#might as well have lit it on fire for all it was worth

[silverislander]

i was talking to my friends abt this earlier today and while i'm still p mad abt how things worked out w the government job program it's also kind of funny if you think abt it. i sent in a resume and never heard from them again. not to confirm that they got my resume, not to offer me any interview or job whatsoever, not to tell me they're sorry but they couldn't find anything for me, just total radio silence, and because it's been a month i just kind of have to assume i didn't get selected for anything. i got ghosted by the fuckin government

[thekissofaphrodite]

I Grew this for you, Ives.

Luke Castellan X Daughter of Demeter! Reader

Summary: Your secret meetup with your boyfriend, Luke, might have been interrupted by Percy Jackson.

Warnings: MakeUp...MAKEOUT- I MEAN. Language (Tell me if i missed one!)

Author's note: It might be kinda weird that the title doesn't match the summary but trust me, it's worth reading. + If you saw a fic from another blog the same as this i requested it and decided i wanna make the fic myself.

___

New kid, New responsibility. You were known as being motherly towards every kid that stepped in Camp Half Blood. And Maybe, Just maybe, Percy Jackson considered you as his Camp Mom, It wasn't new for older campers seeing a new 12 year old boy follow you around and look up at you with big puppy eyes along with Grover's confused look, but oh well.

Ever since your Godly Mother, Demeter has claimed you, Luke has called you Ives since then. It all happened when three years ago, you ended up in Camp Half blood after your mortal father has been killed by a chimera, much to his sacrifice, You might have offered some small offerings to your Brother In Law, Hades, to watch him in the underworld. Your first week into camp half-blood, Chiron had announced that Capture the Flag will be the first game for the day, you were teamed up with the reds (Much to your disappointment) you were near the cabin fire when two boys from the blue team had cornered you (One of them was luke) you raised you hands to cover yourself but then, Two ivy vines sprouted out the soil and blocked them, horror washed over you when one of the vines that you 'accidentally' summoned strangled one of the boys, Luke was able to escape and still..Blue team one.

While they were celebrating, The red team started ranting angrily about how you made them lose, You sat in a corner, your head leaned against an oak tree as you sobbed, then, a bright greenish-yellow light appeared with gold sickle with a few sheaths of wheat above your head, No one was there, not until a group of campers saw you, they ran and moments later, almost dozens of campers were in front of you, including chiron.

"All Hail Y/n Y/L/N, Daughter of Demeter"

Bunch of flowers started sprouting near you, The forest and plants looked much more healthier in your eyes as every one knelt down, Including Luke, Who gave you a mischievous wink.

"....And this is the mess hall, You're always designated to sit with your cabin mates but that depends, most unclaimed kids just sit with their friends" You said, Glancing at Percy, The young boy just nodded shyly and coughed,trying to hide his blushing cheeks.

"Looks like someone has a crush on you" Luke appeared behind you with a grin, Percy's eyes immediately went wide, making you chuckle.

"Crushes don't hurt, it's admiration afterall" You whispered before giving percy a light kiss on his cheeks, leaving luke shocked.

One of you halfsiblings, Althea, called you over. Apparently, another one of your half sibling's EX boyfriend from the Dionysus cabin used a lard grapevine to ruin the bathroom door inside the cabin while you sibling is showering out of rage and jealousy.

Now, As head of your cabin, It's either you spent one whole hour being lectured by Mr. D out of his favoritism or...Plead with one of the Hephaestus kids to fix it for you.

What a day.

Giving Luke and Percy one last smile, You left.

__

"C'mon Felix! This is the only time that i've asked for a favour out of all the favours i've done for you, You'd do it for me" You pleaded as you followed him back and forth inside his cabin's workshop.

"Look, Y/n, I love you as my friend, but i can't do it, not right now"

"What if i give you a 25$ gift card from burger king and......" You scouried your pocket hoping to find something, Your eyes lit up as you felt a bill in your palms "50 dollars...and...." You then went to pat your bra and pulled out a coin. "A Peso"

You then placed it in his soily hands, Felix's face remained calm, he then took the money.

"It's warm..." He said kinda horrified...You pulled the peso out of your bra for the gods sake!

"Take it or leave it."

He then rolled his eyes and grabbed his toolbox.

"Lead the way"

You squealed and hugged him before pulling him to your cabin.

As you watched him repair the door in silence, Felix broke the silencce by purposely dropping a hammer to the ground, the loud clattering sound made you flinch a little, he smirked "Thinking about Luke?"

You snorted, as if tho you weren't actually thinking about him, "No, i'm thinking about Percy"

"The new kid who broke Clarisse's spear? he's badass"

"mhm, Son of Poseidon"

"Speaking of, How's Luke?"

There was a moment of silence before you replied.

"Fine"

"Just 'fine' ? No ungodly things happening?"

"No" You could've bursted out laughing.

"I don't believe you, C'mon tell me some elaborate details"

You raised your brow, a mischievous glint appearing in your eyes.

"Actually, if you finished that, i'll tell you"

The Hephaestus boy huffed and went back to work

After an hour, Felix finished repairing the door and bid you a goodbye (Along with a side-eye)

__

It was now 11 pm, the Campfire sing-along ended almost an hour ago, and you were in your cabin, re-arranging your stuffed toys for the 5th time, (Making one plushie lay beside you will cause chaos among the plushies)

"Carrie..You go here and..Princess should be right....here, Done!"

All of your plushies were in order when you heard a knock from the window near your bunkbed. then, you saw luke, still in his usual camp shirt, unlike you who was in your rather inappropriate pajamas.

His eyes first landed on you, he then grinned before groaning and landing on your soft bunk bed.

"Hey ives-"

"Luke, what're you doing here?!" You hissed, afraid that your half siblings might caught you two.

"Can i not see you?"

"You can, but not at this time" You huffed, But he was still grinning before pulling a flower pot, with a rose.

"I grew this for you, Ives" He whispered, His eyes carefully scanning you expression before you chuckled.

"You know i can grow this in seconds?"

"Mhm, But still, I love you 'till the very last rose in this entire world wilt into ash"

A smile graced upon your lips before luke grabbed your cheeks and kissed you, the flowerpot fell into your bed, the soil staining your new bedsheet, You couldn't care less.

You deepened the kiss by pulling Luke by his neck, and a groan escaped his lips, his calloused hands then slowly went up your shorts making you moan a little, His hands became closer and closer and closer until-

"Luke?"

You two pulled away, Luke's hands were still in your inner thighs, he took a peak into your window and saw Percy, in his cute pajamas with messy blonde hair.

"Percy" Luke breathed.

"What's up?"

"The Apollo cabin seemed to be having a party, the noise is too loud and i can't sleep, i was wondering if you could go see it "

You then peaked into your window, your cheeks were pressed against luke's

"Y/n? Wait..what are you guys doing? and...why are you in her window?" Percy asked, his drowsiness seemed to have vanished.

Luke couldn't even answer percy himself, he started chuckling softly before burying his face into your neck and smothered it with kisses.

Percy then stood still before realizing, he cleared his throat, but before he could leave you called him.

"You know what? I think Luke could actually take a look at those Sun Brats" Luke immediately groaned and looked at you.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Go help the poor boy"

"Yes Ma'am"

He then got up and just as he was about to climb down your bunk bed you stopped him.

"Nah uh, You can leave where you entered"

The dark haired boy chuckled, and and started climbing down the window, before he could jump back to the ground you kissed him one last time, But this time, the kiss was much more passionate. You could've sworn percy made a gagging face before turning around.

"I love you Ives"

" 'Till the very last rose in this entire world wilt into ash" You said, Luke's eyes soften.

You watched as he and Percy went to the Apollo cabin to resolve the chaos.

The flower potted rose sat in your bed, You took it, and glanced at the beautiful red beauty, You sniffed the fragrance before placing it near your window as you felt Hypnos' warm palm caressing you to sleep.

__

The next day, The first thing you did was bang into Felix's cabin, Giving him every detail from last night as Luke, along with percy watched you from afar.

A/N:

Hey Guys! I've been gone for too long and i just watched the new PJO series and i have to be honest, I fell in love with Charlie as Luke so here's a little treat for you guys while i finish my other fics, i do hope you guys like it!

[writeriguess]

Katsuki x fem reader fic where he's your professor but you have a secret relationship

The heavy sound of boots echoes through the empty lecture hall as Professor Katsuki Bakugou finishes his lesson. The room is devoid of students now, the lights dimmed except for the one near his desk. You linger behind, pretending to review your notes, though your eyes keep drifting towards him. The air is thick with unspoken tension, the kind that only you and he understand.

"Everyone's gone," Bakugou says gruffly, without looking up from his papers. His voice is deep, commanding—a stark contrast to the softness he shows you when no one else is around.

You close your notebook, heart pounding. "I know."

Bakugou finally looks up, his sharp, crimson eyes locking onto yours. "You should leave too," he says, but there's a hint of something more in his tone. Something that says he doesn't really want you to go.

You stand, your pulse quickening as you walk towards his desk. The distance between you feels like a chasm, but you close it in a few quick strides. The moment you’re close enough, his hand reaches out, grabbing your wrist and pulling you behind his desk, out of sight from the door.

"Katsuki," you whisper, the use of his first name forbidden in this setting but thrilling all the same.

"Quiet," he mutters, his voice husky as he pulls you closer. His lips brush against your ear, sending shivers down your spine. "Someone might hear."

But the thrill of being caught only heightens the excitement. You can't help the smile that tugs at your lips as you lean into him, feeling the warmth of his body against yours. "Let them," you tease, knowing full well that neither of you can afford the consequences.

Bakugou's grip tightens on your waist, his breath hot against your neck. "You think this is a joke?" he growls softly, but there's no real anger in his voice—just a frustrated desire that matches your own.

Your heart races as you tilt your head to meet his gaze. "I think it's worth the risk."

For a moment, the world outside ceases to exist. It's just the two of you, wrapped in the dangerous thrill of your secret. He kisses you then, hard and fast, as if he can’t stand being apart from you for even a second longer. His hands roam over your back, pulling you flush against him as if trying to erase the boundaries that keep you apart during the day.

The kiss is fiery, just like him, filled with a passion that leaves you breathless. When he finally pulls back, you're both panting, your forehead resting against his. His hands remain on your hips, holding you close as he fights to regain control.

"We can't keep doing this," he murmurs, though his actions betray his words. His fingers trace patterns on your lower back, igniting sparks beneath your skin.

You know he's right. You both know it. But the thought of ending things makes your chest ache in a way you can't ignore.

"I don't care," you whisper, your voice trembling with the intensity of your feelings. "I want you."

Bakugou closes his eyes, jaw clenched as he struggles with the same internal battle that has plagued him since the beginning. But when he opens them again, there's a fire there that mirrors your own.

"Damn it," he curses softly, before capturing your lips in another searing kiss, one that promises that this secret, this forbidden romance, is far from over.

In the silent, dim-lit lecture hall, your love is a spark that defies the rules, burning brightly in the darkness. But with each passing day, you both know that it’s only a matter of time before the world outside finds out, and the consequences of your forbidden love come crashing down.

Requests are open.

[sylvies-chen]

I think the focus on the firstborn sons this episode was really interesting as well because jacaerys and rhaenyra’s relationship reaches a point of tension in this episode for… probably the first time ever? and yet it contrasts so beautifully to the discussion between aegon and alicent.

jace is argumentative when his mother comes back, and he does make some bold statements for someone talking to a queen in front of her court. still, it comes from a place of love and worry, and that pervades in everything he says. his concern as to where she was, his refusal to let her go into battle. and rhaneyra did leave him and baela hanging for a bit! some tension is natural! this is someone who just loves their mother and wants so badly for everything to go right. rhaenyra of course holds her ground to shut down his boldness, but she does so in a very diplomatic way. then she pulls him aside to tell him about the song of ice and fire almost right afterwards. like emma d’arcy said, this is rhaneyra enfranchising him as her heir, but it’s also her showing him the respect of an equal. and visually it’s beautiful. she’s holding his hand as a sign of love and intimacy, they’re lit so beautifully with the light beaming down on them to show their potential and rightfulness as leaders, she’s doing it in front of a dragon skull like how her father did with her in the name of preserving tradition. it’s very succinct, very respectful, very loving.

then almost immediately before that, aegon ii and alicent have a discussion. aegon’s complaining that none of the council members respect him, and of course alicent can only view this as whining. she shuts him down as rhaenyra did jace, except without dignity and respect. alicent is lost. her beliefs are crashing and she really doesn’t know where her place is in all of this anymore, only that she caused this, so it leaves her with quite a bitter looseness. she disrespects him, calls him thoughtless, and when he reminds her that he is king, it kind of means nothing to her. I do believe she loves her children, but she treats them (especially aegon) the way she always has: as pawns. if the love is there, it isn’t shown. she says all kinds of blasphemous things about her king and then, instead of affirming his worth like rhaenyra did jace, she tells him he’s only a seat on a throne, that he’s worthless, that essentially it was never about wanting him on there, but about not wanting rhaenyra there (an idea conditioned into her by her father). all while they’re sitting an entire table’s length apart— not to mention that they go on to shatter various things in this episode. that’s the crux of it really: alicent and her children are dysfunctional, shattered and loveless where rhaenyra and her children are functional, united and loved.

I don’t know. there’s that dumbledore quote that goes “do not pity the dead, pity the living. and above all else, pity those who live without love.” to me, that’s the epitome of the greens. they might have known honour and compassion had they first known healthy love.

[drunkkenobi]

Today I’m thinking about three guys. Thinking about how they all had hands in creating concepts and videos that made the company they worked for famous. Thinking about how, despite that, they weren’t allowed to own what they created. Thinking about how their two biggest series were threatened to be taken away from them and given to more popular (whiter) hosts. Thinking about how they nearly burned out and faded away, but an idea lit a fire under them instead. Their own company, where they could have full creative control, where nothing could be taken away from them, where no one could tell them there wasn’t the editing budget for a show that was already written. Thinking about how they started it in secret, with no business knowledge. Thinking about how one of them took it upon himself to learn everything he could about running a business. How he knew it would mean putting his own creative pursuits on hold just to support his co-founders. How he did it anyway.

Thinking about how they announced their company to the world, with a shocking surprise. Thinking about how the world delivered its own shocking surprise back to them a few short months later in the form of a global pandemic. Thinking about how their company was almost strangled in its crib, how they thought it was DOA, how everything they worked so hard for was almost gone. Thinking of how, instead, it survived. Thinking of how they pivoted, how they threw everything they could at the wall, and while not everything stuck, the things that did kept them going. How they took every cent they made and put it back into the business by hiring fellow creatives and weirdos and investing in their future. Thinking of how they kept taking gambles, by taking the series that made two of them famous and making it their own. Thinking of how if that series had failed, it would have taken the company down with it and how they went for it anyway.

Thinking about how the CEO talked openly over the years about how he missed his old co-host, how hard it was to find that spark again. Thinking about how he focused on running the business instead of finding his own creative path. Thinking about how much thought he put into caring for their employees, how he put their well-being over churning out content, even if it meant less profit. How a work-life balance might not be in his wheelhouse, but how he wants it to be for the people that work for him.

Thinking about how the internet has changed in the decade since these three guys starting making videos for it. Thinking about how the algorithm values cheap drama over interesting stories. About how one wrong thumbnail or title can tank months’ worth of work. About how a misplaced swear can do the same, because the world is run by advertisers and not human beings. Thinking about how disheartening it must be to make a video to appease someone that would never watch it anyway. Thinking about how hard it would be to look at the numbers and realize the place that once was your space for success could now be home to your failure. Thinking about how much time they spent looking for a better alternative and how they ultimately realized there was only one.

Thinking about how delighted those three guys were once they had a plan. Thinking about the one of them who had finally reunited with his creative partners to start a new show, the one he’s been dreaming of for years, the one that’s been put on the backburner for the betterment of his company, finally able to exist. Thinking of the week of announcements, of the thousands of excited comments when this partnership was publicly declared. Thinking of how much joy was in the air, how much hard work was about to pay off. How their plans for months were about to come to fruition, how excited they were to take the fans on this next journey.

How they announced their new venture with a corkboard of fanart, showing it’s about them and us, together.

Thinking about how nearly everyone turned on them.

Thinking about how they walked back some of their plans to appease the loudest and the nastiest. Thinking about all the racist screeds their CEO had to read about himself. How he had to keep working despite it. How he and the rest of the company had to pivot immediately. How they had to know some of their contemporaries were also planning something similar and how none of them came to their defense. How they had to watch everything that they’ve worked so hard for become perilous. How a global pandemic was easier to weather than the cruelest words typed for everyone to see.

Thinking about how tomorrow, a new show will premiere. The one that’s been worked on in relative secret for so long and thought of even longer. The one that everyone was eagerly anticipating before they realized the people that make it need to eat, too. The one that everyone immediately mischaracterized to justify their own racism. The one that was supposed to be their big flagship series. The one that maybe still will be.

Tomorrow I’m hoping it will be the start of a new chapter. Hoping that the worst actors will get bored and move onto something else. Hoping that those who got the wrong impression will come back. Hoping that the show and its new home are a success and they get to make as much of it as they want, with no one to tell them how to do it.

I hope.

[miyamiwu]

On Kaiser’s Trauma

I’ve thought it over, and I think there’s really no way for Kaiser to awaken this match. Be it scoring a goal or getting one over Isagi, he is not winning. I don’t see it at all.

I’ve reviewed the previous character development arcs, and one thing Kaneshiro has been staunch about is that internal development comes first before external development:

Chigiri - Chigiri had to get over his fear of losing his old self by putting his leg at risk again before the narrative rewarded him with a goal.

Bachira - Bachira had to overcome his fear of being alone before being rewarded with, not a goal, but with a friend who met him where he was.

Barou - Barou had to experience his arrogance being crushed and overcome the subsequent resignation he felt before he could reclaim his role as “main character.”

Hiori - Hiori had to first come at peace with giving up soccer entirely—something he had been hesitant to do, even when it hurt him, because he didn’t know what else to do—before discovering what soccer really means to him.

