey before slowly turning to leave to rejoin the other guardians; however a shrill mewl of a crying child pierces the air freezing her and the other guardians in their tracks. Opal turns and runs back up to the peak where she finds a day old hatchling wailing in the snow beside Odin's maw. Quickly, they scoop the whimpering baby in their arms and hold them tightly against her chest to warm the frighteningly cold body. The other guardians cautiously approach not knowing what to expect from the now ex guardian. To everyone's shock the baby resembles Harry, Opal's late son, the only major difference between this baby and Opal's son is the otherworldly white colors of their scales meaning that this child must be a reincarnation of Odin's spirit.

"When the last whisp of my spirit reenters this world, you must make hast and consume it for death and life are one and the same." The grim words echoes in the ex guardian's mind and causes their heart to drop. Carefully, with a mother's devotion, they studied the shape of the child that laid in their arms. They looked so familiar to their child that they had lost so long ago...yet it was not them it was their deity and they must follow their command no matter how painful and gutwrenching it was.

Placing a tear filled kiss on the baby's innocent forehead the Serpentine reared back their head before sinking their fangs into the child's flesh and tearing them asunder. A piercing wail and howls of objections filled the hollow of the mountain as the other guardians tried in vain to stop horrifying act. Several minutes passed by as the baby's wails of agony fell silent but the hair raising sound of crunching bones continued. Finally, with the grip deed done Opal meticulously licked the remaining blood away before settling back on her hunches to wait for the last part of the command to come to pass. A pale glow shone through her body for them and the other guardians to witness the "rebirth" of the deity. The shape melded and grew until it took the form of a seven year old child curled into a fetal position before it faded away inside and within the very center of Opal's soul.

Death and life were one and the same

[blooddrop-palace]

Project Updates - What to Look Forward To

<3 Hello all! I've realized (humbly) that I have a small following of very nice people that seem quite interested in what I've written so far, and after seeing some mutuals post update-status posts, I thought I should share what's going on with my projects, also. (Thanks for the encouragement, @queenmuzz!)

Updated Dec-10-20

Sons of Fortune

Probably somehow my main focus now, though I am steadily working on other works. Currently working on the “In Between” special short before I start on Chapter 12.

I would also like to talk a little bit about my plans for this story: if anyone has paid attention to this story's tags, yes, I am touching up on the plots of most of the games. In fact, all of them, and the anime. (I already dealt with DMC4. No, I will not tear apart Fortuna lol.) Not all relevant tags are in, yet, because small spoilers. It looks like it's going to be a long while before I even get to the Temen-ni-gru, though. (There is a reason why that event is getting pushed back.) I want to have fun with the family fluff that is the twins each learning how to parent, first. 

Hell Froze Over, and We Shall Reignite It

The drama of it all! Dante and Vergil are finally back from Hell, and Nero doesn’t even know his mother is now standing right in front of him. Meanwhile, even I’m anticipating seen how Snow and Dante is going to handle the obvious things currently unsaid... and I have a feeling a small measure of stupidity is still going to be involved.

Current chapter progress: Outline complete.

It's going to feel so interesting, shifting from "Fortune" back to Reignite. I get to write Sera and Vergil falling in love all over again, with a different set of circumstances. Whoa.

And, and... Nero meeting Sera... odd that I'm saying this as the writer, but I have a "I hope he likes his mom" feeling going on. 

Also, no doubt Dante's brain is going to 404 when he sees Snow. 

Nico prepares popcorn.

This is Not an Office Rom-Com

I have... about 8 new skits planned out. Nothing more written just yet.

That’s all I’m saying about this for now. =P

Hierarchy of Kings

Purely indulgent M/M romance of Vergil and an OC, existing all thanks to

@wordborne

Working on chapter 2. 

I know I said 3 chapters only. I might have lied depending on how much I want to write. It's supposed to be just... awkward fluff of a listless part-devil who somewhat-recently lost his mate, got in a bit of a tiff with his brother, and now his children are trying to set him up with the prospective-king-of-hell, Vergil. 

I think about this one a lot but I haven't written anything new for it yet, only because "Fortune" is taking over my life right now, haha.

Through the Lens of the Beholder

Okay, so...This story has no real plot. As a result, my drive for it is purely down to "if I think of a badass or cool photograph to describe." There is a TINY bit of plot. Only a little. And I don't know when I'll update. But this is why I'm trying not to START new projects. Four  is a lot already! But because this one is supposed to be simpler than the other two, I will most likely finish this one before the others, so I can open a new project. 

---------------

Speaking of new projects... Here are things ideas bouncing through my head:

- I still have a prompt from @maybeishouldwait sitting in my inbox. I WILL have it done one day, when I find the perfect way to write it. 

A whole, entirely royally late set of Dadgil week fics.  Yep. I want to write them. They just won’t be on time. 

Written in Ink

A plot-less post-DMC5 story. 

I say plot-less. There is a plot. The plot is:

Dante: Damn it, Verge, are you trying to turn my office into a zoo??

In which Vergil compulsively starts contracting strong demons he's defeated, left and right, because he's discovered "the joy of pets." The demons all take on a dark animistic form and things get wild. 

A Persona and DMC fusion/AU

I have no title for this yet, and I absolutely cannot start this one until I have finished one of my other big projects. This one will take a lot of big planning, because I am making a new plot, using the mechanics of Persona, with DMC characters and setup.

What I want to write, is a teenage Nero as the protagonist, trying to solve a mystery... probably starting with the sudden disappearance of his mother. (Most likely Sera.) And he meets a lot of "new" people, and even finds new family... and yes, he will find his dad. (I'm thinking he'll know about Vergil, though. At least in name and a photo? Isn't that an interesting difference?)

For those of you not familiar with Persona, the major theme I really want to play with is that of the protagonist growing as a person (and in power) by befriending different people that helps them grow as a person. Each party member and important NPC is represented by a Tarot Card, signifying the type of journey the protagonist (The Fool) "embarks" with that character. There is growth in both the protagonist and that characters. 

Again, this is ambitious to try and pull off... but it's in the back of my head. I'll focus on it once I've cleared some other stuff. 

Sugar Sweet

A somewhat short-chapter series reader fic... of a surgeon/doctor!reader (barely 30 and good at what you do) who often saves the lives of shady people (e.g. mafia) because you care about saving lives, not the politics. But you do make good money out of it. (Hey, you gotta be at least a bit morally ambiguous if you're going to deal with devils.)

You meet one mess of a young mercenary named Dante, who is totally not human and deals with things like having bullets healed into his back, and he can't reach them to cut them out. 

Dante doesn't care about bills for his office, or a lot of the debts in his life. You don't know where his money is going, or if he even makes much money at all (for the kind of specialty work he does? Money's going somewhere, but that's none of your business.)

You won't pay Dante's bills, or his debts, but he will accept pizza and ice cream. And new parts for his jukebox. And maybe a motorcycle. Or a new coat. Or a new car...

And you might complain to him about your dumb patients. Or just listen to him talk about his job. Or you two watch a movie together.

And this just continues. For years. 

Tokusatsu DMC fusion/AU

So. First thing's first: I'm a big fan of Sentai/Tokusatsu. What is that, you might ask? It's a Japanese genre, and if you're familiar with Power Rangers, that's derived from Sentai. 

Basically: Masked heroes with transformation gadgets, sometimes with motorcycles, fighting against evil. ("Magical girls" but strictly the opposite, a lot more physical combat involved, may involve upgrade gadgets, and not strictly limited to male heroes though mostly a male cast. Also not strictly for male-only audience. Girls like the eye-candy, too. :eyes-emoji:)

Why am I thinking about this?

Because I have found out that: Vergil's VA, Dan Southworth, was the Quantum Ranger (WHICH WAS RED). Nero's VA, Johnny Yong Bosch, was a Black Ranger and a Green Ranger. 

...And Dante's VA, Reuben Langdon, had a role in a Japanese Toku show as "B-Fighter Yanma" forever ago???? (HE WAS BLUE!!)

What am I going to do with this info? I'll let you know later. But my Sentai/Toku-loving little heart is about to burst with hyperfixation overlap. 

If I ever write this out, expect it to be just as cheesy as an actual Kamen Rider show. Or, at the very least, expect some art. I love Kamen Rider stuff!

Family Fantasy MMO

Snow introduces Dante, Vergil, Nero, and Kyrie to Final Fantasy 14 (because that’s the MMO I play) for family bonding. Yep. Mainly for silly indulgence.

Stardew Valley Visit

Post DMC5, Vergil and Dante accidentally end up going on a vacation when they try to leave Hell. No pairing with the farmer, but instead just a relaxing and somewhat introspective moment of the boys being stuck with most of their power temporarily sealed, learning how to take care of a farm, and maybe do a bit of healing by interacting with the townsfolk while they try to find out where their swords went and how to get home. 

Re-Colourize

Otherwise what I would call the “re-colour of Nero and Snow” AU. 

What if Vergil was found by Kassy’s family and raised among them? What if Dante ended up briefly in Fortuna and then convinced Sera to run away from the island?

What if we have a Nero who, though brash, is outwardly more soft and open-hearted, and has red-orange and gold colours instead? What if we have a Snow who is named Chiyuki, who wields her katana more like Vergil does, and has a more ice-queen aura about her, and has a teal and blue colouring about her?

This is my excuse to switch up the pairings, but also write Vergil being taught to fight more like an assassin. 

Raised by the Blade

Imagine: Yamato, cracked, broken, and separated from her Master... desperately searching for a way to get back to him, and ended up washed up on the shores of Fortuna. Humanoid, but clearly not if anyone saw the cracked, broken, and no-normal look of “shattered” in her torso, that she would have to keep covered. 

Made from the power of Sparda, she is pale with white hair... and she finds herself drawn to the orphanage...