Yukimiya - Yukimiya found salvation when Isagi saw him as he was desperately fighting for a chance while he could still see.

It’s a bit different for Isagi’s main rivals, though:

Nagi - Nagi got motivated to put in an effort because of Isagi -> Got stronger during Second Selection -> Went back to old habits just to beat Isagi once -> Regressing in the rest of the NEL arc

Rin - Rin had to stop seeking answers outside of himself -> Unleashed his true ego during the U20 match -> Subconsciously sought affirmation from Sae at the end of the match -> Felt rejected by Sae -> ??? (The current match against PxG is ongoing, so I don’t know how he is right now)

Nagi’s and Rin’s development arcs are not linear, and currently both are in the lower curves of their arcs. This is because they haven’t fully solved their internal problems. Until Nagi finds a reason to push himself outside of beating Isagi and until Rin gets over his brother issues, they can never fully grow.

Likewise, Kaiser, who is undoubtedly also a main rival, has to first fucking get therapy process his childhood trauma before he can truly awaken.

But trauma is not easy to overcome. In fact, you don’t even really “heal.” Kaiser “getting over it” in just one match is impossible. As such, I don’t see him winning. At least not now.

Isagi throwing Kaiser’s words back at him by calling him a “clown” has gotten some people to think that Kaiser’s awakening is imminent. After all, a similar thing had happened to Barou before when Isagi called him “donkey.”

But Kaiser is not Barou. Both may be arrogant, but one of them didn’t grow up under violence. And as I’ve said before, internal development comes first. Barou’s internal problems, compared to Kaiser’s, are much easier to resolve.

And unlike Barou’s, Kaiser’s problems are not confined within soccer. They seep into his every being and in all aspects of his life, as we can see in how he treats himself and others off the field.

To begin, let’s talk about what Kaiser thinks of himself:

Alternatively, Hoshi’s translation of Kaiser’s monologue goes like this:

These guys are “humans.” Different from me, they were born wanted “humans.”

Having been abandoned by his mother and growing up abused by his father, Kaiser’s sense of worth is so low that he thinks he was born without it—which is wrong. Everybody is born deserving to live.

But Kaiser thinks otherwise. He sees himself as not even human because nobody wanted him alive. Still, he has this strong desire to live—a desire that had first made itself known to him at this moment:

Right before this, he had looked so dead inside:

He didn’t flinch when the cops came to arrest him. He didn’t try to fight for the escape money he had stashed away. He was so passive and tired and helpless that he might as well be truly dead.

But at that moment his father was about to destroy his soccer ball? A fire lit up inside him. A fire so bright and strong that he got to beat seven cops while handcuffed.

That fire was the love he had for soccer. All his life he’d been in a passive position, but when he fought for what he love, the reins of his life got transferred into his hands.

And in that moment, Michael Kaiser, for once, was truly alive.

Now, he’s living his life in constant search of that fire—or “proof of his existence,” as he puts it.

However, Kaiser has misunderstood what that fire is. After all, how can he recognize love when he’s never been loved?

Only pain and violence are familiar. Thus, it is honestly no surprise when he misattributes “proof of existence” to “inflicting malice on others, living on inside them as a scar.”

For Kaiser to grow, he has to redefine “proof of existence.” How can his own existence depend on the number of people he defeats? That’s unhealthy. And as with Rin’s problem, it’s just seeking answers outside of himself.

But for Kaiser to even begin redefining it, he must first learn to recognize love for what it is.

Love was the fire that was lit inside him. He must go back to it. (Like how Bachira awakened by going back to how he used to play as a child.)

Love is also the main thing that sets Isagi apart from him—the former having been raised by loving parents and having companions sincere to him—so it’s crucial that he learns this if he wants to defeat Isagi.

How can he do this? With the way he was raised, I don’t think Kaiser can learn love on his own. He has to learn it from others. But before that, he must see himself as “human.” While he still views himself as “non-human,” Kaiser won’t be able to connect deeply with “humans” and welcome any love from them.

And this is the crux of his problem...

Kaiser has made attempts to be more “human,” but...

... he’s going about it so horribly wrong 😭😭😭

@galaxynajma also sent this question:

What do you think is the new reason for why kaiser does this every morning: His morning routine consists of: standing before the mirror naked, gazing at himself while having a conversation (to himself), getting into the mindset that nothing is impossible, and then smiling while thinking ‘this is me’. (Trivia from Blue Lock wiki)

“This is me” is Kaiser reaffirming to himself that he is becoming more “human” when he sets out to achieve the “impossible.”

How to be Human 101

Okay, fuck, to be completely honest, I have no idea! I didn’t expect to get this psychological while I was writing 🫠

I had… written myself into a corner. But anyways, I’m gonna try seeing this through...

So, I’m no psychologist, but… I relate on a deeply personal level with Kaiser’s “human vs non-human.” But in my case, I had used the words “normal vs not normal.”

(This is gonna get a little bit personal, but bear with me!)

This distinction was something I strongly felt during my peak depression years. I felt like nobody truly understood me because they hadn’t been through what I had been through. Whatever the doctors said just went from one ear to another because I couldn’t trust them. In my head, I had categorized them as one of the “normal” people—their lives were so put-together and they were so in control and on top of things! Not like me, who was drowning.

I also slowly distanced myself from friends because they, too, were the “normal” ones.

One friend, however, stuck around. She didn’t mind me going missing for months without a word. And whenever I showed up again from who knows where, she would always excitedly welcome me back as if I never even left. And this was the friend who I thought to be always better than me in every way because she was prettier, smarter, and had a better financial status. So I never really expected her to get me.

But oh, she did. I found out that she wasn’t “normal,” too. She too had her own problems, and we got to share our sorrow with each other...

So, I guess what I’m trying to say here is that...

It’s not really a matter of erasing the distinction between “human” and “non-human.” It’s enough, for now, that Kaiser finds another “non-human” like him, and with whom he will slowly start to feel “human”—worthy of living and being loved.

I know Kaneshiro isn’t fond of therapy talk, but for Kaiser, I think it’s a must that he gets to open up to someone. He doesn’t have to share the full story. He just has to be sincere about it.

And who is the closest “non-human” that we have around Kaiser who’s also unwanted by his family?

Ness.

This doesn’t even have to be about shipping. And I know their relationship is looking pretty grim right now because of how Kaiser has been treating Ness since the beginning, but...

...I still believe that this, at least, was real.

Together, they can learn what it is to be “human.”

In summary, for Kaiser to awaken, he must first resolve his internal problems. To do this, he must...

Find a fellow “non-human.”

See himself as “human.”

Recognize love for what it is.

Redefine his “proof of existence”

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, *bows

---

Okay, so I don’t normally do this at the end of my posts, but I just recently launched my Alpha Reading Service. If you liked my analysis above and would like me to review your story the same way, do check it out!

Or, if you don’t need any alpha reading, consider tipping me on Ko-fi instead. Thank you!

[in-daddy-price-we-trust]

All I Wanted - Part 1

summary: when you are kidnapped discovered by TF141 they can't help but fall in love.

pairing: 141 x fem!teen!reader (platonic)

warnings: mentions of child abuse, drugs, canon typical violence

Part 2

A/N: this is like my first fanfic in a while, and first on tumblr (yay!) any tips and tricks would be so helpful!

this also plans to be a series but posting might and will be inconsistent, thank you in advance!

You always had a difficult life. Being abused by your parents up until you ran away at 13. After you ran away, you got in with the wrong type of people, promises of hope and money, food and validation was all they needed to say to get you hooked in their business of organised crime. Some good came out of it however, they gave you a home and how to defend yourself. They taught you how to shoot a gun and the best place to make someone bleed. They taught you nothing else mattered except them, they became your new family.

You were 15 when you were tasked with transporting a couple crates of weaponry and drugs. The organisation you joined knew you well enough and practically raised you to be the strongest you were. So one cargo ship to Amsterdam later, you find yourself in a rotting, metal warehouse, wearing pink apparel, pink puffy skirt and a white hello-kitty shirt. A baby pink cardigan is draped over your shoulders and over-the-knee white knitted socks. A chrome covered knife strapped to your thigh.

“Zus, how much for it all?” he stood across from you, a cigarette lit between his lips taking a long drag as you assessed his question. His black, slicked back hair elongated his face and the three piece suit almost made this deal professional.

“How much are you offering?” was all you said as a small smile graced your lips, ‘the higher the offer, the better’ you remember being told before you left. They weren’t the best weapons but they were definitely worth at least a couple K.

“25”

a grimace, “80”

a growl, “40”

a hum, “55”

“65. Final offer,” his teeth were bared, almost like he was sweating already.

A sinister, sweet smile stretched across your face, “Wonderful, and how are you wanting to transfer that?” out of seemingly nowhere you pulled out a notepad and pen, writing down the bank details before you gave him a pointed look, “You have one week to transfer the money, or I will have your head.”

His face paled, almost embarrassingly so. For how innocent you appeared to be, you knew how to handle yourself in these situations. You turned to walk away, the sound of baby pink mary janes clacking against the concrete as you bounced towards the rusted metal doors, sliding them open as you looked back at the man one final time, “It was a pleasure doing business with you,” and leaving.

You were good at your job. It was easy, for the most part. Gather intel, pass forward that intel. Transfer somewhat illegal items from one holder to another. So it comes to you as a bit of a surprise when you exit through the dusty doors when a bullet wizzes past your face, luckily just missing you. Swiftly pulling out the hand-gun out your waistband and shooting in their direction. You wish you had your sniper, but it was left in the hotel room you managed to stay at.

As you shot in the direction of the fire, you failed to notice someone sneaking out behind you, kicking your knees in. Dirt caked your socks as the grip on your gun became loose. Acting as quick as possible, you flipped onto your back, retching the knife from its holster. Before you could act, black invaded your vision as you felt pain shoot from your head. Shit.

-

White light invaded your vision, a grumbled swear leaving your dry lips at the pounding in your head. "Jesus Christ," your wrists hurt, rubbed raw by the shitty metal handcuffs they strapped you in, "Whose bedroom did you get these out of? Couldn't even afford good quality cuffs?" fell out of your mouth before you could think to stop it. No one reacted.

It was a van, you could tell that much. The interior white with small wooden benches lining it. Two men sat on either side of you whilst the other two sat across. From what you could make out, another pair sat at the front, driving to this unknown destination.

Maybe you should have been more scared. More begging for them not to hurt you. Four big, burly military men could definitely kill you much easier than you kill them.

They studied you like you studied them. The one on your left was most likely the oldest, a fisherman's hat upon his head and mutton chops-moustache combo was the dead give away. He had his eyes closed and arms crossed across his chest, legs spread wide.

You couldn't make out the one on your right quite as well. A black balaclava with painted white skeletal teeth paired well with the upper half of the skull mask he wore. He seemed to be in a similar position as grandpa, although he had an ankle resting on his knee instead, head tilted back against the cool metal of the van.

The two across from you seemed younger. One had a darker complexion, his eyebrows furrowed in a thoughtful expression. He was smaller than the rest but no doubtfully as strong.

Lastly was the man with a mohawk. His eyes bore into you the most, not so angry and more trying to figure out who you were. Breaking you apart and putting you back together with his eyes. Childishly, you stuck your tongue out at him. His face morphed into one of slight surprise before rolling his eyes and looking towards the front.

It was quiet. The hum from the light ticking like a clock in your ear. Trying to gauge where you were and how much time had passed, your foot started tapping on the floor.

"Stop," A gruff voice said suddenly making you jump before mumbling a sorry at the skull-faced man. It was quiet again. It numbed your senses, sending shivers down your spine. Gravel sounded under the tires before voices outside sounded, signalling your arrival.

The doors pulled open, sunlight shining in. As mohawk and shorty left, skully pulled your arm to tug you along out with him, a short yelp escaping past your lips at the action.

You tripped over your feet, pins and needles shooting up your legs from sitting for so long. "Can you be gentle?" you spoke as you found your footing, "Please?" it was tacked on at the end for at least the tiniest bit of sympathy.

Skully looked down at you as he continued to drag you towards what you hoped was a five-star hotel with bed and breakfast. At least your death would be a quick one.

The halls blurred together until you were sitting in a leather chair in someone's office, back to the door, although you felt the looming presence of the men behind you. Mutters were heard outside before the door clicked opened, footsteps and a click again.

Gramps stood in front of you, leaning over the dark stained oak table. He had a file in his hand, putting it on the desk before sliding it over to you. "What do you know of El Sin Nombre?" it wasn't as much of a question than you'd like but an order for information.

Your mouth was so dry it felt like you swallowed cotton. As much as you wished to answer him, you look at him with furrowed brows and a confused expression. It took you a couple minutes before words formed in your throat, "Who?".

He didn't enjoy that answer. One of his hands slapping on the desk as he seethed, repeating the question again as if that would change your answer.

"I don't know who that is! I can't help you," you felt that burning sensation under your eyes as you desperately tried to convey your emotions. Tears meant weakness, and that's the one thing you didn't want to show to your captors right now.

Pairs of eyes hammered into your head. You felt like a child again, staring down at your toes being told off for not doing the dishes or not being quick enough to grab a beer. You braced for the hits, the punches to your ribs as you made promises that fell on the deaf ears of your mother and father.

"Price," A voice sounded behind you, soft and comforting. An accent coated the words that flowed through the air you didn't pick up on. The more time passed the more your eyes stung, tears slipping past your defences. Shoulders shaking as you try to curl into yourself, strings of "I don't know" and "I'm sorry" being nothing more than mumbles.

The room grew cold and quiet as you sobbed. Footsteps couldn't be heard over your own cries, so when an arm wrapped around your shoulders, you jolted. Expecting this is where you get hit. Bracing for the impact and sting they usually brought with them.

Instead, the arm pulled you into their chest, hugging you close and stroking your hair, along with shushing you softly. It only made you sob harder. When was the last time someone hugged you like this? Sure, you got the occasional pat on the back for a job well done, but never an embrace like this.

Time passed through your fingers like sand, not knowing how long you sat there for before you calmed down. The arms didn't pull away until you did, cringing at the wet patch you left on the man's shirt. Speaking of, you looked up to see mohawk looking down at you, eyes soft and an equally soft smile. "Y're alright now lass?" his accent leaked into the words, a curt nod allowing him to pull away and stand up again.

A heavy sigh sounded above you as you dragged your eyes up to meet who you presumed was this 'Price' figure. "What’s your name?"

Gears turned over the question in your head, thinking of an answer. Technically, you lost your name when you left home, gaining a couple new names at the gang.

Your silence was taken for an answer. "What are you doing in Amsterdam?" this you could answer.

"A business exchange. I'm just the messenger, I don't know any of the customers - I promise! - I just get the money and dip. I promise I can't help you-" you were hyperventilating at this point.

"It's alright sweetheart, deep breaths, calm down for me, yeah?" Price's voice was gentle now, seemingly not wanting the same thing to happen.

"Can you tell us where you're from? Who you work for?" He asked once he saw you calm down.

"Uhm- I'm from England. And I don't really work for them but I'm a doberman. They're some organisation that took me in," you weren't really interested in going into full depths of your life with these complete strangers.

Although, you felt the gazes lift off you and onto Price, his own eyes looking back at his men, a million silent conversations happening right above your head. Price inhaled sharply before he asked his last question, "How old are?"

"15." The air knocked out of his lungs.

[valeriianz]

Dream is trying to be good. He is out of his house, for starters, attempting to mingle among the crowds. He figures this effort alone is worth at least 10 points on the socialization scale.

He may be wearing black on black as usual, but at least this is his nice pea coat, and his jeans don’t have any rips in them. His hair is even washed (though he hadn’t bothered with a combing, minus 3 points).

It’s New Year’s Eve, he’s standing at one of the few scattered tables around the large space. The bar’s ceiling and walls are lit up in a colorful agglomeration of Christmas lights and twinkling decor, so much that the people around him appear to have pink or blue or orange skin, otherwise the place is dark.

Dream drums his fingers on the tall table’s surface, scanning the crowd and trying not to look too uncomfortable at the DJ’s choice in thumping bass and current rap trends blanketing the ocean of conversation happening all around him.

“Hey, how are you?”

Dream watches as a man walks around him to stand across the table, setting a drink down and smiling in a lazy, drunk way.

Dream just stares.

“Sorry, I saw you standing alone and thought you might want some company.”

The man has to lean forward and yell to be heard over the music and people. Dream is responsive enough to at least lean in as well to catch the stranger’s words.

“I’m fine, thank you.” Dream barely has to raise his voice, thanks to his natural baritone. He’s thankful for that; he hates shouting and to do so just to commit to a conversation would be tribulation.

The man doesn’t seem to catch Dream’s response though, or doesn’t care to. He takes a sip of his drink and tries again, his fingers curling around the pint.

“Can I get you a drink?”

Dream seizes the opportunity to politely turn this man away from him.

“No, thank you. My boyfriend is getting my drink.”

The man’s brows pinch together.

“Where is your boyfriend?”

He says it like it’s a joke. Like he’s caught Dream red-handed. Dream sighs and turns to look at the crowded bar.

“He’s right…” Dream’s eyes desperately scan the scene of chaos at the bar, hoping to find Hob’s familiar head of dark brown hair, his mischievous caramel brown eyes, or even the bomber jacket he wore tonight. But from here, it’s difficult to spot anyone’s face in the crowd. The blinking lights give off strange shadows and everyone is moving, either dancing or stumbling to push through the dense sea of bodies.

He hears a soft laugh from the man across from him and looks over to find him shaking his head, but he’s smiling.

“Look, I don’t mean to come off strong, but someone as gorgeous as you shouldn’t be alone on New Year's Eve.”

Any patience left for this man is immediately snuffed out, like water tossed onto a fire.

“I told you, I’m–”

“Waiting for your boyfriend, uh huh.” He grins with his teeth and Dream barely restrains from throwing his head back in annoyance. 

If there weren’t a threat of getting lost in the crowd, Dream would abandon his station here and go looking for Hob. But he knows it’s better to stay here and wait as he had been, despite the nuisance still attempting to converse with Dream.

He steps around the table to stand next to Dream, who takes a deliberate step sideways away from him.

“What’s your name?”

Dream ignores him, head now permanently angled towards the bar.

“You know,” he starts up again and Dream eyes flutter shut, praying for patience. “The longer you ignore me, the more persistent I’ll become.”

Dream opens his eyes and levels the man, who is definitely drunk, with an unamused look.

“Even if I weren’t already spoken for, this is a terrible way to receive my affections.”

“He speaks!” The man exclaims and laughs. Dream pinches the bridge of his nose and has officially made the decision to lose his mind at the stranger, when he blessedly feels two familiar strong arms wrap around his waist.

“Sorry that took so long,” Hob speaks directly into Dream’s ear, no need to shout with lips tickling his skin. “I got us two drinks each so we don’t have to deal with that again.”

Dream smiles, unaware of how tense he was as his body relaxes against Hob’s– before it sharpens to a smirk at the utterly baffled expression on the strange man’s face.

Hob’s lips trail up the shell of Dream’s ear, his nose nudging in his hairline as he speaks again, his hot breath warming Dream up from the inside and sparking a sudden and intense feeling of surrender in Hob’s possessive hold. 

“Who’s your friend?” And fuck, Dream can hear the control in Hob’s voice. The question is innocent enough, but the way his tone pitches into a growl, low and dangerous, makes Dream’s toes curl. 

“I don’t know,” Dream answers simply, one brow arching at the other man, giving him the decency to turn and walk away on his own before Hob can make a show of animalistic ownership that Dream can practically feel radiating off Hob’s self-control.

Thankfully the stranger leaves, which is just as well, though Dream would have rather liked being ravished with an audience.

He turns to face Hob properly, duly noticing the drinks on the table and slips his arms around Hob’s middle, bringing them flush together in what can only be described as a bear hug.

Dream tucks his face under Hob’s jaw– bending his knees a little– and inhaling deeply, the scent of Hob’s cologne grounding him, and exhaling loudly through his mouth and smiling again at Hob’s deep chuckle that rumbles through his own body.

“You good?” Hob asks into Dream’s hair, placing a kiss there.

“Mm…” Dream hums. “I’m great.”

[kaiannae]

It is time- (Or: It Has Begin XD)

Greetings, my dear readers, it has been quite some time. First and foremost I would like to assure you that yes, I'm alive, and no, I have not abandoned my writing. But, I HAVE been distracted by somehing in the last few months, and I think its time to reveal it. I made a game! And not just a game, a Shadowgast game. I would like to present to you:

Beacon Run.

Ko-Fi This game begun its existance as a homework project for a game dev course I took about a year ago. I was supposed to implement a simple chase and pickup game and I thought, "Why use some random sprites when all I can imagine is small chibi Caleb chasing small chibi Essek around while Essek is trying to nom beacons?"

This idea lit a fire in my brain, and I just had to implement it but I had a very short time for the assignment. Iended up implementing something very simple, but I just couldn't let it go afterwards and vowed I was going to finish that small game and get it out for the fandom to play.

It has since been rewriteen, refactored and recoded several times, until I had something workable to show others. This is the place to mention the major contribution the people fo AIFL had on this little game. As I was maing this game, I shared its early stages with the server, and people have been kind in thier enthusasm, gave me ideas and provided invaluable criticism and feedback. They kept me motivated and kept me going through the lows of frustration one gets when coding. I got @bumble-b-goode 's permission to use their designs for the Weezards and drew my own sprites using that as inspiration. I ended up creating most of the assets for this game. Drawing the art assets took quite some time and I've learned a lot in the process.

Beacon Run not big or complicated as a game. In essence, is a tribute and a love letter to the Critical Role community and the CR crew. To the people who brought to life the Mighty Nein and have shared, and continue to share their stories with us on a weekly basis throughout the years. For Liam and Matt, who have weaved the tale of two broken wizards mending each other into better people, and keep their children of ink and paper alive for us to enjoy. The game: You as a player, are randomly assigned a little wizard to play for each match, so you can play as Essek or Caleb. The board dimensions and obstacles and even the flooring art are randomized for each match so each match is different. Your goal: to collect as many Beacons as you can during the allotted time, and end up with more Beacons than your rival which is the other wizard played by the computer. You gain projectiles over time, which are fake Beacons you can throw at the other wizard. If hit, the rival wizard is stunned for a short time, and drops several of his picked up Beacons for you to gather. However, beware! The rival wizard can also shoot you and stun you for a short while, and make you drop beacons as well. (You might notice that Essek gets stunned by sour lemon Beacons, while Caleb gets stunned by hand-knitted wool Beacons XD) In addition, when the rival is hit, he may drop a Magic Abeyance Bead which contains a Chronurgy spell. if you pick it up, it will provide a short time bonus for the match. In short, the game is a small, cozy game, made out of love for the wizards and the fandom, and I hope you'll enjoy it! I it still in the late stages of testing and development, as the feedback players provide is invaluable and lets me find bugs, add ideas and content suggested and tweak the mechanics to make it more enjoyable. So I would very much appreciate feedback, suggestions, con-crit etc. I would be happy to head what you like about it, what you think needs tweaking, ideas of content to add.... you name it! (Note that currently, the game does not work on mobile. I am planing to revamp the input system and add touch suport for mobile in the near future) Also it is worth mentioning that as I fix bugs, add content and tweak things, I upload new versions of the game so its worth following the Devlog and updates. The game is avaliable for play in the embedded player on the page, and also available for download to play offline (Though you might need to redownload it with every new version as I don't have an auto updater for it.)

In addition, if you like my work, feel like enabling me to make more of these or just want to buy me a coffee, It is always very much appreciated as it sure helps me stay afloat! Tip Jar

So, I hope you forgive me for my lack of writing for the last few months. I really wanted to get this out. I am trying to keep writing in my spare time, but the muses haven't been with me lately. I hope that now that this is out I can finally get my mind off it XD Stay tuned!

[muddyorbsblr]

a startling realization pt2

See my full list of works here!

Summary: Oakley finally finds the words to explain what he's been feeling for you, but the sudden reappearance of someone from his immediate past threatens to dampen the mood. And ruin any progress he's had toward becoming more with you.

Pairing: Oakley x Reader

Word Count: 5.2k (get some drinkies ready)

Warning/s: angy boi Oakley at the elderly (she had it coming); bit of angst; language (like maybe 2 cuss words) [let me know if i missed anything!]

Things to be aware of: only one bed trope at the end; special guest Hiddles character mentioned; jealous and clingy Oakley hours

Note to self: Find a massive care package for Y/N's sister to thank her for the new dresses, Oakley typed away at his phone, giving himself a reminder as he looked outside the cafe to where you were seated, admiring the way today's wine-colored dress made you look like a doll. Every dress the last few days did, and it always gave him the perfect opportunity to offer you his jacket if ever you started getting chills during your classes.

It was a rare beautifully sunny morning, and he told you to find a seat outside, beat the rest of the customers to it. He'd take care of ordering for the both of you. Much as he still didn't consider himself a morning person in the least, these hours he got to spend with you before your first class for the day made it well worth the adjustment. Especially today, that he was blessed with the vision of the morning light bathing you in such an ethereal glow.

You were more than a doll today, you were an angel. At the risk of blaspheming any deity out there, he might even call you a goddess.

It was just too bloody bad for him that other men were beginning to notice the change in your appearance, too. Some frat boys blatantly ogling you and nudging their mates to get a good eyeful as well, others even being so bold that they outright approached you to tell you how nice you'd been looking this week. While he was visibly in your company, no less.

And then…there was the worst of them all, at least to him. Your thesis advisor. Professor Laing. Who saw you even before your sister's intervention. Who showered you with admittedly well-deserved praises for being one of the brightest amongst his students.

Who saw you for everything you were worth even before Oakley himself did because he was so caught up in enjoying his life as a boy, that he didn't realize that a better life could have been waiting for him as a man.

Who was standing outside by your table, chatting it up with you with that blinding grin of his that he seemed to only have for you. Every other student in your year only ever got that menacing grimace as if he was lambasting every word that came out their mouth. No one dared approach him to become their thesis adviser, but for you…for you the professor approached you himself. Saved you the trouble of lining up with everyone else on the faculty and fighting your classmates for slots.

You were the only one he took on.

This was definitely a new emotion, the pounding in his chest, the furious breaths he was taking through his nose as he watched the two of you outside. Before there was only a mild irritation whenever he took notice of how much nicer the otherwise grouchy professor was to you. But now? Now it felt as if someone lit a fire under his arse. Now his insides were writhing with something he'd rarely, if ever, dealt with before.

Jealousy.

Laing made a motion as if to take the seat across from you, and from what he could see of your face, you seemed apologetic, explaining to him that it was already taken. "Yes, that's right, the seat's mine, you pompous wanker," Oakley muttered under his breath, forcing a civil thin line of a smile across his face when the older man looked into the cafe, his own bright smile fading into its signature grimace before he nodded at both of you, before saying something else to you, briefly touching your shoulder, and crossing the street toward the campus proper.

The elderly lady at the register cleared her throat, motioning for him to step forward. "A fry up with the works and a cup of decaf," he said absentmindedly, browsing the lineup of pastries for something down your alley.

"And for your girlfriend, dearie?"

The word felt like a jolt of electricity all over his body, all the way to the tips of his fingers. The roots of his hair.. "Erm, she's not my girlfriend, but I'll get two of those jalapeño cheese puffs, a lemon bar, and your largest iced coffee as well."

"Could've fooled me, dearie," she shot back at him. "The way you looked at her, your pupils might as well be heart-shaped." He handed her his credit card when she told him the total, his mind still fixating on that word.

Did he want that for you? Was he ready to put your friendship on the line for the chance of becoming something…more? How would you react if he told you he'd been thinking about you endlessly since he got back from Italy? Was he ready for the possibility of you rejecting him?

Did everyone that saw him in the last few days know what was going on in his mind whenever he looked at you? Was he that much of an open book that literal strangers could decipher him so easily?

And if strangers had read him within moments…had you read him, too?

"She's my friend," he said softly, the words fighting against him as if it hurt him to say. "How am I supposed to tell her--"

"I've been here quite a while, dearie," the lady cut him off. "And I've seen all kinds of stories play out in this here cafe. You're not the first ladykiller I've seen wanting to go down the reformation route, and you certainly won't be the last. I'll tell you what I've told every single one before you. You can't go about thinking about how to tell her, if you don't even know the words yourself yet. Once you can tell yourself how you feel about this girl, that's the only time you can start even thinking about how you're going to woo her."

Oakley began to stew over more questions, starting with whether he even knew for himself quite yet these feelings he was having for you. How long would it take for him to know what they were? Where would he even start to find the words?

What if someone else found his words faster? Told you before he ever could? Or even worse…

What if someone else already knew how he felt, and could articulate those feelings better than Oakley ever could his own? Someone who had years of experience on him, and was so visibly smitten with you, it was almost endearing that you hadn't ever noticed it?

"What if I tell her and it's already too late? Or she doesn't feel the same?" What if all she'll ever see in me is the randy scoundrel that juggled two affairs in Italy?

"Then at least you would have told her. Letting your words remain unsaid will weigh down on you your whole life. Until they burst out of you. Or they crush you."

The sound of the service bell from the kitchen effectively stopped the conversation dead in its tracks, leaving Oakley to process the sage woman's words as she brought the tray to him.

"Enjoy your breakfast, dearie. And your company."

Before he lifted the tray, he snuck a glance at your seat again, his blood going cold when he caught sight of the woman walking away from your table. He hadn't seen her face, not completely, just a glimpse of the side of her face.

That was all he needed, though. He knew that frame, so well that it made him uneasy. Anna.

Once he made his way to you, there was a faraway look in your eyes, repeatedly scanning the same page on your notes as if nothing was sinking in. "Y/N…"

You started in your seat, looking a bit like a cartoon as you shook your head rapidly to get out of whatever thoughts were running through your head. Then your mouth stretched into a strained smile again. Just like the night he got back.

The unsettling pit in his stomach returned, a mixture of shame and fear flooding him now that a part of what he wanted to leave in the past had followed him and found its way to you. He couldn't help himself anymore, he reached across the table and took your hand in his, desperately trying to close the steadily growing distance he was feeling between you two.

"Y/N what's wrong? That woman that was just here what did she--"

"She's quite lovely," you told him, your strained smile unwavering as your eyes flickered to your joint hands. "Just wanted to check up on you since she couldn't call your mobile anymore. You really shouldn't let the people that care about you worry like that, Oakley."

You returned your focus to your notes, pulling your hand away from his to trace along your line of sight on the piece of paper, and at the same time deflating him of any hope that he had that perhaps you two would have a rather pleasant morning. Simply joking around and roaming about the campus until it was time for your classes together.

He was hoping that maybe today you would be open to the idea of having dinner with him. He would dress all nice and bring you to one of those frilly restaurants with wait staff and fancy wine glasses. Before you two would pick up some pizza for your all-nighter at his apartment.

Any hopes of today having any form of levity faded into nothing all because Anna wasn't one to let go. She'd tried to impose herself into Oakley's life and when she failed, she instead drove you away from him.

His panic worsened when you placed your things in your book bag, only throwing a cursory glance at the tray he'd brought out. No no, please don't leave, he wanted to plead with you. Beg you if he needed to. Don't take my light away. My home.

"Wait…Y/N, where are you going?" He couldn't find it in him to speak any louder, the lump in his throat making it hard to even breathe. Please stay.

"Professor Laing passed by while you were inside. Told me his schedule's cleared up for the day and I won't have to wait until after lunch to consult with him about my thesis." His chest felt a sharp pinch at your monotonous answer, not even a hint of your usually playful tone present. Like you were just trying to get out with as little fuss as possible.

"But…" he uttered, his voice barely a whisper. Maybe even a whimper. "What about breakfast?" he asked you lamely. "I got your favorites." Please stay.

The smile you gave him now was mirthless. Civil. "If I hurry perhaps I can find that lady friend of yours. She could join you, have a lovely morning together."

"No, no, Y/N stop." He placed his hands over yours, grabbing hold of your book bag for dear life. The words he was biting back from before began to spill out. "She doesn't mean anything to me. Just…just…please? Sit and we'll just finish our meal together and I can walk you to Laing's office myself." Please stay. Stay with me.

"She might not mean anything to you," you muttered, your hands stilling when his thumbs began to stroke the inside of your wrists, the gesture a touch too intimate for the two of you. "But clearly you mean something to her. She went all this way to see you--"

"That's obsession, Y/N, not affection. She doesn't care about me. Not in the ways that matter." Not like how I care about you. "Please?" he tried again. "Breakfast? Then straight to Laing's office. No detours, no distractions." And no ghosts from my past trying to drive a wedge between us.

He finally felt like he could breathe again when you sat back down on your seat, taking a bite from your puff pastry with a ghost of a smile playing on your lips when the cheese and jalapeño hit your taste buds. "You weren't kidding when you said you picked out my favorites," you mumbled, covering your mouth with your hand while you spoke. "Thank you."

"You know I've always been curious what is it about those pastries that you love so much. The lemon bars I understand. Coffee…I've accepted we'll never be on the same page with that--"

"To you, Goldie, it's a necessary evil. To me, it's like petrol to a car," you explained to him. "I need it if I want to function properly. Now as for these pastries…" You cut a small piece from your pastry, making a motion to hand the fork over to him. "Since you bought today's breakfast, I think it's only right that I share and help you satisfy your curiosity."

The Anna-shaped cloud that hung over your heads seemed to have been shoo'd away. At least for now. Oakley made a note to have a word with her if she was still hanging around campus after he walked you to your session with Laing.

For now he was more than content to enjoy the moment with you, wrapping his comparatively larger hand around your wrist and holding the fork in place. Then he held your gaze as he closed his lips around the tines, offering you a little smirk as he handed you back your now empty fork.

The remainder of breakfast passed quickly. Too quickly, if he was being completely honest with himself. Before he knew it he was already walking you toward your thesis adviser's office, once again fighting against the urge to wrap his hand around yours. To lace your fingers together.

"Alright so…I'll see you later tonight then." Your words violently yanked him back to the present moment. Tonight? "All nighter? Our thesis portfolios?" Your face fell for a fraction of a moment before stretching into that smile that now instilled the fear of God in him. He never wanted to have to see you smile like that again. To wear a mask around him. "But if you're going to be catching up with your lady friend I totally understand, we can always reschedule--"

"I'm not," he cut you off, frantically placing his hands on your shoulders. Part of him was fearful that if he didn't, you would have just slipped away. "Of course we're still on for tonight. I just--Won't I see you in class?" He was tripping over his own words, trying to get them out fast enough that you'd know he was far from wanting to cancel plans with you.

In fact he wanted to make more plans with you, if he could.

"Oh…right…" you said in an exhale, your features twisting into a sheepish expression. "Tiny thing…I took the exception exams. And I passed. I'm pretty much done with--Well, everything, really. Except this portfolio. I technically don't have to attend any more classes unless I just want to be a nuisance to our instructors. Or annoy the living daylights out of you."

There was another pinch in his chest as the information sunk in. Now he was going to have even less time with you? He must have pissed off some deity of confused and conflicted emotions, because they were making it increasingly difficult for him to find the time with you so he could make sense of what exactly it was he was feeling.

Why every time he saw you all he wanted was to have you right next to him. To put his arm around you, not even to tell every onlooker that you were with him, but rather just to feel you there with him.

Why the moment you parted ways all he could think about was when he would see you again, his thumbs hovering over the buttons on his mobile, itching to send you a message. To make plans for the next day. For the weekend.

For after graduation, wherever that would take you.

"That's…that's wonderful news, Y/N. Truly. No one in our class has worked harder than you. No one deserves a breather more. I'll see you tonight, then."

He wanted to place a kiss on your forehead. Or perhaps your cheek. But the fear set in again that if he did, that was a bell he couldn't unring, and he wasn't even fully aware what bell it even was to begin with. So instead he handed you his jacket instead, draping it over your shoulders.