Where she finds the toddler that is Nero.

Devil Hunters’ Podcast

Nico “accidentally” finds entertainment in recording the Sparda Family arguments as they talk about hunting; after all, they all share one braincell. 

Ascended Monochrome

A white angel remains by the side of Nelo Angelo. Mundus was not pleased by the behavior of his second creation, from the human woman that he had picked up with the treacherous Son of Sparda. But he later discovered that by using her, he could keep Nelo Angelo complacent. Eventually, underestimating love will be his downfall.

Fall to Royalty

A story of where Vergil wins against Mundus the first time, and takes the throne of Hell. But what is he to do next? Eventually, ruling Hell seemed meaningless when there was no one by his side, so he goes to seek out the Lady Knight that he had vowed to never think of or go back to unless he had obtained the power he sought.

Doppelganger Woes

So, I heard Capcom retconned Gilver to be some sort of imitation created by Mundus. I’m all for this! And I’m going to DO something with this.

Side-Project: DMC Tarot List

I started on this maybe months ago; and I have a tentative list oh what characters go with what card and a few detailed descriptions. I think I should confer with

@harlot-of-oblivion

at some point about this, and anyone else interested in, well, Tarot stuff. 

[alias-b]

"Neil would have kept trying for you. And eventually, he would have taken pictures of my little girl." Susan welled. Her body gave an odd vibration with the thought. "I can't stop thinking about that fact. I won't for a long time." -Susan broke my heart in this chapter, I love that she's woken up to Neil's shit. Getting closer to Camille is a good thing!! Their last scene was sweet. The dream jarred me though. I keep thinking about what would happen if Cam went to Neil at his manipulation? Scary

I’m so happy that Susan’s growth is being spotlighted. Her heart to heart with Camille was a scene I walked away from so proud of. :) Billy and Camille both got good moments with her. And…your last question actually got me to pull something from my drafts. It’s an AU scene after the break up/Camille’s mental meltdown/her kissing Jim in a moment of illness and confusion.

Yes, there’s a chance she WOULD have gone to Neil in her state. She feels so unwanted at the moment and his manipulation was really getting to her. Awful or not, attachment happens even to people who are abusive. I actually wrote an AU scene where she skips school all the same and goes to him instead of Jim finding her first. It was more of an exploration to prepare for the Camille & Neil convos I had coming. I preferred what I did by a mile, but this helped me feel out Neil and Camille’s relationship and her turmoil and honestly I put a lot of my own isolating thoughts into it. I’m…terrified to post it and still going slow, but I figure if I get more terrible anons, I have double the support from good friends. Also figure it’s relevant to how I feel now so I’m sharing.

So here it is below, be warned it’s uncomfortable and leads to the Jim kiss and there is heavy, heavy gas-lighting and some sexual references from Neil’s bullshit mouth. The FOIL between Jim and Neil is so stark, I wanted to highlight it. It’s not rly edited, I just pulled it. Thanks all.

Open Wound

    Camille swept snowy slush around her feet while a fresh coat fell. Dainty little flakes that stuck to dirty sleet as if to hide it away. Loch Nora was smaller than she recalled. Rollerskating up and down the street when the wind was warm and flowers in full bloom.

  Edna snipping roses to pot some around the house interior. A smile and wave at her floating girl. Stuck close to make sure Camille was safe.

  “Bullshit.” Smoke swelled out from red lips. A cigarette flicked toward the mass of frozen dirt that used to be the Harper house. She remembered Billy bleeding out in her lap and the fire that ate everything in sight. It was beautiful at the time. Now, she and Billy bled separately.

  Kids around here say they can hear moaning and weeping from the plot at night. Camille felt like she was watching herself. Like she was a soul and no body. No skin, no muscle, no bones to rattle from the cold. It was all far away. Her car swerved along ice when she parked near Cherry Lane. More so in the forest.

  Camille Harper was desired around town. Not wanted. That bleated. But, there was one soul who wanted to play.

  Billy would be at school still. Susan at her morning shift in the perfume department. It was a roll of the dice. Camille felt her entire being stretch to wrap around the town. Around this Earth. Cold air puffed and snow began to crunch too loud for any sound to get in.

  Neil knew why she’d come the moment he saw her shaken and wide-eyed there. Red and loud against pristine white snow. No innocence. He was wrapped in a winter coat. Ears prickling pink. Gloved hands swept snow from his truck with a plastic scraper.

  “Camille Harper.” Neil pretended to be blasé about it. Brushing snow and ice with short swipes. Flecks melted on his front.

  She seemed drunk. Half here.

  “Do you see me?” That flitting tone shrunk. He hitched like he might laugh, lip twitching.

  “Yes, Camille, I do see you.” Neil forced his eyes from her expression to the car. A beat. One hand clicked the passenger door open. She stared. He could have said a number of things about how she was trembling and frosting over. Better to come inside where it’s warm and sound. Camille lingered still at the opening and felt red lights blare.

  “Don’t get into that car. Just come back to school.” Billy said behind her ears.

  Billy didn’t want her anymore.

  She crossed with ire. Climbed in. Neil stood there with one hand on the door while she looked ahead.

  “It’s important,” he took his frosty glove off and reached to buckle her in, “that you’re safe.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hargrove.” Camille gave a dreamy sigh. Didn’t remark that his arm was still over her lap, palm resting on the seat.

  “You’re very welcome, Camille.” He stepped back. “Neil is fine.” The door shut.

  She didn’t hear the car start. Didn’t feel it move. Didn’t even process the music or heat turning on.

  “You’re upset.” He noted. Threw a brick into the silence. Camille turned her head toward his profile when they took a left.

  “Are you hurting him badly again? What did you do to him?” She rasped. “Billy. Do you want to hurt me too?”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Neil sat back in his seat. Shrugged like he might be thinking of what groceries to buy later.

  “He’s different. Bad different,” she decided. “Worse different.”

  “Listen, Camille, I’ve known. This whole thing between you two. I imagine you both learned a hard lesson from it. It’s for the best. Billy was never good with secrets. My boy was never good with much of anything. Pretty girls for one. And you’re the prettiest of them all.”

  He made it sound like such an apology.

  “Where are we going?” She asked finally. Tried not to choke.

  “Moving here, I’ve gotten to know some fine people.” He said instead. “Everyone knows each other and do they love to talk.” Neil laughed. Hearty like a dad. Something vulgar about it. He touched his mustache in thought and came to a red light. “You’ve been crying.”

  “I’m fine.” A quick reply. Sharp and airy at the same time. Camille stared through him. Not at him.

  “I see you, Camille.” Neil set his elbow to the little pull down rest between them. One hand on the wheel. “You lost your parents. I lost mine when I was younger too. I did this, you know? Acted out. Tried to replace them. Learned I never would, but that didn’t stop me trying for awhile.” He parked on main street and cut the engine. Few shops still open from Starcourt taking business away.

  “It’s okay, you know, to look.” He clicked his seat belt off, faced her. “You’re all shaken still. I make you that nervous? Do I not make you feel safe, Camille? You got into my car.”

  And she couldn’t take that fact back. Another chill rushed.

  “I’m upset.” She admitted, felt like for the first time. “I miss the way things used to be.” Neil tutted, caught a tear with his thumb and skimmed down her cheek. Edged the corner of her lips. “I miss my mom and dad.”

  She sounded like a baby, face crinkling. Head tipped to the rest. Fingers clutched at his coat. Neil’s lips lifted as he shushed every little weepy sound. Patted hair.

  “There there, you’re too pretty to cry like that.” Neil eased, tipped her chin up in a way that was encouraging. “You feel safe here. You got into the car with me. I can make it better. Ask me to make it better, Camille.”

  She blinked at him. Really considered it because no one fucking wanted her except one red light that blared and readied to consume her. She felt Billy lick the shell of her ear and utter, mutilate. Syllables caught and Neil sighed when she slipped down, bowing her head as if to pray before him.

  “Shame. Stay here.” Neil slipped away to get out.

  “Wait,” a hand snatched his wrist on instinct. He was looking not at her face, but at the hand on his skin. “Where are you going?”

  “Girls like hot chocolate, don’t they?” Neil smacked the door shut after locking his car. Looked around. Camille covered her face and quivered. Those red flares burned her flesh. She glanced outside and saw herself with Robbie. Too young. Him offering her an ice cream cone.

  She took it. Smiled. Licked.

  She should have just screamed.

  She should have screamed now too.

  Neil returned and offered a to-go cup that steamed. He didn’t buy any for himself.

  “Take a moment and drink it.” Neil turned his car back on. Heat kicked up. Camille steadied her breathing enough to sip. It went down all chalky. Hair stuck to pink cheeks. “Police Chief can’t replace them, can he?” Hands smoothed his tie.

  “Jim is nice to me.” Her back hunched like she was avoiding a crushing blow.

  “Man has quite the reputation. Nothing that should be near such a nice girl.” Neil only shrugged, blue eyes lifting. “Unless, maybe, you’re not a nice girl. Painting your lips so he sees them. Dressing the way you do. Does he like to look at you?”

  “I-”

  “Do you like it when he looks?” Neil almost smirked, it flashed in his cold eyes. “You want him to pat your pretty head and kiss your cheek.” His palm cupped her face. The free hand took her cocoa away to set it aside. “Has he touched you?”

  “What?” Camille reeled back. Neil’s hand came to her knee. Everything locked up.

  “Have you shown him things? Hm, Camille? Taken your clothes off for him so he can see you too? Good girls don’t do that.”

  “We-”

  “You want a big man to kiss you all better. You want daddy to sweep you up.   Make you feel good again. Don’t you, Camille? You just want to feel good again. I understand that too.”

  She twisted, reaching for the handle when the lock came down.