"In case you get cold."

There was a glimmer of something in your eye before you gave him a soft, warm smile, the kind that started to show that little dimple in your cheek. A real smile. The kind he'd been dreaming about seeing on your face when he pulled away after kissing you.

"Thanks, Goldie. Try not to take a nap during the lectures."

He stayed at the bottom of the steps leading up to the Faculty of English building until you'd made your way inside, offering him a tiny wave before the doors closed. There were words at the tip of his tongue, itching to be said, that was pure uncharted territory for him.

The mere thought of commitment scared the living daylights out of him; this wasn't his forte. Never had been. He wasn't the kind that thought about cleaning his apartment and making room in his drawers and counters for your things. The kind that only thought about spending the foreseeable future with one woman and deleting every other contact in his phone that he'd collected over the years for short lived flings.

He wasn't the type that planned for the long haul, the kind that wanted to be someone's husband.

And yet for you…he wanted to be that type of man. He wanted to go on an adventure with you that wouldn't last a few fleeting days.

The sound of Eric and Marcus chuckling as he approached the lecture halls brought him back to the present, his blood turning cold when he saw who it was they were laughing with.

"Oh look there he is! Oaks! Look who popped by for a visit." Marcus waved him over, Eric making crude gestures behind both him and Anna. There was an unease in the older woman's eyes as he approached, as if part of her knew that coming here, finding some out of left field manner to insert herself into his life, had crossed a line in the sand that he'd never thought of drawing.

In truth he'd thought that the boundaries were implicit enough when they all parted ways a week ago. He was wrong.

"What're you doing here, Anna?" There was no warmth in his tone, her smile immediately dropping when she realized that he wouldn't be one for niceties. Not anymore.

"I--Well my calls weren't coming through and I'd begun to worry and since I was traveling and passing by the area--"

"Well then isn't that sweet, Oaks, the lovely Anna here was worried about you--"

"Too worried," he butted in again, the grim and unimpressed expression on his face unmoving. "So you came here to…what then, exactly? Did you have hopes of starting back up what never should have been back in Italy?"

"Oakley, darling, why are you like this--"

"I'm not your darling," he snarled, his nostrils flaring with the anger starting to boil up inside him. There's only one woman I wish to call me that and she barely even wishes to look at me since you invaded our morning. "I made mistakes on that getaway and I have to live with those memories. But I don't appreciate when those memories are trying to once again be present in my life while I'm trying to build for my future."

"Your future?" she repeated, scoffing. "That quaint little thing outside the cafe? I met her. She seems like a nice enough girl. Smells awfully familiar. But Oakley you don't possibly think a girl trying to build her own life would want to already be shackled down by something as defining as being 'your future'? Girls like Y/N--"

"Don't you dare say her name," he cut her off, the older woman immediately clamping her mouth shut. "You don't get to talk about her and belittle her as if she's something beneath you." He stepped closer, standing at his full height and imposing herself in her personal space. "Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough what the boundaries were when we all parted ways, and that's on me. But I'm going to make them clear now. Italy and boyish trysts and letting women barely more than strangers cling to me affectionately? That is firmly in my past. And I won't respond with kindness to anyone that tries to go against my wishes. Am I clear enough now?"

She could barely meet his eyes, fidgeting in place like she was trying to fight against the instinct to back away. But she insisted on her own convictions. "Y-You're young, you-you don't possibly know what or who you want yet, you need g-guidance--"

"I know who I want and it's not you." He'd begun to raise his voice, passersby stopping in their tracks and turning their heads to watch the commotion. "This will be the last time I repeat myself. What happened in Italy is my past. And there is only room for one woman in my future. And you met her outside the cafe. Must I make myself any clearer for you?" She shook her head mutely, already shuffling away to the side.

"I-I understand," she stammered. "I hope she'll make you happy."

"She will," he shot back without missing a beat. "If she even gives me a chance after whatever it is you might have told her." She gave him a single nod, waving a final goodbye to his friends before awkwardly stepping further backward and away from them. "One more thing, Anna. It'd be wise for you to lose my number. I had yours blocked. That's why your calls weren't going through." Her face fell even further, eyes misting over. "At the very least you deserve some semblance of closure. There you go."

He walked away before she or anyone else could say anything further, the faint sound of his mates giving her a haphazard goodbye registering in his ears before he heard their heavy stomping footsteps as they caught up to him.

"Bit cold, Oaks."

"She wasn't getting the hint," he deadpanned. "Coulda been nicer, I'll admit that. But I also coulda been worse. Considering she was beginning to belittle Y/N like that."

"So…Y/L/N, huh?" Marcus queried, trying to change the course of the conversation. "Got your whole life with her all planned out and everything?"

"Yep. Y/N," he answered, unable to help the smile that stretched across his face even saying your name. "And maybe not everything. Not yet. All I know is wherever I'm going, I wanna be going there with her. No one else."

"Well, mate, it's about bloody time," Eric quipped, clapping both his hands on Oakley's shoulders. "Slight problem…doesn't she kinda see you as just…oh I don't know, a friend?"

"Yeah…I was hoping you two could take a pause from your dick wetting trips in Sorority Row and help me with that. Make her see me as something other than…well, whatever the fuck she's seen since Freshman Year." He felt so awkward even admitting it to these two. He needed help with a girl. No. A woman.

Quite possibly the last woman, if things went his way.

The sound of the egg timer going off jolted you and Oakley out of your last review session for the night, handing each other back the articles you'd been peer-reviewing for the past half hour. "Goldie, you know you were supposed to critique these, right? I'm finding no marks on any of these."

"That's because I couldn't find any parts to critique," he answered. He couldn't help but smile watching your mouth form into a pout at his words, brows furrowing as your eyes scanned the page, no doubt critiquing your own work now. He grabbed the ultra-fine tip dark green pen from your hand before it could touch the paper. "Your work is concise, and yet offers explanations where needed without going on for too long. There's no part that felt it went on for ages or needed more meat to it. My honest opinion? Your works are borderline perfect even Laing would be proud."

You let out a little hmph, looking over the pages again. "Funny that Laing said nearly the same thing," you muttered, shaking your head at the words you were scanning over. "But there has to be something--"

"Y/N," he cut you off, giving a gentle but firm tug to the papers to get them out of your hands. "If even Professor Stick in the Mud Immovable Object Laing said that it's perfect as it is, take the win and just use the rest of your time to…I don't know, kick back? Get some sleep? You're beginning to get bags under your eyes and if they go any further you can start carrying your books around in them."

He reached over to trace the curved line under your eyes with his finger to emphasize his point, causing you to break out into that lilting laugh that he adored from you. You swatted away his hand, sticking your tongue out at him. "You just want me to stop working on mine so I can help you with yours."

Oakley only responded with holding his hands up in surrender, giving you a slight shrug. "Only partly guilty as charged, darling." He bit the inside of his cheek at the endearment that slipped out. It felt too natural, rolling off his tongue with as much ease as his next breath. "Rest first. Then if I get another batch of red pages from Professor Adams I'll ask for your help. I wanna at least try to get through this without calling in the cavalry."

"The Cavalry…" you repeated, drawling out each syllable as a your smile grew even wider. Brighter. "How flattering." You stretched your arms upward, finally letting out a yawn. The fabric of your pajama top rose to expose your stomach from the motion, making you quickly put your arms down when the cold air hit your skin. "So erm…like always? Help me with the couch?"

Your ask brought to surface a rather unfortunate circumstance. "Right, about the couch…Eric stayed over a couple days ago, absolutely shit-faced and…" He made a motion to simulate throwing up, making your face scrunch up in terror. "I haven't gotten around to seeing if I can get it cleaned yet--"

"Cleaned?!" you shrieked, horror coloring your features when you realized that all he'd done was wipe away the sick, turn the cushion to the other side, and spray a mix of Febreze and bleach to the area. "Oakley, if I were you, I'd use that shiny trust fund that you're trying to deplete faster than it earns interest into throwing this one out and getting an entirely new couch."

"I'll work on getting it cleared out of here first thing in the morning," he swore, making you break out into a smile when he held up his hand in a scout's honor. "You can go ahead and crash in my room, and I'll take the couch tonight. I'm really sorry I didn't tell you earlier, it completely slipped my mind--"

"Nonsense, I'm not kicking you out of your own bedroom, Goldie. And making you sleep on cushions with dried up sick in it is just cruel and unusual punishment, I won't stand for it." You stood from your seat at the table, putting your things away in your book bag. "I appreciate the offer, but if this is the hand we've been dealt, then maybe we won't be able to stick to the usual schedule of an all-nighter tonight. How's about I head back to my dorm and I'll just swing by in the morning--"

"Y/N have you lost your lid, it's dark out," he blurted out, panic rising in him at the thought of you going out and walking back at this hour. "Well after dark, actually. Most of the lights outside have been shut off since the shops closed hours ago."

You huffed out a long breath, placing your hands on your hips and wracking your brain for another solution. "Well then if this is the hand that we're dealt, I suppose we'll have to sleep at the very edges of your bed, then."

He nearly choked on his own spit. "Pardon?" The same bed? With you? He might just lose out on every urge to hold you in his arms through the night. Or kiss you.

"I don't know, it's the only idea coming to me short of me sleeping on the rug--"

"You're not sleeping on the ground," he said sternly, his tone visibly taking you aback. "Pick a side then, right or left?"

"Right," you answered him after a few beats.

Oakley hadn't slept a wink that night, whereas you had no issues slipping right into slumber within minutes of easing yourself into your side of the bed, unwittingly giving him the most vivid glimpse into what a life, a future with you would be like. Especially when just under an hour after your breathing had evened out, you rolled on to your side and your sleeping form had draped your arm across his stomach, snuggling into his side and resting your head on his shoulder.

His breath caught in his throat, trying to fight the tears that pricked in the back of his eyes as more visions of what your life together could look like. As the words that he stomped back down his throat every time they threatened to come out finally stumbled clumsily from his lips the moment he placed his arm around you, tracing along your cheekbone with his other hand.

"I love you," he whispered, taking every ounce of his strength not to press a kiss to the tip of your nose, settling for tracing his finger along the bridge of it instead. "I don't know what I want for the rest of my life yet, but I know who I want to be there with me for the journey and it's you. It can only ever be you."

He pressed a ghost of a kiss to your forehead, holding you close as you slept through the night. All the while he was making a list in his head of arrangements to make for after graduation. For his future. And perhaps, if you felt the same, your future together.

Starting with a two-bedroom apartment for the two of you to move into once you were finished with this final semester.

A/N: A sequel to this story is already up for y'all to enjoy in the form of 'just another memory', so we all already know what becomes of Oakley and Reader in this story 🥹 Also there won't be anything that becomes of Reader and ✨Professor Laing✨…at least not the Reader from this story, because she's already very much down bad for Goldie Long Legs

'everything' taglist: @simplyholl @loopsisloops @imalovernotahater @coldnique @loz-3 @huntress-artemiss @salempoe @vickie5446 @athalialaufeyson @lokiprompts @kats72 @kikster606 @asgards-princess-of-mischief @lokixryss @thomase1 @mischief2sarawr @lovingchoices14 @lunarnights95 @goblingirlsarah @iamlokisgloriouspurpose @creationsbyme @maple-seed @mjsthrillernp @ladyofthestayingpower @mygfloki @sititran @glitterylokislut @ozymdias @fictive-sl0th @lokidbadguy @mochie85 @silverfire475 @joyful-enchantress @elizabethmidnight2017 @holdmytesseract @smolvenger @gigglingtiggerv2 @lokidokieokie @lunarnights95 @superficialdomina @kmc1989 @november-rayne @goddessofwonderland @buttercupcookies-blog @peaky-marvel @lokiified @tom-hlover @dryyoursaltyoceantears @herdetectivetheorist

[genshin-obsessed]

Bound to You | Blade x Reader

Howdy! So, I don't have a real reason for writing this, other than I felt like it. I've been heavily debating doing more fantasy type fics, but I just don't have a proper idea. This might just help me a little! I think this should have 3 parts just to finish up the story, so I may most likely add two more to this. Word count: 4516 Extras: Fantasy AU

Blade's red orange eyes practically glared at you as you flipped through the third book in your possession. He watched the frantic look in your eyes only get worse as this book was yet another dead end. The previously darkened room was illuminated by the large sigil Blade was sitting on. It was bright yellow, with every symbol pulsating with enough power to keep Blade prisoner. Golden cuffs with long, ghost-like chains held onto his wrists, refraining him from leaving the sigil that he'd been summoned with.

"Could you at least let me go?" He asked, his tone of voice indicating his clear frustration. His head was propped up on his closed fist, while his elbow rested on his knee. It had been so long, at this point, he was just bored.

"No!" You yelled as you looked over at him with a frown. "You've been doing nothing but yelling at me and hurling insults." Blade sat up a little, that fighting fire lit within him once more.

"Oh? What the hell else am I supposed to say? Only an idiot confuses a binding spell for a summoning one." Your frown only deepened at his sarcastic words as you placed a hand on your hip.

"It was an accident! It was really just a test to see if it was even going to work!" You argued, but it only irritated the demon before you.

"Who reads an incantation out loud as a test? You really are an idiot." He scoffed, making you groan out loud. For the last hour and a half, he'd done nothing but call you dumb and stupid for what you did. Which was fair. You certainly didn't mean to bind a demon of his worth to you, you just wanted to practice summoning a demon for future fights! However, you were so engrossed in reading, you accidentally read aloud the incantation... which wasn't even the right one, you came to find out. As for the sigil… well, you just decided to set it up to see how much work it would require. You did intend to use it but at a later date since none of the items were perishables.

"Hey, I'm still really new at this mage thing, ok?"

"You're new to using magic, but not new to reading right? It literally states on the page before that it's meant to bind demons to your own soul. You know, even we don't use spells like that." He explained as he adjusted his legs that were beginning to get sore.

"What? But don't demons make that whole pact binding thing?" He rolled his eyes, as if he wasn't surprised that you would even ask such a question.

"No. We create contracts that are called pacts. Both parties list their terms and conditions and once those terms are fulfilled, the pact comes to an end. The connection between demon and mortal is held by the signed contract, which is why they're kept safe and hidden. As you know- or at least I hope you know- the easiest way to break a contract with a demon is to destroy the actual tome it's written on. Soul binding is nearly unbreakable. It actually binds the souls together and there are no conditions required for it. There is no tome to break and it's an extremely powerful spell that’s almost forbidden." He explained, doing his best to stay calm since he had been furious the entire night and it was exhausting.

With every word that spilled from his lips, you realized just how grave your situation was. You... really didn't mean to do this. You wanted to practice summoning a demon which is why you set up the circle exactly as stated in the old grimoire you found. Blade had a point... the instructions and sigil were on one page but the page before had all the warnings including the title. Somehow when you were flipping through the book, you skipped over that. Mainly because the next page explained which color candles to use for what demon. So, you figured it was just a regular old summoning spell.

"There... is a way to break it, right?" You asked, your eyes flickering to the demon.

"Of course there's a way to break it. Every spell can be broken, but the more powerful the spell, the more limitations appear. This particular spell is avoided by many precisely because of how difficult it is to break it. Even your death wouldn't break it, you'd just be resurrected because you're attached to my soul. And vice versa."

"Aren't you already dead?" Blade's eyes widened at the audacity you had to ask the dumbest question he'd ever heard in the centuries he'd been alive.

"Are you serious? No, demons aren't dead, in fact, we can't die permanently. We just get resurrected in hell, which is probably where you're going after this dumbass stunt." Your eyes widened at his words, and you couldn't help the words just escaping your lips.

"Does that mean I'm stuck with you for eternity?"

"No. I'm stuck with you for eternity." Blade corrected, with an irritated smile ghosting his lips as he looked away, shaking his head in disappointment. He was far from the most powerful demon in the hellish realms, but he was up there and to be stuck to such a weak mage was practically insulting. Not to mention your lack of understanding in apparently everything.

Though… you did succeed in the spell which felt like the biggest shot of luck ever; but spells like this didn’t ride on luck. 

"Why would anyone have a soul binding spell for demons?" You asked with a pout, your eyes glancing at the torn, leathery binding of the grimoire you'd used earlier.

"It's a grimoire right, and not a scroll?” Grimoires, as opposed to single use spell scrolls, were written by high level magic users. Mages- and often witches- usually created their own. There were a multitude of reasons from convenience to secrecy, if they’re confident enough, they could create their own spells. “Chances are whoever owned that grimoire was probably close enough with a demon to bind their souls together. It's an easy way to gain immortality.” Blade replied, his own red-orange eyes flickering to the grimoire that sat on the small pedestal.

"Isn't using magic to make yourself immortal punishable by an eternity in the prison of torment?" You questioned as you walked over and grabbed the grimoire.

"Only if you're found out." Blade answered, leaning back on his hands and staring up at your ceiling. "It's not easy to recognize a bound soul when they're both powerful. Our magic will intertwine and you can use my own soul energy for yourself. To those who aren't like the High Mages, you'll just look like a strong magic user."

You opened the grimoire, walking back over to Blade who looked at you. Kneeling beside the sigil, you placed the grimoire in between you two and slowly moved through the pages.

"Honestly, it just has simple spells. Here's one to make plants grow faster, then there's a minor healing spell, one to help wash dishes, then the spell I used to summon you, but then there's this orb spell which preserves whatever you put inside of it, this one helps dig tunnels- I mean this is a total beginner friendly grimoire." You said as you looked up at him. However, Blade was still staring down at the grimoire.

"Give it here, I wanna look at it."

"Sure." You slid the grimoire into the circle allowing Blade to grab it, picking it up and flipping through the pages. He was silent for a moment as he read through each of them before turning the book back to you.

"I knew it. It's been modified." It was the spell to create a preservation orb.

"How do you know?" You asked, tilting your head a bit as your eyes glanced over the text. Nothing looked weird.

"Magic is second nature to us. I know this spell and the original's orb lasts at most three days before it expires. This one doesn't- it's a permanent orb."

"Ok, so they improved upon it? What's the issue?" You countered as Blade placed the book back in his lap. “Didn’t you just say magic users can make their own spells?”

"There's a bunch of beginner friendly spells, then a nearly impossible spell to cast and a modified preservation orb spell? Nothing seems out of the ordinary? Who did this book belong to?"

"I don't know, I found it in a ruined house." You said with a shrug, making Blade's eyes widen.

"You just picked up some random person's grimoire and started to play with it?"

"Well, I wasn't worried because it had a bunch of beginner friendly spells and it let me touch it. So, I just thought it was a grimoire made for newbies like me!" Why wasn't Blade surprised you would do something like that?

"Well, for one, it didn’t react negatively with you because it's made for us. Whoever created this was obviously a magic user- that's you... somehow. And it's meant to help bind a demon's soul, which is me. I don't think the author expected anyone to find it, though it’ll blast anyone else who tries." The lack of hesitation in his words made you flinch a little.

"So, other than immortality, why would someone bind their soul to a demon?" You asked, making Blade sigh as he fell in thought. That piqued his curiosity as well, why would someone go to these lengths and not just make a contract?

"I don't know. Power, control, the ability to traverse the hells, maybe even love? Though, the weird orb situation is the most confusing. Whatever this person was doing, they needed a preservation orb that lasted... forever."

"Think if we find the orb, we'll know more?"

"Probably, but you still need to let me out of here." Blade said, referring to the sigil he was sitting on. A frown crossed your lips and you were silent for a moment. You may not have meant to summon him, but you could tell he was a powerful demon. You needed one in combat because you weren't the best fighter and were still a novice. However, you knew he'd leave the first chance he got and... you didn't want that.

Blade stared at you before reaching forward, still within the boundaries of the sigil, and snapped in front of your face. It was enough to pull you out of your thoughts.

"Hello? Let me out."

"What if you run away?" You asked in a small voice, your tone wavering as if you weren't sure whether those words should escape your lips or not.

"Go where? You'll know exactly where I am 24/7, which is one of the perks of soul binding. I can't go anywhere without you knowing. Not only that, as the creator of the bond and me being a demon, you have some level of control over me."

So, he'd stay if you commanded him to? Not only that, but he'd protect you in battle if you commanded him? So far, this soul binding thing didn't seem so bad. You couldn't die, this powerful demon was gonna be with you all the time, and he would do whatever you asked. You weren't entirely sure of your specialization... but conjuration didn't seem so bad with him.

"Ok." You replied, sitting on your legs and touching the edge of the symbol with both palms. According to the book, it was quite easy to make it go away- which was the opposite of setting it up and drawing it. The symbol's bright light began to dim, little by little before it dissipated completely.

Blade inhaled sharply, exhaling slowly and he stood up. The ghostly chains that held him to the sigil were gone, but the cuffs remained on his wrists. He raised his arm to get a better look at it. There were symbols on the cuffs themselves, which he recognized as protection spells. Multiple of them.

For him or for you?

His red orange eyes flickered to you before he roughly reached out and grabbed your throat. A scream escaped your lips as he yanked you forward, giving you little time to fight back. You felt his sharp nails digging into the sides of your neck as he squeezed tightly. His grip was strong, cutting off your breathing in seconds. Against his brute strength, you could do nothing except attempt to pry his hand off. 

"Th-the hell?!" You choked out, weakly looking up at him. However, he released you as quickly as he grabbed you, staring down at his cuffs again. You instantly took a step back, gaining distance from him. After a brief coughing fit, you spoke up. "What was that for?!"

"It's not for you..." he mumbled, entranced by the spell writing on his cuffs. He didn’t even seem the least worried about your current state as he began to examine the cuffs once more. Why would a demon get a protection spell? Not one, but multiple.

"What are you talking about?" You asked, making him look over at you. He held his arm up, the cuff glowing a dim gold. You could feel the power radiating off of the bands, even making you look away for a moment. He was really stuck, there was no way he could ever break out of those.

"There are protection spells on this thing, but they aren't for you. In fact, I could've killed you right there, which is bizarre. I've never heard of a mage putting a protection spell on a demon. Especially in this situation, where it would be more beneficial for you to have safety from me."

Usually, demons had no reason to harm or kill those they made contracts with. The end goal was to acquire the soul, which could easily be done through granting their wishes. But soul binding was different, there were no end goals. At the end of the day, Blade owed you nothing, not even his mercy.

"So, you choke me to find out?" You yelled, glaring at him a little. Your heart was still pounding in your chest and you weren’t sure if you could trust him considering he just admitted to being able to kill you. Even if you wouldn’t stay dead for long, you didn’t want to die! 

"If I told you, you would've expected it. Whatever spell is meant to protect you, wouldn't kick in if you don't truly believe I'm going to harm you. So, I didn't say anything. But I released you by choice, nothing actually stopped me. Meaning... this mage trusted the demon they bonded with. I'm starting to think it was a friends or lovers situation." You rubbed your throat while he spoke, turning away from him a little.

"Can demons even be trusted?"

"Only as far as their contracts are concerned. No demon will ever break a contract. Otherwise, not really." Well, at least he was honest.

Eventually, Blade walked closer to you, stopping only a couple feet away. Your hand briefly flew up to your neck but he made no sudden movements. Instead, holding his hand out, he met your gaze with his own. This time, you saw no anger or hatred, which brought an inkling of comfort to your mind. 

"I am Blade. For the time being, I will be your personal demon. You may use my services as you wish, and I will do my best to protect you from any harm. I only ask that in return you help me break this soul bond."

Your eyes slowly fell to the outstretched hand as his words rang in your ears. You didn't expect him to say something like that, but at the same time, your soul bond was a type of contract, right? So, he was just abiding by it.

Hesitantly, you reached out and grabbed his hand, your fingers tightening around it. Raising your eyes, you nodded to his terms.

"Ok. I will help you break the bond. Thank you for serving me." Yet, the words felt like sandpaper in your mouth. You weren’t entirely certain why, but you knew your words weren’t genuine.

Once that was done and over with, Blade retracted his hand and walked back to the grimoire. His eyes slid across the old pages, searching for any clue. As far as he was concerned, he could only sense a weak protection spell on it, nothing else. That meant the pages hadn’t been altered with magic. 

“Where did you find this? We should go back there to see if we find any more clues.” With little hesitation, you found yourself nodding to his words.

“Sure, but it’s a bit of a trek. I found it on a trip I just recently went on.” You explained as he walked to your desk and grabbed your bag, putting the grimoire inside of it.

“Doesn’t matter to me. By the way, until we figure out who made this book, try not to use it. Even if the spells are simple, they’re not meant for you. Best to leave them alone.” Understanding what he meant, you agreed. That book clearly had a purpose which you didn’t know of. Trying to use it could cause issues like with Blade. The last thing you wanted to do was cause more problems that you didn’t even know how to solve. 

“I’ll need to get another grimoire then.” You said with a sigh. Those things didn’t come cheap and you were still a novice mage. Being able to buy one… well, it was gonna take a while.

“Why bother? Don’t you have scrolls or something?” Blade asked, looking over at you.

“Scrolls aren’t as informative as grimoires. Not to mention they take up a lot of space and some vanish once the spell is cast.” You replied with a slight sigh as you began to clean up your mess.

Blade’s emotionless eyes watched you for a moment before he began to help. For any magic user, having their very own grimoire was proof of their abilities. Not only were they great sources of power and knowledge, if a mage ever managed to climb to greatness, their grimoires would get preserved in the Library of Novis, which was the biggest library the entire region, said to contain every single spell known to man.

Novice grimoires were often given to young students just beginning their journey into the arcane, but were usually loans and needed to be returned. Blade couldn’t begin to understand why you didn’t have one. There were plenty of grimoires handed down within families for young mages, yet not only did you not have one, but you chose that dingy book that clearly had its own ulterior motives.

A bit pathetic… but admirable. Though the spell you casted was powerful and unstable, you did it. No destruction came to you, this small space, or him. In fact, Blade felt great, technically speaking. The sigil also subdued his powers and kept him there and that’s something he expected from a high level mage.

Blade stopped for a moment and looked at you as you kept picking up the candles you’d laid out. The space around you two was dark, but Blade could make out the rundown walls and floorboards with his sharp eyes. The room was barren except for a small desk on the side, an old looking bed on the other, and what seemed to be a dresser beside the bed. The scent of dust lingered in the air and tickled his nose- it was almost enough to give him allergies. Turning his head, he saw two training dummies against the wall behind him, both covered in a thick layer of dust with cobwebs to boot.

Looking back at you, he noted a frown on your face which was expected. But with your newly created bond… he also felt your resolve. In fact, if he focused hard enough, he felt your desperation to be a great Mage.

An Archmage. Like the legendary celestial, Alessia. Noting that you were distracted, Blade decided this was the best time to peek inside your mind. Inhaling softly, the demon closed his eyes and focused on you. Your presence was heavy in his mind and heart.

He could feel your breathing, gentle and soft. Your heartbeat was strong, yet hastened. He felt your muscles moving as you picked up each item and threw it into a nearby box. Every curl of your fingers made his own tingle. Soul binding was scary, even he wouldn’t attempt something so stupid. But, he had to admit- it was fascinating to be here like this with you. You felt like an extension of himself yet he couldn’t control you.

Pushing past the physical aspects, he delved into your mind. Other than you scolding yourself over and over for making this mistake, he felt that resolve again. To be better, to be stronger, to be more mindful. There was a lingering sadness that he couldn’t decipher. He wanted to push past it, to see what you were thinking but stopped himself.

A gasp escaped his lips as his eyes shot open, feeling the sensation fade away. His eyes landed on you once more, who hadn’t realized what had just occurred. He could just peak into your mind like that? You couldn’t ever hide a secret from him. Yet, the idea of pushing through your defenses to peer into your mind felt unfair. You wouldn’t appreciate that, right? Being you and all.

There is one thing he wanted to hear you say.

“Hey, (y/n).” He called, making you look over at him, your hand abruptly stopping. It felt weird hearing him say your name and not call you an idiot or something.

“What?”

“Are you allied with a college? For your magical training, I mean.” At his words, you shook your head.

“If I was, I wouldn’t have summoned you the way I did. I actually can’t afford attending a college right now. I wasn’t born with the gift so I never prepared. Now, I’m so much worse off because of it that I can’t even attend a college if I wanted to. I’d just humiliate myself and make life harder.” Your words weren’t burdened with sorrow or anger, as if you were just stating pure fact. Even in his own heart, he didn’t feel any particular emotion stir. What? You just internalized your failure and called it a day? This was the worst way to learn magic in his expert opinion.

Plenty of thoughts filled Blade’s mind. With how dumb you were, it would be so easy to just manipulate you to do what he wanted. Hiding his emotions from you was an easy job, it’s not like you even knew you could look into his mind. Not only that, but you were so naive and clearly alone. But, that weird resolve of yours made him waver. You may have thought you were a failure, but you didn’t just live with it. You were still trying to learn and do better. He wasn’t sure if he was pitying you or not, but another thought flashed in his mind. One that seemed to yield a better outcome than just manipulating you. Standing up, he let out a sigh as he gestured for you to approach him.

“Come here.”

“Why?” You asked as you dropped the items in your hand into the box and walked over. Grabbing your shoulder, Blade positioned you in front of him with your back toward him. “What?”

“Like this.” Intending to put those neglected training dummies to use, he pushed one of your arms out straight, and  your palm to one of them. Reaching out, he positioned your hand in a more relaxed form. Using his foot, he pushed your feet a short distance apart and forced you to bend your knees a little. “Make sure you’re in a steady stance or you’ll fall over. From here, push your energy into your fingertips. Don’t force it, or it’ll explode.”

Deciding not to question him, you breathed and followed his instructions. It wasn’t necessarily easy to understand what he meant by energy, but you tried it anyway. For a moment, you felt a warmth at your fingertips. It was the slightest sensation that you could’ve almost missed.

“It tingles.”

“Good. It’s easy to aim since you’re pointing your hand. Be careful and try not to aim this attack recklessly. Also try to avoid heads.” He pushed your hand downward a little so you weren’t pointing at the training dummy’s head. “Once it feels like a good build up, release the energy. Literally, think in your mind that you’re letting it go.”

Giving it a moment to build up some more of that energy, you did as he said. You let go of the energy. Suddenly, a blast escaped your hand and fired straight at the dummy, hitting it right in the chest. You were knocked back a little too, but Blade kept you steady.

“What the- what was that!?”

“A blast. Good.” The demon commented as he stepped away, inspecting the dummy. Because it was a training dummy, it wasn’t destroyed but Blade could see the point of impact. That would certainly kill… as long as you didn’t fly away.

“How did you know I couldn’t do that?” You inquired, your eyes flickering to him. Even now, you felt the tingling at the tips of your fingers. It was that easy?

“Because that’s one of my attacks. You definitely don’t know it.” He replied, walking past you to finish up your attempt to clean up. “But make sure to plant your feet firmly or you’ll fall over like you almost did just now.”

He… taught you a personal spell? After all that name calling and stuff, he was actually willing to help you? That was kinda nice of him. You watched as he quickly cleaned up with his magic. He made it look so easy, flicking his fingers and making all the excess items fly into the box you’d used earlier. You hadn’t even figured that out, no wonder he kept judging you. He wasn’t entirely wrong, you were as weak as they came and he was the opposite. He grabbed the bag with the grimoire, making sure the book was secure.

This was the demon you were expected to just let go? He was powerful, smart, and handsome. You knew it was the right thing to do, but at the same time this was a good chance. A good opportunity to learn magic and have a powerful companion at your side.

“Stop staring, idiot.” He said as he looked back at you, holding the bag out to you. “Come on, we need to get going.”

“Right, thanks for the help.” You said as you took the bag from him, slinging it around your shoulder.

“Just keep your word and I’ll consider it even.” 

[vaultie-and-theghoul]

Thank You for Holding Me

Lucy numbly followed the Ghoul, the last month playing on repeat. None of what happened had sunk in and she felt like a mind floating inside her body. Lucy knew from her Vault-Tec education that this was what they called dissociation. A classic symptom of PTSD. Well, maybe the ghoul was right. She just might one day turn into someone like him. Lucy's already aching stomach seemed to cramp in on itself, empty and angry.

"Watch your step sweetheart," the Ghoul said, voice kinder than she had ever heard, "I know you're all up in that head of yours, but if you fall and break yourself... Let's just say it wouldn't be good for either of us."

Lucy didn't have the energy to respond but nodded and refocused on her feet. Somehow her mind was still able to recount each brutal and devastating moment. A few times, Lucy swore she could hear the sounds that accompany her thoughts. Much to her stomach's dismay, Lucy had to stop and wretch a couple of times before they reached camp.

As they went through the motions of setting up camp, she noticed the Ghoul eyeing her when he thought she wasn't looking. Lucy had many questions for the man she was traveling with, but they could wait until morning. The Ghoul excused himself to check the perimeters and the second she was alone, silent tears streamed down Lucy's cheeks. It seemed like every thought was a scream and they blended one after another until all she could do was scream with it.

Lucy didn't realize she was screaming until the Ghoul returned, pistol drawn and eyes focused. She watched as he expertly assessed the situation, noting the lack of a threat as well as the tears streaming down her face. The Ghoul's face changed from focused to pity and Lucy wanted to be angry, but to her surprise, she instead felt seen.

Her screams had died the moment the Ghoul took a step towards her. Lucy knew she should be apprehensive, scared even, but she felt safe. Her heart pounded as the Ghoul lowered himself to his knees. He hesitated a moment, uncertainty clear in his eyes, before pulling her into his chest.

"Atta girl," the Ghoul shushed as he rubbed circles on her back, "You gotta let it all out before it eats you alive."

Lucy sobbed silently, tears and snot staining the Ghoul's shirt. Every time she tried to pull back and apologize, the Ghoul would shush her before pulling her back into his embrace. Eventually, Lucy slumped heavily against him, tears finally running dry. She took her time steadying her breath, in through her nose and out her mouth. Every deep inhale also contained the Ghoul's scent. She would have assumed he smelled rotten or musty, but the cowboy who held her smelled of gunpowder and leather. There was a hint of something else that lit her senses on fire. Without realizing it, Lucy leaned into the crook of his neck and inhaled again.

"You got a thing for smelling people sweetheart," the Ghoul asked with a chuckle.

Lucy pulled away, embarrassed by her thoughtless actions, "No, I'm sorry. I just couldn't place what I was smelling. It was mostly gunpowder and leather, but something else too."

The ghoul raised his brow, lips pressing together. She had stumbled upon a sore spot for the Ghoul.

"Anyway," Lucy said, changing the subject, "Thank you for holding me. You didn't have to."

"Course I did Vaultie," he said, eyes deathly serious, "You ain't my enemy anymore Miss MacLean. Out here in the wasteland, it's each feller for himself, unless you find someone worth teaming up with." Lucy was at a loss for words, chest going tight with emotions. "Now, stop thanking me and get some shut-eye. We will be heading out at dawn."

The Ghoul stayed with her until Lucy was tucked in her sleeping bag. She had interrupted his usual security routine, so he once again excused himself. This time, the quiet seemed less lonely. Even dogmeat padded over to her and laid heavily against her back. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. Lucy felt safe with Dogmeat and the Ghoul. She watched the campfire flicker until her eyelids became heavy and she fell into a dreamless slumber.

Cooper returned to camp no longer than half an hour later. He treads quietly in case the Vaultie hasn't fallen asleep yet. Dogmeat lifted his head from his place lounging behind the girl, saw it was Coop, and laid back down with a sigh.

The Ghoul watched his little Vaultie sleep, face finally at peace. He hadn't liked seeing Lucy in such distress. When Coop heard her screams his whole body flooded with adrenalin like Jet on steroids. Prepared for a gunfight, there was a moment of relief when he realized there was no threat. That relief had just as quickly turned to pain when Cooper saw Lucy's face. Tears and snot poured down her face as she screamed bloody murder.