  “Camille, don’t make a scene,” came his chiding, “I think you’re being very unfair to me right now. We’re just talking. I’ve been nothing but kind to you. Aren’t you safe here? Am I going to hurt you?” Neil’s grip on her knee clamped down. She wanted to scream that he hurt Billy. His family. Scream that he was the dirty monster. “You got into this car all on your own. Face it, you asked for me. Say it.”

  “It hurts.”

  Camille didn’t know what exactly was hurting. Everything. Nothing. But, it was an open wound she kept picking at.

  “There’s a place, you know.” Neil’s hand left her leg. The ability to function swept air into desperate lungs. “A place I could make you feel better. You wouldn’t have to do anything. Unless you wanted to. I’d take care of it. Don’t you want to be safe and secure again?” Wet clumpy lashes fluttered shut. “No, you stay right here.” Neil grasped her shoulder to shake. Eyes opened.

  “I see it. I see you.” He sounded so nurturing. “I see what made my damn son so crazy. You do these things to men, you know?”

  Neil laughed again. Camille felt him sucking the air from her. The pang of a jackal’s teeth sunk into her heart.

  An answer was upon the tip of her tongue.

  “Camille?” A muffled knock on the window. Neil’s play cut, he reeled from her quick. Detective Callahan looked less dopey staring there. He gestured for the window to roll down. Camille grew petrified.

  “What’s going on here? The Chief got a call. You skipped school.” He peered behind her. “Neil Hargrove?”

  “Afternoon, officer.” Neil’s smile dazzled. Camille stared at Callahan all paled and tearful. Never seen Phil this serious in all her time working at that station. “Ms. Harper was wandering the street. She’s a friend of my family. I worried. I was about to take her right back to school. Poor girl just went through a bad break-up. It’s my fault, I figured a nice cup of cocoa could solve anything.”

  Camille felt Neil’s warning hand on her back. Knew Billy would pay a price later if she didn’t lie right now.

  “Isn’t that right, Camille?” He chirped too cheerfully.

  “That’s right. I’m feeling better now.” She turned to Neil. “Jim must be so worried about me. I want to get home to him. Right now.”

  His brow twitched.

  Neil hated her and those red lips.

  “I got her from here,” Callahan didn’t thank Neil. Just took Camille’s hand and led her to his own vehicle. Neil stared the entire time. Waited until they drove off before he threw the cup outside with a spatter and sped away. “Camille.”

  “Is Jim at home?” She cut.

  He sighed.

  “Yes, he’s not happy about this.”

  “Oh.” Camille looked at the icy trees. Cracking against harsh winds.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Fine. Tired.”

  “Why did you skip school? This isn’t you.”

  “Yes, Philip,” Camille sniffled and faced him with red eyes, “it is.”

  They pulled up to the house. Camille felt fear flood.

  “Go on, he’s waiting for you. Don’t skip school again, Cam.” Phil offered. Tried to be careful about it because she was breaking.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Camille got out. Saw her car pulled up. Jim must have gotten a buddy to tow it over. The door opened and Jim crossed his arms there. Already aflame.

  “Skipping? Leaving your car in-”

  “I know.” Camille locked the door. Put her head down to go around him. “I just…needed to get away. All right?”

  “No, it’s not all right. Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Jim’s tone lifted. “I need to know that you and El are safe at all times.”

  “Well, we’re not.” Hands jabbed out and fell. “Can I go to my room now?”

  “Callahan radioed that he saw you in Neil Hargrove’s car.” Jim grasped her arm. “What’s that about?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Camille, I know how that guy is. Just talk to me. Let me help you.”

   You can’t.

  “He didn’t force me into the car.”

  Admitting that made her feel like trash. Jim saw her bottom lip wobble and let go. He rubbed his scruff and turned to sit at the head of the kitchen table. Covered his eyes when irritation twitched.

  “You need to understand that you can’t run off like that. It’s not safe. It’s a risk. We don’t take risks. I know…what happened with Billy is hurting you. I can’t watch you-”

  “Are you mad at me?” Camille crept to the table looking insecure. Hands pulled to her stomach.

  “Yes, Camille, I’m actually furious with you.” Jim’s hand smacked down. Caused her to jump. “Running away from school when there are people after you, I thought the worst!”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Jim, please.” She welled and came to his left side. “I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me.” Hands lifted. Heart pounding. Red lights scorched now. All she wanted to do was smother them out. “It hurts when you’re mad at me, let me make it better. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, don’t be upset.”

  No one wants me.

  I’m not a nice girl.

  “Camille, it’ll be okay, just…don’t do this again.” Jim cocked his head with an easier sigh, lifted his eyes to see her too close to him. He opened his mouth to continue before bright red lips fell upon his.

  Begging.

  Tears wet Camille’s cheeks as she took his jaw and opened her mouth. Moaned. Tried to deepen the kiss instantly, but Jim muffled a gasp of shock. Jerked up and away so quick that the chair skidded to crash into the floor. Camille was still looking at him with her hands lifted aimlessly, huge hazel eyes shining.

  “I…I thought…”

  “Camille, Jesus Christ, what was that?” Jim wiped his mouth and saw red smeared on his hand. His own gut twisted. He looked like she slapped him. Guilt that maybe he led her on pooled. “You can’t do things like that.”

  Camille burst into tears. Covered her face and crouched down on wobbling legs like she might collapse.

  “I’m so stupid,” she cried. Jim recovered and came down to her level. Felt a cringe back into the wall the second he touched her.

  “Hey, Camille. Just breathe for a second. Talk to me.” Jim was too good. The open wound bled out. He managed to get her into his warm arms.

  His girl was confused. Trying to hurt herself. He knew the pattern well enough. Tears wet his uniform. Camille pressed her cheek into the cool metal badge still pinned to his chest. Felt his heart beat under it.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” it wasn’t often Jim used pet names, they made her soften, “you’re safe. I got you. Just take an easy breath for me.” Camille shuddered into his body. Clutched at him and lifted glimmering eyes.

  “But,” Camille cringed through a sob, “can you see me, Jim?”

  Am I real? Am I dirty? Are the red lights going to burn still?

  Jim Hopper had no answer. He tucked her back under his chin. Kissed brown hair. Squeezed Camille so tight. Until she stopped crying and berating. Until she could breathe once more.

  “You just…make me feel safe,” she said, “I’m sorry.” Jim nodded and rubbed her back. “Are you still mad at me?”

  “No, I’m not mad at you.” Hopper looked at the patterns in the wallpaper behind her. “You’re hurting. I just…can’t watch you hurt yourself more, Camille.”

  “I’ll try to stop.”

  “Promise me.” Jim’s own voice cracked.

  “I promise.” She closed her eyes. Exhaled Neil Hargrove out of her skin.

  For a single beat there, Camille Harper felt the wound might be able to close.

[marshmallowgoop]

I write stuff, at times. I swear.

(Check it out! These are my research books and plot outline for this novel that I’ve been working on for nearly half a decade!)

So, it’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’ll probably be a little absent from this site for the rest of November ‘cause I’m trying to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days and am also the boss lady (ML) for the event in my area and have boss lady things that I should be doing.

Buuut since my novel is my Kill la Kill fairytale AU (which I even have a tag for!), posting about the project isn’t totally procrastinating, right? 

Anyway, I’ve written drafts of this story for two NaNos already (2016 and 2017), and the first draft is basically getting totally flushed down the toilet, but the second draft is closer to what I wanna go for, so I’ve been revisiting it to see what I wanna do with my NaNo 2019 attempt. 

And did you know? Maybe kinda relevant to all the anon hate lately, one OC I wrote for the story is a villain that exemplifies a lot of what I hate about myself. Her situation is of course different than mine—I ain’t beautiful, lol—but her jealousy, vindictiveness, egotism, etc. are all things that I despise about me.

Like, I guess maybe you could consider her my evil self-insert. Pfft.

I dunno how much of her backstory will really be in the final draft, and it’s definitely way, waaaaaaaaay too much right now ‘cause it was written for NaNo and all, lol, but tl;dr, tl;dr, I guess one big message of my entire story is that being bitter and envious isn’t fair to anyone, destroys others and yourself, and I gotta knock that crap off or be just as awful as this awful, awful woman (who arguably literally caused some of the biggest problems in the book).

If anyone’s interested in reading, I’ve included her segment under the cut! (As well as a little segment about Senketsu ‘cause that’s just where it was placed ‘cause this novel is a disaster in terms of organization, lol.) It’s super messy and unedited ‘cause it was written for NaNo, and I only lightly cleaned up some grammar and placeholder names for this upload, but eyyy, I swear I do write creatively, sometimes!!

And maybe me being so honest about the stuff I hate about myself will do something for others, I dunno. I can only hope ^^; 

From Chapter 5, “About King Prasenajit’s Daughter Ugly Adamantina”

As it would happen, the curse that befell the beautiful empress’s princess was quite the complicated affair. If the man in the cave could have been there and could have known, he might have begun the story by speaking in great length of a woman from a kingdom far beyond the Kingdom of the Reed Plains.

The woman, you see, was a magnificent, wondrous healer. She knew her medicines and herbs better than anyone had ever seen, and she knew how to combine them better than anyone had ever seen, too. And so it was said, as it may be imagined, that she was a prodigy of her craft, and she was a genius, and she could only be a miracle doctor sent from the gods.

But it was not purely the healer’s knowledge that made her well known throughout her kingdom and others. The healer, much as the empress of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains, was also extraordinarily beautiful. People would come from far and wide to set their eyes upon her, just as people would the empress, and those who were lucky enough to be her patient would say, in great sincerity, that the healer’s beauty alone was enough to cure them of all sickness and pain.

So you must imagine that when the empress sent for all the best doctors and healers in her land and lands far beyond that this miracle doctor was called for. The healer received the invitation one quiet afternoon, and she tried her very hardest to hide her displeasure as she listened to the empress’s messenger speak.