Cooper knew that feeling all too well. The cowboy shook his head, reaching down to tuck a lock of hair behind Lucy's ear, "Goodnight darlin'."

He gave Dogmeat a quick pat on the head before retiring to his sleeping bag. Cooper wouldn't sleep that night, but he would rest his weary eyes and daydream about the Vaultie snoring softly on the other side of the campfire.

AO3

[ms0milk]

𝟏𝟏 | 𝐖𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"Being safe from sand and ocean winds doesn’t seem worth it to the Alderan prince, not worth enough to miss the sun rising every morning. How could you die in a place like this? How could you possibly be okay with that?"

no cw unless you’re averse to apprehensive touch between enemies. reader and co recover from last night’s attack in their own ways. two fools stand too close in a cold hallway. three fools finally go to the sea and one of them can’t get you out of his head 6.8k

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Bakugou’s first memory of you is doused in blood. His second is somewhat more pleasant. Just two giant, shining eyes peering at him through a crack in the library door. You’re lightfooted now, sure, but back then he could feel you coming through the floorboards from how excitedly you wiggled at your self assigned post. You thought you were hiding. Him pretending not to notice, and you pretending it wasn’t hours after curfew.

Bakugou liked to do magic for you. Sometimes he waited for the sound of your heart or your twiddling thumbs before he blew out the candles around him and lit the first pink spark on his fingertips.

The prince can’t hear well enough anymore to recognize your heartbeat, so he’s been searching for your bedroom since dawn.

Wretched flashes of you play across his ash lashes like a curse. Of you toppling off a cliff like some psalmic tragedy. The pleading in your grasp but something– something else in the blacks of your eyes on the mages back. Relief? Like the first flecks of ease he’s seen since he made warm magic for your audience. If his fists weren’t drawing blood from his palms as he marched he might have reflected on how long he’s been watching you.

All this work just to wring your fucking neck. Takoba is ill-equipped for Bakugou’s Alderan thunderstorm. Castle marble trembles underfoot.

What the fuck were you thinking?

He’d like to throw your door open, demand an answer and then not tolerate a response. It’s been three hours of his tirade. Of startling footmen and growling at maids, before he finally catches the tailend of someone useful.

“Oi, Cheeks!”

Uraraka isn’t thrilled about this and pauses, considering for a moment, before turning around. She chews her lip instead of rolling her eyes.

It’s just short of miserable where the two of them are standing, freezing in this part of the castle and somehow also stuffy. The only windows are at the long ends of hallways. It smells old. Being safe from sand and ocean winds doesn’t seem worth it to the Alderan prince, not worth enough to miss the sun rising every morning. How could you die in a place like this? How could you possibly be okay with that?

“Where is she?”

“Gods, the pair of you–”

“Where?”

Uraraka, in her padded cotton sparing clothes, sags weight to one hip, “Kats, she’s your guard. What do you mean where is she?”

Bakugou hasn’t gotten enough sleep for this. Up until bitter hours with Aizawa and his men recounting the attack and now stalking Takoban hallways. A perfectly comfortable bed beside a steady fire, ruined by the memory of you.

He spits and pushes past the soldier. Fuck her, fuck it. He doesn’t hate you more than he wants to sleep.

“Last blue door,” Uraraka barks behind him, “and she doesn’t want help. I already tried.” She grins nervously as the prince adjusts his gait, hardly hiding his beeline for the room at the end of the hallway. Fuck sleep. And more crucially, fuck you. You, setting great fires in Aldera’s name wherever you step and bursting at your simple seams to be righteous about it.

A blind man might be more prepared than him. Might remember why he avoided you all week– what he was going to say to you in the gardens those few hours ago, before the mage and blue fire.

Your door is already open a crack when Bakugou approaches with a egotistical lack of decorum. Storming and sauntering. Morning sunlight hardly illuminates anything on this side of the castle. He’s just cold enough, just close enough to the edge of irate that the thought of swinging it fully open with a roar fills him to the brim with grim satisfaction.

At a distance, Uraraka thinks about stopping him, but his wind up, his general air and the tense of his shoulders dies before he can cause the scene she knows he wants to.

Inside the crack, Bakugou deflates as you slip into view. You keep your back turned. Dark blush climbs up the parts of your neck neither hair nor nightgown cover and you stop your gentle drifting at the foot of your bed. Steam from a tub under your window fights with the sea draft. You’re trying to reach something– a ribbon? And your fingers tremble as they graze a tie at the back of your dress. Are you in a hospital gown? Bakugou peers inside silently, completely underestimating the shock of seeing you conscious.

You don’t look right without a sword. You don’t look right at all. Turn around. He can’t see– what did Uraraka say? Help with what?

Bakugou touches golden fingertips to the door’s beveled edges at the same time as you slam your fist hard to one of your bed’s four posters. The prince’s fingers twitch instead of startling but it’s too late because your ears work leagues better than his and you’ve spun right around to catch whoever it is that’s watching you. Uraraka drifts carefully around the corner.

“Wh– Highness?”

Your door rushes open and Bakugou can tell you’re nursing your left arm by the way you reach with your right. Though your frustration deflates with a glimpse of him, it doesn’t shift to something comfortable. He’s not what fills you with ease.

He didn’t expect to be so disarmed by the sight of you alone but now that you’re here, solid and in front of him, he can’t stop remembering the state of you in the gardens. Wet and bleeding, bubbling and burnt to a crisp and still, still swinging a spear. You shouldn’t be getting dressed, you should be dead asleep in the hospital. Bakugou hasn’t thought this far and he doesn’t think he can yell anymore.

“Sir?”

What did he come here to say to you?

You look like a proper wild Alderan this morning like he’s hardly ever seen you. Worn eyes and bed hair, battle scars and a bruise that peeks out from under your collar. It took seeing you for him to remember the last conversation you’d had.

You’re mine.

“Your arm,” he musters instead of thinking harder and tips his chin to your left.

“Do you have business with my arm, sir?”

The shallow cut down Bakugou’s chest has started to scab, the one from your sword in the gardens. His only injury from last night and not because of his skill in a fight. You are battle weary, exhaustion holding your eyes in your head and healing magic draining the life from your heart to keep your arm intact. Shame roils.

Great galloping fuck, do you ever stop staring? You look through him under the doorframe with huge dim eyes.

“What help do you refuse?”

Whoever said that has said it much too sweetly Bakugou tisks, and you seem to agree because your otherwise tired face sets itself to stone. He pities the person that would speak to you like honey, his kamikaze captain, until he realizes you are looking only at him in an empty hallway and that syrup has dripped like drool from his lips.

“Is that all?”

He would be more upset with you if you were wrong. If he hadn’t actually run out of things to say and couldn’t only focus on staying upright after a night with no sleep.

He sounds like fucking Kirishima. The same shithead who started to cry after cornering a loose-lipped Deku outside of Aizawa’s interrogation office. He might have blubbered on for hours about your injuries if Bakugou didn’t send him on a chore to collect breakfast.

The hospital you must have escaped from healed your wounds but missed more than a few patches of dark blood crusted up your neck and into your hair, and then Bakugou remembers he didn’t come here to stare. Every day of tutoring and diplomacy, every shouting match, every spar, every fist fight is failing him. What did he come here to say?

“Don’t be stubborn.” Not that.

“Is that an order?”

Takoba has sucked the soul from your eyes, day by day. They should be filled with fire. He distinctly remembers fire, but today you hang in the doorway without a weapon and just wait for him to leave. Speak too quickly for him to think. You can’t even stare at him right anymore and it’s pissing him off.

You look like shit, he considers grunting, you smell worse. You gray my fucking hair, run away home. Go die for someone else. The broad prince shuffles his tongue over his teeth when vitriol doesn’t find its way from his mouth and while the pair of you watch each other too close in this cold hallway something so much worse sneaks out.

“It is.” He wants to spit the second the sounds leave his mouth.

“Yes, sir.”

And immediately the word ripples his skin from his bones, his sinews try to tear from his body every time you utter it and he knows now that you do it on purpose. Before Bakugou can recover and growl and kick his way through this cursed castle out of your stoney company, you turn your back to him and wait without moving, “The knot, sir.”

It’s so much worse without your staring. To stand with you alone and out of his mind with exhaustion and for your eyes to be anywhere other than burning holes through his head.

How dare you. Bakugou vibrates as he watches unmarred knuckles reach forward in time to register that his own hand is going to touch you. Even injured, your posture is still perfect, unsettling, and it’s taken twenty years for the prince to realize that you’re no bigger than a sunflower. You carry yourself like a dragon through his castle but it would take two of your hands to cover one of his. And you thought you could kill the flame mage? You thought he was worth your Alderan life?

In the time between dreading the closeness and pinching the bow at your back in his fingers, Bakugou remembers his fury. All the senseless shit he meant to say in the gardens suffocates in the smoke hate tends.

You, who orders your soldiers like an old general and then refuses to eat with them. You who hunt and kill for the queen but stumble through professionalism when it comes time to look at him. Do you smile alone, in your room or with your master? Or is subservience a full time job?

You’ve pulled the tie free of its bow with your stupid struggling and now Bakugou needs both hands to pick at a knot too small for his fingers because you can’t ask for help. You want to die so badly? Do it out of eyesight.

He focuses for one second too long to keep his magic from spiking with his anger like a teenager and with that second he finally pulls the fucking ribbon loose and– and it’s bad.

It’s ugly. You’re not bleeding, they’ve closed you up, but black bruises reach from your shoulder so far down your back he has to blink away when his eyes follow the trail too quickly. The back of the gown begins to open. Turning bruises purple, a scar like tree sap creeps out from under your sleeve, up your neck and down your spin. The burn. A pink scar like sparks in his twilight library.

Shuzenji can only do so much with bruises but this welt? It looks too angry to touch cloth. She couldn’t put in some goddamned effort? You saved her useless queen for all she knows and she couldn’t spare a fucking second to put you back together again?

Creativity given too much platform by your silence, a much worse thought surfaces. Did you escape, or were you discharged half patched like this to make room for more important patients? Royal patients. Blood in your hair.

Bakugou spent fifteen Julys in this Takoban hellhole, every summer for diplomacy or training or vacation, or whatever the fuck his mom decided to call forced socialization that year. He might as well have spent all fifteen years in the hospital for all the trouble he got into by the sea. Pirates and sparring or krakens, whathave you. There was never a broken bone bad enough, a concussion so blinding that Shuzenji couldn’t fix it.

“I’m no god, Katsuki,” she’d murmur even when he was too dazed to hear properly. Always, always she reminded him. How long had it been? How did he forget? “I can only use what you give me. If I take too much you’ll die.”

Your room reeks of the sea even with the windows closed and blue infects its every inch. Even the steaming tub at the foot of your bed tinges green at its bronze lips.

“Highness.” Your voice is a call on the wind when Bakugou realizes how tight he’s still holding your ribbons. You are a subtle source of warmth kissing his knuckles in a cold corridor and he can’t get away from you fast enough. You turn. Your shoulders drop and your gown drops with them, your big eyes catch the corner of your face and where anyone else might be coy you look through him like a hound.

“Thank you.”

The sounds that comes out makes him feel like a hound. Like a bark, tch, “Fuck back off to the hospital.”

“Is that an order?”

Your beautiful golden prince spits at your feet and turns away down the hall.

You wouldn’t have gone back even under orders. You woke up in the surgery the second Shuzenji put her hands on you. Searing wet pain and a thousand stitches and where her magic used to feel bubbly, this night was just fire. Blue fire, Takoban fire.

You were the only collateral from the attack. It should have filled you with pride that you protected not only your prince, not only a queen, her heirs, her champions, and guards, but her entire castle. Still, alone in the hospital with a rum cloth jaw clenched to keep from screaming– in the seconds or hours it took to hammer you together again– liquor was a welcomed distraction from the taste of mageblood.

Shinsou was there in flashes looking over you on the table and then in a blink holding someone back from the door, red hair like Kirishima, and hatred like molten sugar spilled from your every sweating pore on the operating table. Where was he? Your prince’s champion left him alone in a hostile country with only one guard and the incompetence of Takoba to keep him alive. If wrath could send letters, your Mitsuki would be inundated.

“C’mon miss martyr, head down please.” Uraraka’s smiling more than you’d like as she runs a sponge across your back. The bathwater is a touch too cold for you and still so hot that her arms have gone pink in the space where she’s rolled up her sleeves.

“I can wash myself.”

“Kats didn’t send me in here to watch a pretty girl wash blood out of her own hair,” the pink guard chuckles and you hate to waste this comfort filled with fury.

Before Shuzenji could wrap any part of you in bandages, a knock at the hospital door took her from attention. Shinsou had long disappeared so you slipped from the bed and through a door at the end of the room.

Footmen and maids balked as you whisked through the halls half-dressed and bloody. The guard stationed maddeningly at your bedroom door didn’t hesitate when you burst from the darkness and growled for hot water. You wouldn’t give your prince the satisfaction of sauntering through the castle nearly naked again but you had been stripped of your padding and armor, your weapons, and a generous serving of blood. The prince had to wait.

“I won’t really wash your hair if you don’t want me to,” Uraraka murmurs this time instead of laughing and you are back in safe company.

The smell of the sea makes you sick.

A change of clothes she brought for you from her soldiers' quarters lays nervously across your bed generally afraid to be worn. Rife with silver bits and baubles, limp where your Alderan uniform would be imposing. You’ll look like a doll and suddenly you’re angry all over again.

Uraraka is gentle when she rinses suds off your shoulders but the itch over the new skin there is deep and welcomed. The brush of Bakugou’s knuckles in the hallways left streams of goosebumps that still won’t fall and that you refuse to think about. Not his hands, never again.

“Do you like looking like this?”

Uraraka leans forward so you can see her expression and gestures vaguely to the room with her elbow, “Like what?”

“Like,” you slip your good arm over the edge of the bronze tub and water platters on rugs, “this.” You're both eyeing the Takoban uniform now.

“Do I like looking beautiful?”

“Like decoration.”

“I am decoration.”

Salt carries on a breeze through the room that persists even with the windows closed and your arm drops from the lip as you settle back down in your bath. That’s right. A few weeks away from home and suddenly you’re playing Royal Captain instead of war fodder, too good for a borrowed pair of greaves.

“Alderan uniforms are beautiful too,” the guard offers, but you rest your head a bit too limply in her hands as she brings water up your nape.

Your voice is tired, “Do you like giving orders?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“I like having a bed and sending money home to my parents.”

“Do you like fighting?”

“I do.”

Your queen is as fiery as her son, but did Jeanist have to tame her first? Or did she have to break him into a shape she liked to look at? Was it an honor? After hardly a month of travel together, Prince Bakugou had pulled up the edges of your identity like a bored child with cheap wallpaper. Fifteen years without so much as three words, then three weeks of torture and still somehow the thought of returning to Aldera where he won’t so much as growl towards your post makes your stomach ache. Where you will never be allowed to raise a weapon against him. Being decoration never bothered you before.

“I like free food and looking pretty,” Uraraka steadies her hand at the base of your neck and holds you tight, “I love my master, I love my friends, I love my city and my people. I miss my mom, I’m afraid to die, I can’t budget, I’ve never been in love,” her fingers pulse warm over your new skin, “I think I’m lucky.”

You think so too. You bring your knees closer in the water, “You look like a chandelier.”

Uraraka tilts your head gently towards the seashell uniform, smiling, “We look like chandeliers.” And then there’s a knock at the door. Your heart beats golden for a second.

“Y/n? Please tell me you’re in here.” Kirishima and his unmitigated gaul. Blood turns red again.

As you sit up properly, your pink guard shouts before you can find a weapon, “She’s in the bath!”

“Come back to the hospital, Y/n. Have you eaten? I brought breakfast, please can I come in?” Doors are made of shit driftwood here so you can hear his ragged breath even through the walls and gods, you start to sweat again.

You’re stiff, not bedridden. Your shoulders can roll again and a scar can’t keep you from raising a weapon, “You’d better arm yourself if you want to speak with me, Champion.”

“Y/n please–”

“Ei, go eat without us!” Uraraka plants her hands on your shoulders when you draw your knees under yourself to keep you from rising fully, “Go on, it’s okay I’m here.”

You don’t like how slowly it sounds like he’s moving. Kirishima rests something on the floor with a click and then clears his throat, “I’ll– I’ll tell the others you’re okay.”

“You do that,” Uraraka chirps for you again. She rinses her hands in the water beside your ribs as awkward footsteps pad away from the room. You settle back down on your hips and long for hot water. “What’s your problem with the champion?”

Your body is a rusted machine and it’s too hard to find words for your anger. Her Takoban champion threw himself off of a cliff to save you. Your champion ate dinner for a few hours too long instead, presumably because he was staring at Lady Mina. An Alderan embarrassment. Another knock.

This one is much too loud and in no way enunciatory. Your door flies open this time with Bakugou attached to the knob.

“Shitty Hair!” He howls over the edge of the door and down the hallway, “Almost wore this breadbowl as a boot, pick up your motherfucking food!”

Uraraka’s hands go limp at your back and she must be staring as blankly as you are because your prince only looks normal– milky and ferocious– until he turns inside to speak. It’s almost endearing how quickly his shoulders and scowl drop into a look entirely foreign on his face as he takes in the scene in front of him.

The first thing you’ll do when you get home is have tea with Master Jeanist under your favorite Saturday tree and laugh over the many expressions of your hellfire prince, for he dearly loves to gossip. He thinks the Bakugous are the most beautiful family in the country, and he’s right, and it’s infuriating in a thousand ways.

The prince clears his throat, hand still tight on the doorknob, “I’m going to the sea.” And he speaks to the bed because something has stopped him from looking at you. The veins in his hands dance. The air might as well be frozen.

With one movement he blinks to the window over both of your heads and steps backwards into the hallway, door closed and absolutely uncharacteristically silent as morning air.

Uraraka’s knuckles crack when her fingers twitch but that’s the only movement or sound either of you are allowed before your door flies open one more time and Bakugou, fuming frowning and bursting with something to say, explodes inside again. This time one slippered foot is deep in a shepherd's pie. Not even your bathwater stirs. Not a single sound comes from his clenched teeth, not even when his lips part to speak.

Six and holding your hands, eleven and soaked in a fruit filled hallway, all grown up and full of hate, always making magic in the library.

“I can ride,” you spare him, and Bakugou manages to look at you for a beat, to stare with jeweled eyes, before closing the door again.

A faint smell of meat and potatoes permeates the fresh air even with a new pair of shoes on. Bakugou huffs in his saddle. Todoroki doesn’t notice. The Takoban prince is too busy tacking your horse while his grooms watch on nervously.

“Just let them do it for her, get on already.”

“Certainly not.”

He knows it’s pointless but he would still rather work himself to fury with feather-brained Todoroki than sit with the image of you. Propped up in the bath with your hair down, a huge handprint scar wrapped around your bicep.

“Almost finished.”

Bakugou agonizes at the pace, but as his airhead companion finally secures the billet strap under the chest of a mottled cream gelding, Uraraka leads you into the stable. She knocks to announce your presence like that would do anything to dull the incessant shock of seeing you on two feet after just last night, wiping mageblood and tears from your cheeks.

You look insane. A black Alderan tunic you must have had tucked away somewhere and bright white Takoban riding pants. Blue strings poke off your hips at odd intervals like you’d ripped some of the baubles off but there are plenty more gems and silver seashells to catch the eye.

“Y/n,” Todoroki is animated when he says your name and Bakugou realizes he’s been staring. The Takoban prince rushes to meet you and your escort and crumples immediately to the ground.

Bakugou groans, head fully back, “Fucking– again? C’mon half n’ half, up.”

“Y/n, please accept my deepest apologies.” Todoroki always sort of sounds like he’s mumbling but this time he’s pressed his hands and face to the ground. You, with the quick wit, look between the prince and Uraraka at a loss for what to say. “You are a guest and to be injured on the grounds is unforgivable. The rogue mage will be caught. Captain Hawks has returned and his men patrol the city at–”

“Y/n!” Another voice, this one less grating, booms through the open air. Kirishima rounds the corner, startling staff, and Bakugou’s no psychic but you don’t seem thrilled. His champion rushes you– idiot– and stops just out of arm’s reach still in his bedclothes. He’s gotten more sleep than both of you combined but looks significantly shittier for it. “A soldier picked this out of rubble, I’m so sorry.” He opens his fist and perched in his soft hand like a pearl is your broach. White dragontooth. “We couldn’t find your halberd.”

There’s a moment of stillness for all involved, Todoroki on the ground, Kirishima and Uraraka beside you, before you turn sharp and stare directly at your prince. You are a painting. You’re always steadying an invisible weapon at your hip even in a nightgown, and where the fire in your eyes has died something hungry and possessive replaced it. Black like the ocean. Infinite. The jewelry in Bakugou’s ears begins to burn.

Todoroki raises his head curiously and muck and hay stick to his forehead. Groomsmen rush to wipe him off as you turn back and offer him a hand. Your bad hand, Bakugou notes from his high horse, and frowns with your next words to him. “Highness, please don’t muss yourself for me.”

One more movement after pulling Todoroki up, smooth like water– and it is so obvious that you are trained to kill– you pluck your broach out of Kirishima’s palm and fasten it to your chest as you spit at his feet.

Takoba is not endearing and Bakugou is on hour thirty-one without sleep. Everyone else might have forgotten but he surely hasn’t, the reason why Alderans are here at all. The observatory, a ball, the Takoban King and diplomatic relations. Bakugou sat through more meetings this month than the sum total of his life, in twinkling cold offices and throne rooms without fireplaces. Hardly time to breathe alone. He wraps his horse’s reins in his fingers in case he falls asleep with its canter over city cobblestones.

“Highness, there are too many blindspots.”

Bakugou opens his eyes with your words as he’s done for the whole afternoon, and frowns when he realizes for the thousandth time that you’re addressing Todoroki. The three of you ride at leisure down the central roads of the Takoban castletown. Every rocky step they take he looks forward to you, expecting this bump to be your last. Expecting you to finally slip sideways off your gelding in exhaustion like he so dearly would like to do. You don’t. You only bark at civilians to keep their distance or direct them away with tilts of your head. You are simply you again, riding tall and alert with no suggestion of the mage-eater you become in blue light. No hints that you have ever shed a tear in your life.

He shakes his head free of the thought. Citizens gawk, but generally don’t stop their errands to do anything more than watch as you all ride past.

“Astute. What do you recommend, Officer?”

Bakugou doesn’t need to open his eyes to know you hate being called an officer. He can hear it in the way you pause before responding, and then he growls through a laugh at the back of the caravan when you find the right words.

“I recommend not touring the town that potentially housed a fugitive.”

Todoroki probably planned this tour for Bakugou weeks ago, excited to show him all the developments to the city in the years he’s been away. He’s not one for change. Shinsou knocked him unconscious to keep him from fighting last night and the first thing the blue prince did upon waking from a terrorist attack was ask Bakugou to confirm today’s agenda.

“Is there a more private area included in this tour, Highness?”

“Yes.”

There’s a beat of silence and Bakugou snorts again.

“Could you please take us there?”

“Of course.”

The Takoban prince seems unaware of his dazzling presence as he guides his horse’s white head at a sharp turn to the west. Bakugou too, in his exhaustion, doesn’t realize how much attention he’s drawn from a city he’s so familiar with. A city so safe, its blue prince doesn’t need a guard.

“Oi,” you hiss on Bakugou’s other side and faster than he’s able to turn, you’re already pulling back on your reins to sidle around him. Your horse doesn’t seem the least bit disgruntled with the maneuver and flashes of consciousness pour between Bakugou’s eyes as he remembers bits of the night you arrived here, bleeding, begging. “Hands to yourself.”

Something pathetic like a dog whimpers below him and your prince peers over his thigh towards the cobblestones where a child is frozen between reaching out to touch his silver stirrup and staring in horror at you, a dark cloud behind them. The child, in modest warm clothes, backs away and flinches when your good arm jerks across your chest with your attention.

On his right, an older kid yelps and falls flat on his ass with two little hands clutching his head. Bakugou considers laughing out loud at this, husky and full of sleep; when he looks back at you, your hand hovers over your saddle’s grain bag and it becomes apparent you’ve walloped a child in the street with horse feed.

Everything feels insignificant when you’ve missed a night of sleep.

He has spent thirty one hours thinking of you. Watching you shoot, skipping lunch to hide, finding the words to speak to you. Being filled with so many things and then twisted excitement against your blade. Dread. Recounting your every step to one hundred officers. Searching for the hospital. Searching for your room.

You have spent those same thirty one hours awake, furious, burnt, bleeding, and then fully dressed on horseback. You are an exceptional guard. You are professional to a fault and it should drive him insane.

“You’re terrible with kids,” Bakugou rumbles as he rips a silver bauble off his vest and tosses it over his shoulder to the twerp flat on cobblestones.

You ride past him to follow Todoroki, “I manage you well enough.”

It doesn’t. Not even when you feign stoicism at the edge of the sea, not for a second. Because when Todoroki’s obnoxiously white horse leads the three of you past castle guards and down a private beaten path– under Bakugou’s favorite marble archway and out onto the beach, something hums in your black eyes.

It is the loveliest stretch of coast in the world, because it is protected by evil. On one side a steep grassy hill that bleeds into the marble castle, on the other, golden sand dotted with black volcanic rocks. The rocks tumble still and algaed into the blue sea, daring ships to beach there. Today the water rolls over itself in tiny frothing peaks as it does before a storm but the color is cold and charming and you have never before been so close to the edge of the world.

As your three horses trot onto soft sand, you turn your head to watch waves making their music and Bakugou can see your face outlined by the late sun. Your wide eyes. It will set soon. You are so much more adept than he is at hiding inside of yourself.

“The observatory,” Todoroki pipes up in the lead and points towards a white spire Bakugou’s never seen before, jutting like a mushroom off the side of the castle above you. In one movement, the blue prince dismounts from his horse and turns back towards his guests with an arm outstretched. “Come.”

Bakugou knows this beach. It’s broken his bones. He watches it every morning from his bedroom window.

Ahead of him the blue prince offers you his arm as you swing a leg over your saddle. Your body doesn’t hint to injury but you nod thankfully at the gesture and salt water rises in Bakugou’s throat.

“You were attacked in the old gardens last night,” Todoroki, standing too close, points up high towards the castle on the cliff, “All the way on the other side. The castle curves around the bend with the beach– although, it’s only cliff on that side.”

You stare as high as the sun will allow, “It’s a huge property.”

“Marble deposits in that cliff helped build the foundation. My family has lived here for hundreds of years.” Todoroki turns from your side and he is always so cluelessly pretty it’s irritating, to call out to Bakugou who’s frowning at the braids in his horse’s hair, “Katsuki did you k–”

But four syllables in and your prince is already waving his hand dismissively, “Fuck all the way off half n half. Give the captain your shit tour guide speech and leave me out of it.”

So you follow Todoroki, who nods, to the edge of the sea.

“Whose garden was it?” You murmur in casual interrogation.

“My mother’s. A long time ago.”

Bakugou knows exactly what question you’re holding back and so does Todoroki, “The king,” he offers. You nod again. You can hide but you’re no liar. Something sours for just a second.

As Bakugou pulls a knapsack off his saddle to use as a pillow while the two of you fuck around, you walk too slowly over the sand beside your tour guide and his first thought is injury until your lips part with timid breath. You move like a soldier, undeterred by uneven footing and fresh wounds, but you stare like a doe.

“Have you touched the sea before?”

You shake your head at the Takoban prince already a length ahead of you and tugging off his boots. The autumn air is warmed by the sun, but getting wet would make a miserably cold ride back.

“You should take off your shoes first,” he smiles. Bakugou spits over his shoulder and unsettles the horses.

You oblige the blue prince like you would any royal but you don’t do it quite so lifelessly as usual. Todoroki gives you his arm again for balance as you tug off one boot then another and bend at the waist to try and pull your pants legs away from the impending surf. You should look like a toddler, your prince should be laughing, but suddenly the sun has started to set and instead he realizes that somehow an entire day got away from him.

Bakugou formed his own opinions of the sea years ago, but he can’t remember the first time he saw it. Stepped foot in it. He reclines on the beach frowning, warm with sleep, and watches quietly.

You are mesmerized. Between black rocks you approach the water and stare. You bite your lip when you’re thinking this hard and the sun’s at just the right angle to reflect dancing shapes onto your chest. The frothing surf twinkles. It reaches for you with limp blue fingers. Two more times before you let it touch you and then your shoulders hitch.

Todoroki smiles, “Cold, isn’t it?”

“It’s alive.”

Do deer freeze in the first drops of a rainstorm? You aren’t made for the sea. You’re meant to hunt and make fires and sit under forest trees and eat plums in warm quarters. You shouldn’t have come.

Bakugou closes his eyes in the golden warmth and midnight pictures of you in the library come before sleep. Six years ago when curfew let up, you started eating alone in the library under the Great Oak and entirely ruining his time at peace to study wild magic. Sometimes you wore your uniform, sometimes a nightgown and cloak, and always he watched from the hallway above. Noting the nights your guard assignments kept you posted elsewhere. The sight of you sores something in him.

“Y/n!”

Bakugou’s eyes fly open when the cool-headed Todoroki actually raises his voice and the first thing he dreads is a half-dead mage rising from the waves you threw him into. He’s already up on an elbow to rise, but the blue prince has raced through the shallow water to where it hits his hip and grabs your arm– your bad arm– again. You’re mid sea-strong stride and many meters farther out than before your prince closed his eyes. Your riding pants are fully gray with wet. What are you doing?

“I saw something.”

Todoroki urges you inland, “What?” But you shake your head.

Your body rocks with the rhythm of strong tides like you’re dancing. Waves roll gently through you from the left and right and even with your back turned to him, Bakugou knows exactly what kind of face you’re making. What did you see? He was right this morning and cocky this afternoon, you should be in the hospital.

“You’re not strong enough for the tides, Y/n,” Todoroki starts, and your prince also knows a lecture from anyone other than your queen is going to whistle right through those fucking ears, “The shallows drop out just past that break, and you’ll exhaust yourself before the rip current releases you.”

Bakugou can see the scene play out like a script. You’ll acquiesce for no more reason than the Takoban prince outranks you, but before you do as you always have, sunset catches the corner of your face and something bright blinks in the blacks of your eyes. Something like candlelight.

“I’m alright, Highness.”

Bakugou twitches.

“You’re injured.”

It’s just a second you take to glance over your shoulder across the horizon and in that second both eyes blaze redhot like they’ve eaten your candles whole, and die black again just as quickly.

Then you nod, “Yes sir,” and accept the guidance of Todoroki’s arm back towards the shore while Bakugou watches propped on a tense bicep, studying his ache. You are a nightmare. A nightmare the sea wants to swallow, because as you’re led to shallow water two waves meet and a new break forms behind your thighs. The strength of the sea kicks yours and the Takoban prince’s feet uneven in the sand and the pair of you are sent backward a step and then forward by the hips into a beaching wave. In the setting sun the sea grows darker.

You resurface in just a second from clam shell surf silent and wide eyed, but Bakugou is already up. He should be laughing, especially as Todoroki rises from the water with a halo of foam blinking just as dumbfounded next to you. Seawater drips from your lips.

“Y/n, we are certainly not swimming now.”

And something entirely new happens. On your knees, soaked through, you stare at the blue prince for a beat and then drop your head back in laughter. Your tunic clings helplessly to the curves of your chest, shaking and expanding with your breath. The sound is starlight. Another wave, smaller, climbs over your shoulder while you sit in the surf and washes over your head. Your hair is made of seashells.

“You’ll get sick!” Snorting on water now, Todoroki tries to help you up but the receding tide sucks sand out from under you both, knocking you gently into one another, giggling together, and doused again. The sunset frames your wide grin. You are no longer in the library, in fact you are nowhere to be found.

“Give me your hand.”

The corners of your eyes are red from salt and crinkled with a smile when you tilt your head up towards Bakugou in the pinking sunset, wet to his knees above you with a strong arm outstretched. You shiver. You without magic. You with nine lives. Him staring at your seashell crown through messy blond hair.

He draws breath through bared teeth. It’s an ill joined feeling, how quickly your new smile drops, how quickly the stars hang themselves back up in the sky at the sight of him. You aren’t a doe, you’re a dragon. Quiet pertinacity bleeds black from you into the sea.

“You’ll ruin your pants, sir.”

And he’s no longer sure he could stop you from anything without killing you first.

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[ihni]

I wanna dance with somebody

For @harringrovesummerbingo, square B2, free space (I chose "dancing"). Rating: G, 1,8K.

Summary: Steve wants to dance with somebody. (Just a sweet and trouble-free moment at a bonfire at the end of summer.)