All those with the healer were left open-mouthed by the messenger’s letter. They oohed and ahed, and then they very quickly turned their attention to the woman to whom the letter had been addressed to.

The woman smiled her politest smile, bowing before the messenger as though the messenger herself was the empress

“It is a great honor that you have come all this way,” the healer said, and she hoped very heartily that her irritation did not seem apparent in her voice. “I am much humbled to be called upon by the empress of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains herself, and I pray for the empress’s health and happiness, and for the health and happiness of her child.”

The healer rose from her bow now. “However, I cannot leave my patients, and so I must decline.” She bowed again, her dark hair falling over her shoulders and concealing the cruel smile on her lips.

Silence fell over the room. To decline a royal order was unheard of, and the poor messenger seemed at a loss for what to say to the woman’s refusal.

Everyone’s eyes had fallen upon the woman. She was no longer smiling. There was a great sense of dread building inside her, as though she had swallowed an entire snake whole.

It was a royal order, the healer realized, even if it was not a royal order from her own country.

And so, with another great bow, and knowing that there was nothing she could do, the woman said, “Please forgive my manners. I will be on my way.”

The healer did indeed travel to the empress’s kingdom. It was a long journey, quite uncomfortable if the healer could say so herself, and all the while, her human heart grew colder and colder.

To help the empress of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains! the healer thought to herself. It was the very last thing she could have ever wanted because, you see, she was quite worn of hearing of the empress’s beauty.

“They say, good healer,” she had been told, time and time again, “that she is even more beautiful than you yourself!”

The healer had to listen and listen to such sentiments and always smile so politely back at them, as though she truly liked to be compared in such a manner! It was a disgusting thing, the healer thought to herself all throughout her journey to the Kingdom of the Reed Plains. Not only did she have to go so many ri away from her homeland, but she had to use her skills to help this woman who could not possibly appreciate her own beauty!

How could she ever appreciate her beauty as I appreciate my beauty? the healer asked herself. Only small people came to tell the healer of her wondrous looks, you see, and the healer always adored every single one of her admirers, but the empress was adored by big people, and very big people came to even catch a glimpse of her, and she could not be like the healer herself, the healer knew, because she had to be very haughty and condescending and must surely not be thankful for the great gift of beauty she had received!

But I am thankful, the healer told herself, and she continued to tell herself this as she went on her way. She thought to herself that someone as high and mighty as the empress did not deserve her talents, and a woman like that also could not understand what it would be like to be born ugly, because a woman like that could never, ever appreciate what a great gift beauty truly is in the cruel, inhospitable world that they both lived in.

It is here, then, that the healer began to entertain a great, terrible idea.

She thought to herself, It would be most wonderful, if the empress’s child is born hideous!

And so the healer laughed to herself, and she thought herself quite amazing to consider such a thing, but she never did consider the thought anything more than a thought.

That is, you see, until the healer first arrived at the empress’s palace.

#

The story of the bitter-hearted healer is a story that the man in the cave could not tell you.

The man in the cave could also not tell you about love between humans and demons to Satsuki or anybody else. That is also a story the man does not know.

Perhaps, too, he does not want to know.

But the little red demon knows this story. It is the story that fills his blood and built his bones, and it is the story he will dedicate his life to believing.

Indeed, to the little red demon, the story that the man in the cave tells Satsuki one day—of demons and humans as mortal enemies where peace is impossible, and only one can be the victor—feels as wrong to the child as a waterfall that he has never seen flowing backwards, up a cliff.

But it is this story, you see, that the little demon heard time and time again from his mama’s setsuwa and stories.

“Why is it,” the red demon asked his mother one day, long before he catches his sister prepared to drink their mama’s blood and long before he comes across the young Ryuko collapsed in the snow, “that in all of Mama’s tales, the demons want to hurt the humans?”

He had thought at first that it was simply the case of a few villainous demons. There are surely many stories where humans play the role of the evil force that must be vanquished. But the demon soon saw that humans were allowed to be heroes and kind princesses and great shining beauties. All demons ever could be were empty-headed and ugly and horrible, ravenous beasts.

The demon saw, too, the way his mama’s face would turn red in the same manner in which his face would turn green as she told him, “Do not let these stories about the bad demons make you feel as though you are destined to be bad and nothing more. There are many good demons, too.”

But Mama could not seem to tell the little red demon a single story she had heard about a good demon.

Mother had been at the loom when the red demon asked why it is the demons must always be the villain. She was weaving, chan, chan, chan, karin, and this she continued to do as she answered the little demon’s question, her amber eyes fixed on her work.

“Those stories are very ordinary human stories, my love,” she said. “If I were to tell you demon stories—and I could not, I must say, because I am not very much good with words like your dear mama—then you would see that the demons see the humans as the humans see the demons.”

The red demon was left very confused indeed. “But why would the humans and the demons want to see each other as evil?” he asked. “Isn’t it ordinary for humans and demons to be together?”

Mother still did not look the little red demon’s way. She seemed distant, as though a thousand ri away. “No, my love,” she said. “Your Mama and I are... not very ordinary at all.” A smile was on her lips as she told him so, but she seemed almost sad at the statement, as though the admittance of being unordinary brought a sort of pain, the kind that the demon would come to feel when he looks upon the fallen girl in the snow.

“Demons and humans are not meant to mix,” Mother said. “That is what everyone will tell you, both humans and demons, and even the little birds that come to visit this home will tell you, too.”

The little red demon still did not understand. The situation became ever more puzzling to the child, as incomprehensible as the world saw the red demon’s very existence.

“But you are very happy together,” he said. He frowned, the usual chan, chan, chan, karin of his mother’s loom no longer the soothing sound of his childhood but an anxious rhythm that the demon could not free from his mind.

“No, we are very happy together,” he insisted.

Mother laughed. “Yes, my little smart one,” she said. She patted the demon’s head, careful to avoid the horns that were just growing from his scalp. “But most people, my love, human and demon alike, do not believe it is possible.” She smiled again, though it still looked strange and distant, and she took her hands from the loom where she had been weaving, finally turning her eyes upon her son.

The little demon saw that she had been crying.

“Most people,” she said, “believe it is a curse for a demon to let a human into their heart, and for a human to let a demon into theirs.”

Mother turned her wet eyes away from the little red demon. “But I would do it,” she told him, unwaveringly, as though speaking a grand declaration no matter the quiet whisper of her voice.

And the red demon felt it was more to herself than to him that his mother then said, “If she would let me, I would grant her every wish and keep a piece of her within me, always.”

#

A story the man in the cave does know, as it would happen, is the story of how demons hold within them the power to grant any human’s wish.

This, you see, is a story that more humans once understood, back when the Kingdom of the Reed Plains had not been cursed to be covered in an endless, inhospitable snow that would not disappear and could not disappear.

It was a story that the bitter-hearted healer who had gone to see the empress had known, and she considered this story her first evening she spent in the beautiful empress’s palace as she peered outside to the lands that were not her kingdom and not anything much like her home country.

If I would give my heart to demons to have a wish granted, she thought to herself, I would not have my wish be to make the empress’s child born hideous.

But it would be such a nice thing, she considered some more, if I could truly make such a reality with my own two hands.

Another healer interrupted her thoughts with a great curse of her own. This healer was unabashed in her complaints and did not keep them locked deeply away as the bitter-hearted healer did.

This healer said, “I am number 37, can you believe it?” She expressed a great many more curses, crossing her arms and pouting in a manner that the bitter-hearted healer could not help but find quite admirable.

“I am number 43, myself,” she said. She smiled politely, as she was so very used to doing in her practice. “I am sure I will not be able to return to my home kingdom for quite a long while yet.”

At this, the other healer offered a sympathetic look. “Oh,” she said, and she shook her head, as though ashamed of herself. “I live very near this palace, and here I have been cursing!”

“You have every right to be upset,” said the bitter-hearted healer. She tried very hard to restrain herself from clenching up her fists at the thought of the beautiful empress and how that woman had successfully called her to this wretched palace.

The other healer smiled at that. “I most certainly do have all the reason in the world to be upset!” she said. “Calling upon so many healers and doctors! You must forgive our empress.” She lowered her voice, until she was near whispering. “She is just very afraid of losing a fourth child, you see.”

This the bitter-hearted healer understood perfectly, and had the empress been another, uglier woman, perhaps the healer would have been meant it, when she said, “I wish the best for her and her child.”

“With all these healers and doctors, there won’t be any need for wishing,” answered the other healer, and then she was quite quiet for a moment before she added, “To tell the truth, I wasn’t happy with my number because I wished to return to my family as soon as possible, but also....” She paused, as though bashful. “It’s maybe a bit silly, but I’m afraid I won’t even be able to meet the beautiful empress with my late number! I was hoping to make my family very jealous for getting to be in the same room as her!”

The bitter-hearted healer’s smile slipped, just slightly. She then made her smile all the brighter as she answered, “I have heard that she is quite a sight.”

“So the talk of her beauty goes beyond even our little Kingdom of the Reed Plains!” cried the other healer. “I so wish to see for myself.”

The healer then looked very carefully at the bitter-hearted woman.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying, Miss, but I almost find it hard to imagine a woman prettier than you.”

The bitter-hearted healer’s smile became very wicked. “You flatter me!” she said. “I am sure I cannot hold even a candle to the empress’s beauty.”

“I suppose we will see about that,” said the other healer.

But the bitter-hearted healer very much did not want to see about it. She had only been in the empress’s palace a few mere hours, but already it seemed an eternity, and so there came the time when the bitter-hearted healer—surely not thinking clearly, mind you—left her room that night and walked very resolutely to the palace gates. The other doctors and healers looked at her quite oddly as she did this, and the guards of the palace questioned her quite thoroughly.

“It is unwise,” said one of the palace guards, “to walk the streets at night, when the demons are about.”

The healer considered it might almost be a blessing, if she could be eaten by demons and never have to come before the horrible empress she did not want to see!

But the healer smiled very politely, as she was so very used to doing from her practice. “My number is very far off, you see,” she said, and she showed the guard the parchment with 43 written cleanly upon it. “I have relatives not far from this palace, and I would very much like to spend the night with them, if you understand.”

The guard shifted uncomfortably. “I understand...” he said, “But you were to come here, on royal orders—“

“And I will return,” said the bitter-hearted healer. Though she had interrupted the man, the tone of her voice had become sweeter than sugared honey. Her impertinence almost seemed kind.

“Yes, I hear what you are saying,” said the guard, and once more he shifted uncomfortably, “but you must understand....”

He could not finish his words. The bitter-hearted healer ran fingers through her slick black hair. She batted her eyelashes, only a small amount. “I know it is dangerous,” she said, “but I am a healer, and I am very good at what I do—as I am sure you know because I am standing here before you right this moment!—and if any demon were to try to hurt me, I could heal myself in just an instant!”

The bitter-hearted healer bowed down very low before the guard. “Please, good man, I am begging you to let me go.”

It was with a great hesitance that the guard did exactly so.

But the truth is that the bitter-hearted healer had no family in that kingdom. She knew no one at all in the Kingdom of the Reed Plains, and she entertained the thought that she could run away to a new settlement somewhere, perhaps by the mountains, and then she could avoid ever seeing the empress and ever living with the shame from refusing a royal order from a kingdom allied with her own.

The person she was at that moment could be considered lost. She could start a new life, and she could become a healer even more renowned than she had been in her backwater hometown. The healer’s head buzzed with ideas, bun, bun. Of course she could start up a new business someplace far away! She was so beautiful that she would quickly become the talk of the town no matter where it is she went!

This thought brought the bitter-hearted healer to stop in her tracks. No, she thought, she could not become the talk of the town in a town where the only beauty anyone could speak of was an empress who did not appreciate her beauty nor deserve it!

The healer clutched the lantern she had taken with her on her journey away from the palace quite tightly. Why did all her thoughts keep returning to such a terrible woman? Even when she had been thinking of the new life she would build for herself, the healer could not help but think of the empress.

She frowned to herself, all by herself in a great kingdom with a wondrous empress, in the forest just beyond the palace, no less, and she thought to herself that she must be such a pitiful sight that even demons would take pity upon her and spare her life should they ever find her.

The bitter-hearted healer, however, did not realize that she was so stuffed full of bitterness and cold that she smelled quite terrible to the demons who were indeed wandering about the Kingdom of the Reed Plains that night.

“That atrocious stench is ruining all the wonderful ones,” the woman heard a demon complain (though she was not aware that it was a demon speaking because the healer did not truly expect to come across demons in her great escape from the palace).

Zushin, zushin, the healer heard, thud, thud, stomp, stomp.“It must be another cold heart,” said another demon (that the healer again was not aware was truly a demon at all).

But it is quite disconcerting to hear voices that you cannot see the source of in the midst of the night, and so it was then that the healer, whose heart was beating very quickly at that moment, raised her lantern and shone it all around her.

“Who is there?” she asked. The light danced all about the darkness, and when it settled upon a face, the bitter-hearted healer was rather surprised that this face was a considerably good-looking face.

She was even more surprised when she saw another face besides the first face that was equally attractive, and indeed perhaps even more so.

“Ah,” said the owner of the first face, who looked to the bitter-hearted healer to be a young woman with eyes that sparkled like bright red rubies.“So it is you who are making this horrible, ghastly stench all throughout these lands.”

Of course, it is even more disconcerting to hear a beautiful stranger in the woods describe you as smelling atrocious, and so perhaps it is not unusual that the bitter-hearted healer felt her bitterness grow and grow within her, puffing out and expanding much like her medicinal breads did in the ovens back in her home.

She said, “Well, now, how terribly rude! I will have you know that I have traveled quite a long way!Even the bath that I have been offered in this kingdom has not treated me well, it seems!”

The owner of the second beautiful face, who seemed to the bitter-hearted healer to be an older woman with great red lips that were a deeper color than even the setting sun, shook her head at the healer, her long, dark hair brushing against her shoulders and elaborate flowered kimono.

“You misunderstand, Miss,” said this second beauty.“No amount of sweet soaps or fragrances or wondrous baths could save you from this disgusting stench that falls off you much as snow falls from the sky.”

The second beauty lifted her chin up very high.“This reek feels even more endless than snow, too,” she said.

This, too, made the bitter-hearted healer even more bitter hearted than she had been before.

The two beauties coughed before the healer could even begin to speak.

“You are making it worse!” said the first woman. “It is no good to upset a human who already smells so terrible.”

These words were the first that the bitter-hearted woman could perhaps smile at. She said, “Come now, are you traveling storytellers looking for refuge by the palace? It is quite funny of you to try to include even your audience as part of your story, but I must confess that I do not have a single coin upon my person at this moment.”

The bitter-hearted healer laughed, and the sound was surely as horrible a sound as her heart was a horrible heart and her stench was a horrible stench. “I must say, though,” said the bitter-hearted healer, “that it is not quite an appealing act to begin by insulting your audience and then continue by calling them 'human' as though you are not humans yourselves!”

These words made the two demons laugh quite heartily indeed, gera, gera, ha, ha. They laughed much more heartily than the woman, and they laughed much more genuinely, and when they had finished this laughter and wiped the tears from their eyes, the younger beauty smiled in a way that the bitter-hearted healer did not find so attractive.

Indeed, she found the grin quite terrifying.

Because, you see, the bitter-hearted healer saw that this beauty had teeth that were perhaps not quite so beautiful. There were long fangs, sharp, and it seemed very much to the healer that she was looking straight at the smiling jaws of a great monster.

“As though we are not humans ourselves!” repeated the once-beauty. The strange creature laughed once more, looking less and less beautiful to the bitter-hearted healer with every second. Its form seemed to distort and mutate before the bitter-hearted healer, and the sight was to the woman very hideous and unsightly, but somehow, you see, she could not look away.

And so it was that the bitter-hearted healer watched with wide eyes as rosy skin changed to a slick blue, shiny, dark hair became as long and wild and white as snowflakes in a great storm, and the once-beauty seemed to grow several feet, towering over the bitter-hearted healer with eyes that the healer then realized to be the shining eyes of a demon.

She also realized that they were the shining eyes of a very hungry demon.

The bitter-hearted healer, in her immense fear, toppled to the ground with a great gasp, haa, haa, wheeze, pant. Her lantern shattered, and the flames jumped out, lighting the leaves scattered upon the forest floor on fire and threatening to burn the trees as well.

Here the demons’ laughter was quite diminished.

“Look what you have made the foolish human do with your silly sideshow display,” said the older beauty. She had shifted her form as well, now bearing the appearance of a massive, red-haired blue demon clad in tiger skins, with three great horns upon her head.

She stomped out the fires with her feet, zushin, zushin, thud, thud, and the younger demon only helped with what the bitter-hearted healer would have considered reluctance, if she had the mind to think clearly. Soon enough only a small bit of flames remained, and this the younger demon held in her hands as though it was a small, fluttering little heart.

“It must be strange to you to see that flames do not burn us,” said the demon, perhaps not knowing—or perhaps knowing very, very well—that the bitter-hearted healer could think nothing on how a demon would not be burned by flames.

“As it would happen, silly, stinky human,” she explained, “demons are not affected by the cold or the heat like you flimsy creatures.”

The bitter-hearted healer could not quite take another moment of this torture. Her heart was nearly threatening to jump out of her chest, beating so very quickly, baku, baku, thump, thump, because, you see, though the healer had often come face to face with death in her practice, she had never given very much thought to the idea that she could truly, actually be the one facing death one day!

She pressed her head against the singed, cold ground with her hands in front of her and said, “Oh, please, demons, please, please spare me! Once you understand my sad tale, you cannot possibly wish to eat me!”

Of course, the bitter-hearted healer did not understand the tale of the demons themselves (and this she would never understand, much as the man in the cave would never understand the love between demons and humans, but, ah, that is a story for quite another time). The bitter-hearted healer did not understand that the demons she had encountered that fateful night were demons from a smaller settlement, and she did not know that this settlement had grown very tired of hunting humans and so had pledged, with great sincerity and passion, to refrain from ever tasting the sweet flavors of human flesh and blood ever again.

It is easy to say that the bitter-hearted healer could not have understood this tale, and it would be correct to say so, because no human in all the Kingdom of the Reed Plains at the time could say that they knew of the demons within their own lands who had sworn off eating them forever. But the bitter-hearted healer would also not have understood this tale should she have ever been told it, because, you see, to the bitter-hearted healer, a demon was a demon, and demons ate people, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

However, the bitter-hearted healer did think very much that she could avoid being the human the demons chose to eat, if she were only clever enough.

And so the woman pushed her face even farther into the dirt (which she didn’t quite think possible), and she said, “You would understand my tale, too!”  The woman’s voice absolutely dripped with desperation, and there was enough that the demons could scoop it up with their hands and drink and be filled. “You are very beautiful demons,” the woman cried, “and my sad tale could only be understood by those who understand the gift of great beauty, and I know very well that you understand this gift!”

Now, the demons had no desire to eat the woman or even drink her blood on account of their pledge, and truth be told, they would have no desire to eat the woman or even drink her blood had they not been bound by such a pledge. There was such a terrible, ghastly stench coming off the woman and her cold, frozen heart, and the demons were quite sure that, should they even attempt to eat her, she would taste as terrible and ghastly as she smelled.

The bitter-hearted woman could also not have known that the younger demon entertained the thought of wiping her tongue off on the bark of trees after tasting someone as disgusting as the woman who sat crouched before her, and indeed, she would not have even considered such a thing. To the bitter-hearted woman, all that mattered was her beauty, and as her thinking went, beautiful creatures must also taste quite delicious, and so she must have seemed quite the delectable treat to the two demons before her.

As the bitter-hearted woman saw her situation, she would have to try her very, very hardest to not be eaten.

The demons played along with the woman. “A tale, you say?” asked the older demon woman. “Perhaps you are the one who should be the traveling storyteller?”

In all her fear, the bitter-hearted woman thought herself at least wise enough to agree with a demon when asked such a question. “Perhaps, perhaps!” she agreed, though deep inside she could not imagine being in such a lowly, silly, worthless profession as a traveling storyteller.

The demons tried very hard to refrain from gagging at how the woman’s stench became much more terrible with her lie. They continued to play the woman’s game.

“We shall see how skilled you are,” the younger demon woman said. She still held the flames in her hands, coaxing the fire as though it were a small animal.

“Yes, yes, you shall see!” cried the bitter-hearted healer, and she then told her story in the best manner she could muster. She spoke of how the beautiful empress did not deserve her beauty and did not appreciate it, and she spoke of how all the empress deserved was a hideous child, and she said that she had half-considered running away from this horrible place and starting a brand-new life because she quite abhors ungratefulness, you see, and the beautiful empress is surely the definition of ungrateful!

The bitter-hearted healer could not have known how the demons reacted to her story. She could not have understood how the two looked at each other with great plans and ideas blooming in their minds, and she could not understand the language that they spoke to one another in quiet tones, because to the bitter-hearted healer, you see, the language of the demons sounded much the same as the go-o, go-o of the wind.

And so after the bitter-hearted healer had spoken all she had to say, she stared a great, long while at the two incredible creatures before her, knowing all too well in her frozen heart that there was nothing else she could do.

But it was such a long, painful time that the demons spoke to one another, and as you might imagine from a woman who believed very sincerely that she was at death’s door, the bitter-hearted woman became quite consumed by fear. Though there was a great bitterness inside her that would not go away, there came too to be a great terror.

How horrible and unfair is everything! the woman could not help but think, tainting her scent ever more as her heart grew ever colder. Here she had not only come to the ungrateful empress’s kingdom to do her a great deed, but on her first night in the supposedly beautiful empress’s lands, she is held hostage by demons and sentenced to death! Her great kindness to come to the empress’s aid had only resulted in her very downfall!

And so the bitter-hearted woman fumed quite thoroughly to herself, and her bitterness grew and grew, and the demons spoke more and more quickly because, you see, they were not so certain how much longer they could stand being so close to such a cold-hearted, cruel woman.

It was only once the bitter-hearted healer became very convinced that she was going to be eaten on the spot that the older demon woman said, with a hesitance that the woman did not recognize as hesitance, “You have told quite an amazing story indeed.”

The bitter-hearted woman thought immediately upon hearing these words that the demon was genuine in saying them, and she would have been correct, to an extent, because the demon woman did find her tale amazing, in a sense.

The younger demon woman said, “We like your story very much, and we would like to help you! It is true; a cruel fate has come upon you, and it is not fair that you have been sent away to this kingdom! To think that you have been sent all this way to help such an empress as the human empress that reigns in the Kingdom of the Reed Plains! It is disgusting! Despicable!”

At these words, the bitter-hearted healer could have broken out into tears, and it is only the older demon’s next words that keep her from doing just that.

“If you would come with us, just a ways, we can make it so your dreams can come true,” she said.

The bitter-hearted healer felt the great relief that had only just filled her dissipate away, tainted. Her fear came back, and this fear was a terror so great that it felt to the bitter-hearted healer to be almost as tangible as the rain that began to fall upon her at that moment, zabun, zabun, plop, plop. With dread and anxiety building deep within her, the bitter-hearted woman considered many possibilities for what the demons planned to do now.

They were discussing which of my body parts they are going to eat, she thought to herself. They are going to take me back with them to their home, and they are going to enjoy me while they drink away all the water in the river that they must live by, because of course demons must live by a river! I am going to die here, and these demons must consider me quite foolish, to think that their compliments and kind words are enough to tempt me straight into the jaws of death!

The bitter-hearted woman grew more and more bitter, but she smiled very kindly at the demons, the way she had become so accustomed to from her practice, and she knew that even in the rain, she looked very beautiful when she smiled.

“I will go with you,” she said, and she got to her feet, and the demons smiled back at her, though even the bitter-hearted woman could sense that these smiles were not fully kind.

And so the bitter-hearted healer went with the demons because there was surely nothing else she could do, and she thought to herself that when they stopped and tried to devour her whole, she could perhaps kick their teeth, or perhaps they were thinking of saving her for another day, in which case she could steal their shoes and surely run a thousand ri in just a moment.

On and on the bitter-hearted healer’s thought went in this way, and she was so very preoccupied with her illusions that she did not notice at first that the demons had stopped. The bitter-hearted woman had only the little flickering light of the demon’s fire (that had somehow not been extinguished in the rain) to use to see in the darkness, but it seemed to her that they had stopped before what the healer recognized to be an herb garden much like the one she had back in her own backwater hometown.

“It is exactly what you believe it to be,” said the younger demon. The older demon then proceeded to pick from the garden something that the healer could not recognize, even with her great skill and beauty at her craft.

The bitter-hearted woman wondered briefly if whatever it is that the demon had picked would be used to make her tastier, or perhaps it was poison, and the demons truly had been moved by her tale and wished for her to have a peaceful demise rather than be swallowed whole.

It took everything the bitter-hearted woman had to not shudder terribly at this thought.

But the older demon explained, very matter-of-fact, what it was in her hands. “We do not grow the same herbs as you humans do,” she said. “Demons are much stronger than humans, with hearts that are much lighter, and we are far more advanced in our medicines.”

The bitter-rated healer did not believe this in the slightest, but she smiled her very politest smile. “I would very much like to learn more about your herbs,” she said, though she wished to say, I want absolutely nothing to do with your cursed medicines because they would be sure to poison me and all my patients!

“Unfortunately for you, I cannot share the demons’ secrets with a human,” said the older demon. “But I can provide you with this herb, to present to the empress.”

This the bitter-hearted healer found very surprising indeed.

“An herb to present to the empress?” she repeated, a strange sensation of excitement filling her no matter the fact that she was surely just seconds away from being tricked into her own demise by demons.

“Yes,” said the younger demon. “If you present this herb to the empress, her child will be born very, very healthy, because we demons have healing magic, you know, and we have the power to cure nearly any ailment known in the world just using our own power. You must imagine that our medicines are capable of much, much more.”

The bitter-hearted healer felt her excitement wane. Her polite smile fell to nastiness, and this she did not even make the slightest attempt to hide. “Why in the world would I want to give the empress exactly what she wants?” she asked. It seemed so very horrible, and she considered herself such a very sad creature, to be in a position where even the demons sided with a disgraceful, ungrateful empress over her! Was she not beautiful enough to be given whatever it is she wanted? She, who so respected and was so very grateful for the gift of beauty that she had received from the gods?

And though the bitter-hearted woman did not take any note of it, the older demon would think that perhaps she was too harsh with her next words, but she could not help it, you see, because it is a demon’s curse to be extraordinarily honest, even if humans could not comprehend nor understand this honesty.

She said, “We would hope that even the most wicked of humans would not wish for a child to be born so sickly that they perish shortly after birth,” but then she shook her head and said to the bitter-hearted empress, who smelled even more terrible at this point and seemed very much to be fuming, “But we would like to make your dream come true, healer from a faraway kingdom.”

The bitter-hearted healer crossed her arms and surveyed the demons quite thoroughly now. “Are you saying?” she started, and she could not quite finish, even if that was quite unbecoming of a beautiful lady.

“Yes,” said the younger demon. Her face was lit up by the flame that still danced in her palm. “If you give this herb to the empress, her child will be born uglier than any human and far uglier than any demon.”

A great, horrible smile came upon the bitter-hearted healer’s face at this revelation. She very gladly took the herb from the older demon, and she even more gladly presented this herb to the beautiful empress when she returned to the palace to a very relieved guard and when it came to be her turn to come before the terrible empress who had brought such pain and misfortune upon her life.

“Take this,” the bitter-hearted healer said very confidently to the empress, smiling her very politest smile that she had grown much accustomed to smiling from her practice. “Place it in your tea, and be sure that the tea is very warm, and your child will be born very healthy and very lovely.”

The bitter-hearted healer, you see, was not like the honest demons. She very much relished her lie, and her very politest smile would have seemed distinctly not polite, had anyone looked closely enough.

But no one looked closely enough, because the bitter-hearted healer was simply a small healer from a faraway kingdom, and though she was a great beauty, no one could be bothered to look her way, not when in the same room as the most beautiful empress in all the world.

However, perhaps the woman’s heart was not as cold as the demons had seen it, because even this bitter-hearted healer felt within her a sting of remorse as she stood before the empress. In the woman’s mind, you see, the empress was surely not as beautiful as she was made out to be, but this silly empress held herself up as though she was the most beautiful creature on all of the Earth! The bitter-hearted healer almost felt sorry for the poor creature, left thinking that she is so amazingly lovely when she is so clearly not.

And yet, as it may be expected from a tale such as this one, the bitter-hearted healer’s small bit of remorse was not enough for her to treat the empress properly, as she would one of her own patients back in her hometown that the woman found herself missing in increasing amounts, and so she kept her smiling as the empress thanked her for her work.

The bitter-hearted healer, of course, did not know that it was not the demons who had made it so the medicine would cause the princess of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains to be born horrifically ugly. She could not know, and she could not understand, because she did not realize her own bitter-heartedness and would never understand it, not for as long as she lived (and this, you see, was not a very much time longer).

“Humans with hearts as cold as this woman,” the old demon had said to the younger demon, back when they had first heard the healer’s sobbed tale, in a language that the bitter-hearted healer did not understand and could not understand, “are capable of tainting even the strongest medicine with evil, but it is they who suffer the most from their bitterness. A human heart is not meant to be cold. Humans are not designed for the cold as we demons are, and a frozen heart can only beat for so long before it wears itself away with its darkness.”

And so, perhaps it was not odd that the bitter-hearted healer did not live to see the day that her tainted medicine had done its work, and the empress’s daughter was indeed born as hideous as a snake. The healer was a miracle doctor from the heavens and a healer who could heal all, it seemed, except herself. The bitter-hearted woman’s coldness made her incurably ill upon returning to her kingdom, and the people sighed for a moment at her passing.

“She was quite a beauty,” the people said, because it was quite sad to lose someone who looked so lovely, just as it is quite sad to lose a lovely flower to an unseasonal bout of cold weather. “It is a shame to lose her and no longer see such a lovely face.”

But as all beauty eventually fades one day, so did the memory of the healer, who, you must understand, was not truly especially skilled at her craft, and indeed, had relied heavily on the skills of her not-so-pretty assistants whose stories the world did remember far beyond their time.

And so the bitter-hearted healer’s tale was forgotten, and when the time comes that a man in a cave tells this story of the beautiful empress’s ugly daughter to the Crown Princess Satsuki, not a soul remains who remembers the bitter-hearted healer at all.

[whoslaurapalmer]

for literally any of your fics: 3, 4, 8, and 13

sam you are a TRUE HERO, and I jumped around through a lot of fics inthese answers, I’m sorry this is so wordy, and I kept rewritingthings because I DON’T KNOW IF EVERYTHING WAS RELEVANT OR THINGS PEOPLE CARED ABOUT i care about very minute details but i know not everyone does 

3: What’s yourfavorite line of narration?

you know how like,you totally know the answer to this on any given day and then someoneasks you for real and you immediately forget every single word you’veever written????? yEAH

I’ve always beenstupidly fond of “I did, in fact, eventually investigate the postoffice, and sent along the required information to my sister, beforeI followed the lead further and wound up almost running into aQuagmire.” from beatrice. cause like. quagmire as in, aproblem. but also, Quagmire, as in, one of. the Quagmires. I thoughtit was delightful and NO ONE’S EVER COMMENTED ON IT it is kind ofburied in the opening though I’ll admit that

there’s also likethis unnecessary amount of narration in what grew in the garden ofproserpine but, I’m very proud of it. I worked hard to make it,different, and low-key creepy but soft. I want to say ‘i tried togo for like shirley jackson?’ but I know I did not succeed. Ihaven’t read enough shirley jackson. shout out to my brother’scopy of the lottery, still sitting on my desk, which I have readlike, halfway. anyway, I like  “The little stone pathways hadcracked with age, as had the fountains and the statues, pockmarked bydead space where the stone itself had crumbled off.” in particular.(oh god is it more like, daphne du maurier, actually???)

4: What’s yourfavorite line of dialogue?

1) literallyEVERYTHING in the parent trap au but particularly the “ramona have you SEEN my son” bit 2) everything laura says in timepresent and time past, I think that’s the best laura I’veever written 3) everything in all phone, no sex 4) "amuffin," laura says. "i want a muffin."

8: Did any realpeople or events inspire any part of it?

I was going to sayno but I think, yeah, for a lot of my fics and especially myheadcanons?? they’re based in a lot of little things I’ve seen ordone and definitely felt. but the moments they’ve inspired areequally little and go more towards like the thematic backbone of astory than inspire like a main event or plot point or acharacter/dialogue, which is why i want to say no, if that makessense?? like little things in my fic are really rooted in a lot of mebut still (at least to me) feel like, they contribute to thebackground fabric of how I thought about the fic and are woven in tothe point that they aren’t worth pointing out

like, coop tends agarden that gets eaten by deer because deer used to eat my brother’sflowers at one of his apartments, but that’s only part of thatheadcanon; laura gets all of my depression feelings, but that’s noteverything to writing her character; one day past the end of theworld partially took from thinking about my and my mom’s owngrief experiences, but not for anything in particular, just in how Ithought about sarah and how people treated her; beatrice doesn’tsay things I’ve said but anything I write her saying is 100%something I would say, because so much of me is in how Iwrite her, but that’s not the only part of her character and a lotof it is me guessing at canon; I have a lemonberry ice headcanon Ihaven’t posted about them raising the kids that’s based entirelyon me babysitting, which is probably actually ‘a big thing’ butit’s a headcanon. mostly, fics come from me sitting around andgoing ‘i have had a thought. I am inspired by this thought. I’mgonna go Follow That Thought.’ which usually comes from justthinking about characters.

13: What musicdid you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story?Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readersshould listen to to accompany us while reading?

musicis always SUCH a big part of my writing (andalways has been!). Ido create thematically relevant playlists. that’s a big thing forme and I’m REAL picky about what I consider thematically relevant.(although sometimes I’ll write to a completely unrelated songbecause I just heard it and it’s a real jam and it became amarathon song. like, snow cats by afi has nothing to do withbeatrice. but Ilistened to that for like two weeks inthe middle of writing that.)

ifI title a fic after a song I WHOLEHEARTEDLY want people to listen toit while they read. maybe marathon it. cause I probably marathoned itwhile writing. but you do you. but I put a lot of thought into themusic I listen to when I write, and especially if a song winds up asthe title, and I want people to feel the same things I felt. (exceptlike don’t listen to what you know by two door cinema club whilereading i will get there,there’s way too much of a tone difference and I definitely did notmarathon it while writing.)

there’sonly one playlist I am super dying to reveal (although i will reveal any upon request) and it’s what Ilistened to for and i’ve written pages upon pages trying to rid you from my bones –engine driver by thedecemberists and hero by regina spektor, and record year for rainfallby the decemberists for bertrand’s part. I also had unspokenhistory by alex lahey on the playlist, but I got really attached tothat regina song and forgotabout unspoken history (but it’s an EXCELLENT song). 

[austennerdita2533]

A/N: Here’s an exploration of Klaus’s final thoughts while dying because why write happy AUs when I can suffer in canon hell instead? Loosely inspired by (THIS) gifset.

**ALLUSIONS TO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH**

(A03)(FF.net)

Happy reading!

xx Ashlee Bree

There are few constants in this world. Though it’s not the most revolutionary thought to be archived, there is none more relevant to a monster who’s currently stretched thin and waning piece-by-piece into the cityscape, his mind drifting off like flecks of paper as he expends his last gulps of borrowed air into the dusk until he disappears.

Such a stark truth helps to put everything back into perspective. His eyelids can flutter closed with one less regret now because he knows…yes, because he knows…

Hardly anything stays the same here.

The sun rises then sets, only never in the same way twice. Opportunity gushes forward when it should trickle in instead. Blood sustains but it too runs dry the longer his fangs cling to the carotid of some nameless human’s neck, that prayer for help already fallen silent on the tip of a person's tongue so it’s gone before the gods can hear it, before they answer it - that is, if there truly are any gods left.

Perhaps they still exist somewhere, or perhaps they never did?

Klaus wouldn’t know since humanity’s fickleness deletes old beliefs faster than it ushers in grander ones on spools of sacred carpet. He doesn’t care because a thousand years have lapsed, and he’s never seen one. Never heard from one, either. Not a’once.

It seems only the agents of hell reign here. So either he’s indebted to them, or cursed, or he’s a member of their demon dregs? It doesn’t matter which one it is.

There aren’t many consistencies to be found around him regardless. There’s little to no predictability.

Sometimes, though, a giggle will leave its mark in surprise or in dread, in humor or in cruelty, so that it echoes in his head. Not that such a sound matters at all to the wind carrying it like a letter, because how could it? Why would it? There is no promise it shall arrive again before it’s missed.

Thoughts, cultures, foods, and dreams all disappear in the seconds it takes to sneeze.

Klaus snaps his fingers and the Berlin Wall tumbles, he whistles and soon the arctic ice thaws into puddles of boiling salt that raise the seas. Applause turns to duels and duels turn to kisses faster than he can flip to the next Shakespearean act and read it all the way through looking for hints, searching for clues that will tell him what to expect at the end.

Another extinct language is continually born to die in ashes that were made to flicker after they fall. Some embers drift away unseen almost as readily as others which remain behind, stacked higher than gray ant hills. Those are the ones built to thrive and condemn all who come into contact with their illegible numerals in the first place. With no ears to listen, and with no hands to point or shoes to kick it along, the fiery wind above delivers a message that may or may not be read by those who remain below, still standing; the lot of them still stuck in a moment they’ll soon learn to forget because they can, because to survive they must march ahead.

Nothing stops in this world, and Klaus knows it. He’s seen it.

History blows past everything with a wink. He feels the edges spinning away from him day after day - splitting into shreds he’s too slow to catch.

Transience is a terrible companion for a man like him, for all creatures who ache for perpetuity or an anchor of sorts to brace them against the onslaught, but sometimes that’s all there is. Sometimes fleeting brevity is all one gets.

Rain often washes the paint and charcoal from his fingertips, for example. Snow likely cools the fury he wears curled under his breath before exchanging it for mercy, or the precious little of it he still possesses. Hope can be moister than a stick of gum when he tucks it back against his molars, but it never stays fresh. The taste is sweet at first, then more and more sour when the mint decays into chalk along the inside of his cheek and drills a hole of white through his tongue, the bloody thing a grave which opens deeper with every smile and charming word he speaks. Cementing like an abscessed cavity when he must count his losses in soon-to-be-archaic syllables.

New species of flowers proliferate then wither in his palms over and over again. Leaves green before they redden, orange, yellow, and brown so as to hibernate with all the foes he doesn’t know exist, or hasn’t bested yet. Time becomes nothing more than a string of multiplying paragraphs before it starts to unravel at the seams to make it impossible to remember where one fantasy begins, and another reality ends.

Barely anything Klaus touches remains steady. Most of it crumbles, turning to sawdust in his lap.

“Permanent” is neither a word he applies to many things in this universe nor to an existence which has done its damndest to convince him of its rarity.

His whole life already buoys on a globe of volcanic nothings, does it not? He’s observed how it perches precariously on a bed of tepid somethings which is always moving, always changing in a rhythm that quakes until it turns deaf from the relentless pound pound pound of his fists. The fog billows around mountaintops so the centuries pass in a whisper, or so year after year zooms by in a screech so loud it could perforate the eardrums. Yet each one remains special somehow because it cannot be weathered by anything else except progress. And evolution. And transformation.

All the lightness and darkness in him blurs while bourbon drowns the red screams that come from another city’s throat. Then from another…and another…and another…ad nauseam. The cycle continuing in squawking refrain because—oh, how the Endless hurts!

Buildings wobble. Cobblestone rots. Parchment crinkles, yellowing at the edges. Lanterns light a crowded alleyway which soon will be filled with rubble, with parking spaces or picnic tables, with ghosts of people he met too long ago to recount every individual face with clarity.

Hills and meadows and streams, and gravel and grasses and blacktopped streets—they crack beneath his feet the longer he treads on this earth with the continents drifting apart, with the waves crashing back together in a lover’s chaotic embrace because that’s how reunions spark throughout the ages: violently and with no care to preserve the prettiness of the land it once abandoned. And that’s okay. It’s this thirst and hunger for uproar which sprinkles life in destructive beauty. It’s what makes eternal adjustments so spontaneous, so thrilling.

The truth is Klaus is no stranger to changeability.

Nor is irregularity a foreign concept to a cunning mind like his that’s forever plotting, always considering new plans for domination or survival, so none of that scares him. Nothing of the erratic sort can, or should, or will unsettle his thoughts enough to drag him from sleep to brew a war which blazes inside of himself because he’s lost a hold of something the world never gave him, something it never promised he could keep.

He's acknowledged all the while how inconstancy is more likely to web around and throughout him as he continues forward into the eclogues of forever. He’s accepted it, breathed it in like the oxygen he no longer needs.

So what terrifies him isn’t that variables still abound as they always have but that he’s stumbled over something much more disconcerting in the pulse of his own throat, in the wretched tremble of his knees as a single look or word pins him to the floor on all fours, willingly damned like some besotted fool straight out of every bloody Victorian novel that was ever penned. It’s how he’s unearthed a kind of endurability in himself where none should be yet is in spite of all he knows or may confess in truths yanked from his soul like teeth—and that’s her. She’s the singular point of alarm behind everything.

Caroline.

She’s equal parts beautiful, infuriating, and fierce. She’s impossible and inescapable, she’s the answer behind every question he’s too afraid to ask out loud. In the forgotten silence, it’s her voice carrying everything he wants to hear: a ‘so long’ sweeter than a peck on the mouth, a slap of reckoning, a right ‘ol pinch in the arse for being disappointing; light that never dims, never burns down to black; charm and kindness with a dash of audacity, the loveliness of an elbow to the gut when it’s warranted, since it often can be with Mikaelsons around; and hope so pure it covers him like heaven’s own golden sleeves.

Klaus was struck by her the moment they met. He continues to be so every minute, hour, year, decade of time he’s fortunate enough to know her. See her. Wondering about feelings she may or may not reciprocate even as a peculiar heaviness starts to settle over his limbs, then robs him of any action except thinking.

Permanent in a way that will never fade, irrational love for her is the one truly indestructible thing he owns. It belongs to him completely. It’s the thumping heart of his entire universe, but then again...so is she.

However, with Death’s fingertips about to shut a lid over him and all they could’ve been one day, a single thought scratches hauntingly through Klaus’s mind; a final pang shoots across his heart before goodbye rots his lungs for keeps because it’s not until then that he realizes:

Caroline will never learn how much she’s cherished now, will she?

There are few constants in this world. It’s a fact, not a mystery. Yet while physics may write the laws and answers for everything else, for him, she - only she - is a perpetual feeling.

[ryoshan]

HOLY SHIT THIS TOOK FOREVER BUT IT’S DONE 

under the cut (for those interested right this second) is a list of all my muses, the ships i’m currently developing with them, and ones i might be interested in, and the ones i’m definitely not interested in. it’ll be linked in my nav page and stuff for future reference but i compiled it and edited it in the new post editor cause it was easier so i might as well post it (pls give me validation..... this took literally all day.......) 

SHIPPING INFO 

right lads this blog is a multi with 10 muses and each of them have at least like, two or three ships that i’m already writing with folk and infinitely more that i would like to, or would be up for exploring. in some cases, i’m willing to write the same ship with multiple people, in other cases i’m not. thats what this page is for! it’s also not an extensive list, so as long as an idea isn’t listed as an absolute no, consider me up for discussion. i don’t expect this to be read by everyone, but do give the relevant info a glance if you’d like to ship with one of my kids. 

WHEN I SAY EXCLUSIVE: i do not mean that i consider myself exclusives with that rper. i’m not fond of applying exclusives to my blog. what i mean is that i personally will not pursue that ship with another rper of that character. usually due to lack of interest, attachment to one iteration, or to stop myself from being overwhelmed. my partner is free to do as they like and i don’t expect them to consider me their exclusive.

OCS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME: just as i’m happy to ship my oc with your canon chars, i’m happy to ship my canons with your ocs, so long as the chemistry is there both ic and ooc. 

YANG 

bumbleby. rebellas & remnesque. not open to other blakes at this time. 

salamander. iridissent. open to other ilias. 

freezerburn. i fucking love this ship but i am currently sans any weiss. hit me up lads i’m dyin of drought here. 

greek fire. remnesque. open to other pyrrhas. 

pink lemonade. pls. my crops are dying

no men, no family members, no villains (unless in an au completely removed from rwby canon)

WEISS 

whiterose. rosescattered. this is blog otp, and you’ll see a shit tonne of content to it. exclusive to jess’ ruby. 

freezerburn. i’m serious guys. i’d die 4 this. 

monochrome. open to exploration, with respect to the contention between them in early volumes (and a rewrite of the v1 finale)

schneekos. remnesque. i’m gay. open to other pyrrhas. 

white chocolate. soulspyre. open to other cocos. 

blizzard lizard. iridissent. in development with and exclusive to blue’s ilia. 

white rabbit. don’t @ me this would be cute

no men, no family members, no villains (unless in an au completely removed from rwby canon)

REN

renora. gcrdens. exclusive to snow’s nora at this time. 

martial arcs. you can blame shi and nine for this one.

white lotus. >v>

ryokucha. dont @ me yats would drink ren’s smoothie iykwim

and most probably lots more, if asked. 

WINTER 

raewin. nvvrrmorr. with respect to it all falling apart post v5 events. exclusive to hawk’s raven. 

glynter. herguidance. im a big fucking lesbian. exclusive to moro’s glynda.

frappucino. soulspyre. i’m a big gay. open to other cocos. 

cinwin. soulspyre & fallrise. this is more of an au based fun to explore but ultimately not endgame ship. open to other cinders. 

elderburn. valorsouls. future verse only. exclusive to jess’ yang. 

blakewin. remnesque. au based, exclusive to blue’s blake. 

no men, no family members, no students in a current-canon timeline. 

ILIA

calico. rebellas. in development with jess’ blake. tentatively open to other blakes. 

rainbow quartz. halluciness. open to other emeralds. 

light speed. GIVE. ME. THIS. WHOLESOME. SHIT. 

no men. 

TAIYANG

silver scales. valorsouls & gcrdens. you can NEVER have too much canon dweeb parents. feel free to assume a ship here!

phoenix. nvvrrmorr. again feel free to assume, but assumed interactions will be placed pre-canon. open to other ravens. 

taiqrow. hoardofheroes. requires plotting. tentatively open to other qrows.  

dadbros. hoardofheroes. don’t @ me these dweebs are awesome. exclusive to reneé’s ghira. 

kalitai. gcrdens. au based. exclusive to snow’s kali, probably. 

no students, but i’m otherwise very open with ships for him.

FOX

good hustle. gcrdens & soulspyre. open to other cocos. 

zootopia. valorsouls. open to other velvets (and alternative ship names...)

tree bark. hoardofheroes. open to other yatsuhashis. 

i’m always willing to ship fox with c*vy

copper magnet. listen.... give pyrrha a guy who doesn’t gaf abt celebrity or looks or skill, only heart.

...i could ship fox with virtually anyone except ruby. 

QROW

flown north. valorsouls. with respect to taiyang; qrow is not ruby’s father. exclusive to jess’ summer. 

...he a ho. you’d struggle to bring up a ship i won’t consider for qrow

...except qrowin. as a winter rper i struggle to get behind it personally, even if qrow wouldn’t mind jumping her bones. 

no students. long term relationships require heavy plotting.

CHARLIE

charlynda. herguidance. exclusive to moro’s glynda. 

charlie is a 42 year old lesbian huntress. she’s down for any women her age. i’m partial to the idea of raven, sienna, and vernal. 

no men. no students. 

NEO

spice cream. soulspyre & fallrise. sometimes au based. not open to other cinders. 

whipped cream. i’m into this just for the ship name. i’ll give u a dollar if u can guess what it is.

bloody sundae. nvvrrmorr. dont @ me my justifaction for all neo ships is im gay. exclusive to hawk’s raven. 

sienneo. im gay. 

verneo. deceivor. exclusive to blue’s vernal. 

no men, no students.