(Also on AO3)

~~~

It was a warm night, for the middle of August. A moment at the end of summer; when nights start to darken enough that the sky will seem littered with stars, at least this far from the town’s artificial lights.

They were a mixed bunch of older teens and young adults who’d gotten together this evening – people who only months ago would never have been seen hanging out together. But living through supernatural events changes a person, and the bonds forged when fighting monsters together are strong. They were all survivors, and as such, they were out here now. Tonight was a celebration of making it through, as well as an acknowledgement that another eventful summer was ending. Soon, it would be back to normal. Business as usual.

They’d lit a bonfire on the gravelly shore of the quarry, which crackled merrily and sent sparks up to briefly join the starry sky. The fire lit up the beach and cast long shadows on the surroundings that might have seemed eerie to some, but despite what they had all been through, none of them worried on this night. Because the monster was dead, the portal was closed, and the shadows from the fire were just the absence of light. It was over, at least for the moment, and that was well worth celebrating.

Someone had brought a battery-operated boom-box and was playing a mixtape with a wide variety of songs. Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls gave way to a-ha’s Take On Me, which was followed by Starship’s We Built This City. There seemed to be something for everyone, only proven by the way Steve Harrington’s face lit up with glee when the opening notes of Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody started playing.

“Billy,” he said imploringly, eyes huge and sparkling, seeking out the blond where he was sitting between Robin and Argyle, with his boots digging into the stones at his feet.

“No,” Billy immediately said, shaking his head as Steve walked up to him. When Steve reached out a hand, he leaned back to avoid it. “Steve, no.”

“But baby,” Steve crooned and joined Whitney as she started singing the chorus, “I wanna dance with somebody,” Billy buried his face in his hands as the other people around the fire snickered, “I wanna feel the heat with somebody,” Steve made a little twirl and held out his hand again, pouting when Billy slapped it away, “Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody,” and grabbing Billy’s wrist, he leaned close as if Billy’s hand was a microphone as he finished off with, “With somebody who loves me!”

“I hate you,” Billy grumbled, his face red with embarrassment, which only caused more laughter around the fire. Steve stepped away to the beat of the music and turned to Robin, pulling her to her feet when she – with a pointed look in Billy’s direction – accepted the outstretched hand. She didn’t dance as much as provide support when the second verse started.

“I’ve been in love and lost my senses,” Steve said, pointing to Billy, whose ears were burning, “Spinning through the town.” He spun Robin around, laughing as she stumbled awkwardly. “Sooner or later, the fever ends, and I wind up feeling down.” He pouted again, and Robin assumed a faux-pitying face and patted him on the head, more than up for playing along with his antics.

“I need a man who’ll take the chance,” he continued, looking Billy in the eye and holding out his hand again in clear invitation, “On a love that burns hot enough to last.”

“So when the night falls!” a new voice cut in, and Eddie sprang up from the log where he’d been sitting curled up next to Chrissy and grabbed theatrically at his chest, “My lonely heart calls!” Everyone laughed when he took hold of Steve’s hand and assumed a dramatic pose as the chorus started up again.

“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody,” Steve sang, eyes glittering with mirth as Eddie flailed around him. “I wanna feel the heat with somebody.” More laughter as Eddie started lewdly humping Steve’s leg at the ‘heat’ part while sticking his tongue out in Billy’s direction. Billy’s whole face was red now. “Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody,” Steve continued with a shrug of his shoulders, “With somebody who loves me.” At that, Eddie pressed a big sloppy kiss to Steve’s forehead, drawing even more laughter from their friends, and then turned to Billy with raised eyebrows, like ‘yeah I did, what are you gonna do about it?’

No one was surprised when Billy stood up suddenly. He’d never been able to resist a challenge.

“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody,” Whitney continued from the tinny speakers as Billy stopped in front of the two dancing boys, raising his eyebrows right back at Eddie, who grinned but offered Billy his spot in front of Steve. “I wanna feel the heat,” Billy jumped in surprise and everyone laughed again when Eddie slapped his butt while walking past him to get back to his spot by Chrissy. “Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody,” Billy, face still red, hesitantly took Steve’s hands and pulled them apart in an awkward first move. Steve took pity on him and took a step back, drawing Billy along and pulling him in close enough to press a kiss on his nose. “With somebody who loves me.”

Billy’s face couldn’t get any redder, but he raised his chin in determination as the song continued, and held up Steve’s hand and twirled him around, before he started dancing around where Steve was standing. His moves were less smooth than Steve’s or Eddie’s, as he was obviously not used to dancing, but that didn’t stop him from giving it his best. Ignoring the cat-calls from around the fire, he jerked his hips in time with the music and clapped his hands above his head, fighting against a smile when Steve whistled appreciatively, “Oh yeah baby! Shake that thing!”

On the other side of the fire, Eddie had pulled Chrissy to her feet, and they too were dancing. The rest of them stayed sitting, but Heather had sidled up next to Robin and they were shaking their shoulders in time with the music, arms touching. Nancy was leaning her head on Jonathan’s shoulder as he raised his camera surreptitiously, trying to get the perfect photo of the dancing couples. Noticing this, Billy glared at him even as he twirled Steve around again, but Jonathan just grinned and took the shot. And Billy mustn’t have minded after all, because he just turned his attention back to Steve and continued dancing.

“Don’tcha wanna dance with me baby,” Whitney sang, and Steve belted out the words right along with her. “Don’tcha wanna dance with me boy?”

“I really don’t,” Billy answered, smiling now. “But I’ll do it for you.”

“Don’tcha wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don’tcha wanna dance,” Steve and Whitney continued, shaking his head so his hair almost slapped Billy in the face.

Billy laughed and backed up, but smoothly turned it into a dance move instead, pulling Steve against him, back to chest. Wrapping his arms around him in what was more embracing than dancing, he leaned in close and sang along to the song, low enough that Steve was the only one who heard, “With somebody who loves you.” He pressed a light kiss to Steve’s ear and then, just as the song ended, twirled them both around and dipped Steve low with one hand out. Steve shrieked in delight and twisted in Billy’s grip, hanging on to his shoulders for dear life. But he couldn’t help the laughter bubbling out of him as Billy’s eyes glittered in the light of the fire and effortlessly held him up in a grandiose finish.

They held their pose as the last note rang out in the night air, and then, to the sound of their friends’ cheering and applause, they stood back up and accepted the praise. Billy, taking a leaf out of Eddie’s book of good manners, bowed and kissed Steve’s hand, and Steve snorted out a laugh and pulled his boyfriend in for a proper kiss instead, which elicited both coos and groans from around them.

“Come on guys,” someone said, “get a room!”

Billy gave them the finger without looking, and then pulled back from Steve only to lean in again and press another kiss to his lips demonstratively with a loud smack. “If you didn’t want a show, you shouldn’t have bullied me into dancing.”

“We didn’t bully you,” came Eddie’s insistence from where he was moving along to the next song with Chrissy. “We just … gently encouraged you.”

“By putting your hands all over my boyfriend,” Billy growled, but with an amused spark in his eye.

“Well can you blame me?” Eddie said even as he swayed Chrissy to and fro, holding her smaller frame close. “Look at him! When a handsome man like that asks you to dance, you don’t say no, Billy! Or someone else might take the chance instead.”

Billy stuck out his tongue at Eddie like they were toddlers at the playground, which led to more laughter. Steve laughed too, but threw an arm around Billy’s shoulders and scolded his friends, “Stop teasing him. I’ll never get him to dance again, at this rate!”

“If it means we don’t have to watch whatever travesty those moves were, I’m fine with it,” Eddie said, but quieted down as Chrissy grabbed his face between her hands and told him to behave. He beamed at her, obviously smitten, and promised to play nice.

As everyone started settling back down around the fire, Billy leaned in and whispered in Steve’s ear, “I wouldn’t say never, pretty boy.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean. In the right circumstances, I could be persuaded.”

Turning his head so that he was facing Billy, Steve raised his eyebrows and asked through a smile, “Out of curiosity, what would those circumstances be?”

Billy bit his lip. “Well first of all, no audience next time.”

“Is this your way of offering me a private dance?”

“Mmm. What if it is?”

“You know we can hear you, right?” Robin interrupted, motioning to herself and Heather who were sitting on the log only a couple of feet away. “We’re literally right here. And you’re not subtle.”

“Or quiet,” Heather added, and leaned forward, making herself comfortable with her elbows on her knees and chin resting in her hands. “But please, continue. It was just getting good.”

“Good?”

“Good as in X-rated.”

“You wish,” Billy quipped.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said angelically.

They continued their banter to the backdrop of laughter and music, as the bonfire kept on sending its sparks towards the star-littered sky over the quarry. And none of them had any worries, because it was a night of celebration, and they’d all made it through.

[bungalowbear]

Across the Stars X

Pairing: Hunter x Jedi!reader

Word Count: 2.2k

Summary: It’s time for you and the children to flee Ibaar, but an unexpected and deadly adversary makes an appearance.

Warnings: action/fighting, mention of death and blood and a body being cut in half, major character death

A/N: It’s been almost a full year since I last updated this story. So sorry for the long wait! I struggled a lot with motivation for this series but the recent season has lit a fire under me. I’m excited to share this with you and what more I have in store. Let me know what you think, or come to my ask box to discuss the show! I’d love to hear from you :)

Series Masterlist

Staying on Ibaar for this long was always a risk. You knew this, and yet it turns out even you aren’t immune to the temptation of normalcy, a coveted comfort promising a respite from your troubles. And now, your weakness might prove to be your and the children’s doom.

You and Tara race across the dirt and back home. Ushering her in first, you look over your shoulder before the door slides closed with a swift thud. The others scramble away from the window and crowd around you.

“What’s happening?” Lyra questions, looking up at you with worry painted across her face.

“It’s the Empire,” Petro says. His expression is even, but you can see the panic in his youthful eyes. “How did they find us?”

“Yes, the Empire is here.” Speaking slowly, you look at each of them before you continue. “But not for us. We know they’ve occupied other planets, and unfortunately, Ibaar is next.”

Gungi chimes in, asking what happens now.

“We’re leaving.” All four voices protest as soon as the words pass your lips. They talk all at once, lamenting their established lives on this planet. It pains you to take this away. You shouldn’t have given it to them in the first place. You silence them with the clearing of your throat. “This isn’t up for discussion. We’ve been here too long, and staying any longer will only put us in unnecessary danger.”

“We can’t just leave these people to be taken over by the Empire,” Tara objects. “They’ll be pushed around and exploited just like on Saleucami.”

You frown, shaking your head. “We can’t help them, Tara.”

“But—”

“You are a child.” The word forces itself out of you, stressed by her actions against the troopers. Tara’s eyes widen before she turns away from you. You sigh, addressing the other three as well. “You are children first, Jedi second. Do you understand?”

Petro, Gungi, and Lyra nod their heads solemnly. Tara still doesn’t face you, but the drop of her shoulders tells you she accepts your words.

“There is nothing of greater importance to me than making sure you all live long, long lives.” You open your arms and three bodies step into your embrace. Lyra tugs on Tara’s sleeve until she eventually joins. You stretch your arms as wide as they will go and hold the younglings close. “Yes, we help others when we can. But this is not one of those times. We’ll leave for the mountain just before first light.”

You tell the children to pack a bag and that you’ll check on them before it’s time to sleep. They’re quiet as they trudge toward their respective rooms, a few sniffles interrupting the silence.

After you tuck the children in one last time, you station yourself in the living room. Sleep doesn’t come for you, so instead you keep watch through the window. The house, the street, the whole town, is suffocated with a deadly tension. Once again, you sense the impending approach of an obscure force. Your mind’s cloudiness has improved, the shadow of the dark side slowly withdrawing from your psyche, but it’s still left you with a numbness you have yet to break out of. Your visions are not to be trusted yet. Not even worth considering. Not when the lives of four children hang in the balance.

Your heart aches for them. They are too young to have to endure what they have, but it’s also their very youth that helps you face another rising sun. Petro’s confidence, Gungi’s loyalty, Lyra’s gentleness, and Tara’s compassion remind you each day that there is still light and hope in this galaxy. 

No one knows how long this dangerous time will last for the Jedi, but you swear to yourself you will do all you can to protect their light. It doesn’t burn as radiantly as it did before, dimmed by the circumstances it finds itself in, but you’re glad you could foster it even if for a short time here on Ibaar. You cling to the hope that someday it can shine freely once again.

The sun has yet to rise when you feel a shift. Someone very dangerous to the Jedi has landed on Ibaar. It’s dark and menacing. It’s searching. 

You wake the children and help them gather their things. You raise a finger to your mouth, pressing your hand to the panel beside the door to open it. You step outside and make sure the coast is clear. Then, you signal for the children to follow after you. Quiet, careful steps make their way across the dirt into a narrow alley. Your small group sticks closely together, only the rustle of your canvas knapsacks make noise as they gently brush against your cloaks.

When you reach the far end of the street you hear the commotion. It’s coming from behind, from the direction of your home, and you realize you’ve been found out. You don’t know how but it’s not what’s most important in this moment.

“Hurry,” you tell the children.

But your quickened pace is not enough to outrun what’s behind you.

A blaster shot whizzes past your head. Turning, you see a squadron of troopers approaching. You pull the children behind a pile of stacked crates and untuck the blaster from the holster strapped to the back of your trousers. You wait until several rounds of fire stop before reaching your arm around the crate and firing back.

The troopers pause their assault, finding their own cover as you continue to fire. You manage to hit a few of them, but there are still too many for you to flee safely. You pull back behind the metal crates and face four worried expressions. 

“I’m going to cover you while you run to that next pile.” You jerk your chin to the crates diagonal to where you’re crouched. “On my signal.”

Lyra places a hand on your arm. A frown pulls the corner of her lips downward.

“I’ll be right behind you,” you assure her.

You look between each of them as you count to three and then start shooting again. You step into the middle of the alley while the children dash toward the crates. You dodge a blaster shot. Taking out another three troopers, your feet move backward toward the children. Another blast just misses you as you roll onto the dirt and land at their feet safely behind the crates. 

Getting to your hands and knees, you peek around the corner of the barricade and count four troopers remaining. You start to think it won’t be as difficult to get out of this situation as you initially predicted. But then you see a dark figure emerge from the cloud of dirt.

He wears robes as black as a moonless night sky. His tall yet built figure halts to position himself behind the remaining troopers. He reaches beneath his robe and reveals a circular object, a large ring with a handle running through the middle that he holds onto. He lifts it and a beat passes before two red sabers burst from either end. Glowing crimson eyes meet yours and you can’t fight the shiver that runs down your spine.

“Okay,” you say as you retreat behind the barricade. “Here’s what we’re doing. You’re all going to go ahead and get the ship ready.”

“What?” Petro asks.

“Master, no!” Lyra shouts.

“You’re all going ahead,” you repeat firmly, looking at each of them. “Get the ship ready. If I’m not back before the sun touches the mountain, then you leave without me.”

Tara’s brow creases, her lips part to voice her own disagreement, but you speak again. 

“You must do this.” Four pairs of shoulders deflate. They must recall your words from the night before because they don’t argue further. “Stay together and don’t stop until you reach the mountain.”

You manage an encouraging smile before you count again. On three, the children jump to their feet and sprint toward the end of the alley. A few blaster shots fly past you and you turn your head to make sure they made it off safely. You catch sight of Lyra’s cloak as they disappear around the corner before turning back and advancing on the troopers. You take out the last of them, and now it’s just you and the mysterious figure left in the alley.

“You’re not what I expected,” he states inquisitively, voice altered by the modulator within his mask. It hides his true face and you’re not sure if that makes him more menacing or not.

“Sorry to disappoint,” you respond, dryly.

“Nevertheless, Lord Vader will be pleased with your capture. He’s been searching for you.”

“Vader?” You’ve never heard the name before. Must be some new Imperial tasked with capturing any remaining Jedi. But why would he be searching for you specifically? “I don’t know any Vader.”

“But he knows you.” The mysterious figure hums, a deep and unsettling sound. “And how do you think I’ll be rewarded when I return with not just one Jedi, but a batch of younglings?”

“Unfortunately for you,” you tuck your blaster into its holster, “you’ll never find out.”

You take a deep breath in as you take your stance. He wields a lightsaber, so you suspect he might also be a Force wielder. He won’t be easy to defeat like the troopers who lay scattered around you.

Wind blows through the alley, disrupting more of the dirt and clouding the battleground between you. He charges first, swinging his dual saber, but you quickly side step his attack. You crouch down to swing your leg and take him off his feet but he leaps high, higher than any regular life form should. He confirms your suspicions about being a Force wielder when he uses the Force to hurl you against the pile of crates. Your head smacks against the hard metal, and you barely have time to blink before he’s on you again. He towers above you and raises his weapon. He brings it down without hesitation, but you raise your hand before it can slice through your shoulder. It’s a battle of strength. The prize is your severed arm. The Force vibrates chaotically between you and your adversary. Drops of perspiration bead down from your temple as the heat of the saber inches closer. 

Your eyes flick down to his hand. In a quick movement, you grab the hilt of the saber where the horizontal handle meets one end of the ring above his hand, twisting up and in the opposite direction of his hold. When his grip on the hilt weakens, you push off your feet and take control of the saber. You continue the disarming movement so that the saber makes a fluid arc that slashes clean through his torso.

He grunts as realization dawns on him that it’s over. You won. His body drops to the floor in two halves. You wait until you see the life leave his eyes, then you power down the saber. It’s a strange design, one you’ve never seen before. Part of you is intrigued. But the longer you hold it the more darkness begins to bleed at the edges of your mind. You toss it to the ground unceremoniously and hurry toward the end of the alley, leaving the town behind and heading toward the mountain.

The sunlight is already touching the mountain but you’re confused when you reach the cave and the ship is still inside, surrounded by the haphazardly discarded large rocks that covered the entrance. Immediately, you feel something is very wrong, and it becomes even more apparent when Lyra comes running down the open ramp of the ship. She’s calling your name as she holds out her hands that are covered in blood.

You sprint inside with Lyra right behind you and find Tara lying on her back on the floor with her head in Gungi’s lap. He has a paw pressed to her torso to stop the bleeding, but Lyra takes over again when she drops by her friend’s side. 

”While we were running out of the alley Tara was hit by a ricochet.” Petro’s not looking at you as he speaks. He’s rummaging around frantically through the compartments for a med pack. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

You sink to your knees beside Tara. Her breathing is slowing down. You can feel her fading away. Your left hand takes hers and you smooth the hair from her face with the other. She stares up at you with watery eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Master.” Her voice is weak. It’s a soft plea for forgiveness. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault,” you assure her gently. “You were very brave. You have such a good heart, Tara. I’m so proud of you.”

You hold back your tears and try to keep a comforting smile on your face. You don’t want her last moments to be filled with sorrow. You hold her hand until her grip loosens and she releases her final breath. 

Gungi lets out an anguished howl. 

Lyra begins to sob. 

Petro drops silently beside you.

Tara lays before you all, lifeless.

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[obsidiancreates]

Just Another Day In The Dimwood

"How the hell did we end up back here?!" Booker whispers furiously to Grumley.

"I dunno," Grumley whispers back, almost whimpering. "We just ran and here we are!"

"Whatever Bitsy's going for in that hutch better be worth this." Booker takes a deep breath. "Okay, just this one last time. One last distraction in this godforsaken clearing and then we're never coming back here again!"

"Never?"

"Never, Grumley. Not even for all the gold in the Dimwood."

"Wow. Alright, one more distraction." Grumley looks down at the powder Peggy had given him before she, Hazel, and Bitsy had sprinted off into the woods. "I won't die, right?"

"I sure hope not, but it's Peggy, so I can't really confirm or deny that as a possibility."

"Well... here goes." Grumley shoves the powder in his mouth and takes a swig of the bottle Peggy had also given him. He coughs a little as thick foam begins to spill out from his jowl-covered mouth.

"Holy shit, it worked- I mean HELP! HEEEELP, OH GODS, THERE'S A-A RABID DOG! AHHHHHHHH!" Booker dashes into the main clearing, gathering as much attention as possible away from the party that had moments ago been readied to investigate why Smoke could be seen coming from that horrid hutch the heretic once lived in.

Grumley chases after Booker, growling and snarling as scarily as he can! He chases him all around the clearly, but the two keep a tight pattern around the path out of town towards Bitsy's old house. Mice and rabbits and cats and dogs alike all scream, chaos spreading as cries of "RABIES!" fill the air!

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

"Oh, Bitsy! You didn't tell us you had cookies left in your house!" Hazel yanks the jar out of the old slightly-singed cupboard and begins wolfing them down without a second thought.

"To be fair we thought it'd burned down because she left the woodstove lit when we ran away before," Peggy says, looking through Bitsy's bookshelf which contains no books, but lots of jars of herbs.

"We did?" Bitsy herself is digging through the ashes inside said stove.

"You said you left it on, yeah."

"Wow. Well how didn't it burn down? Did you save my Hutch, Creator?"

"I must have." Peggy kicks over a bucket clearly left by the firefighting brigade that obviously came and stopped the fire so it wouldn't burn the entire clearing down. "What're we lookin' for again?"

"Is it that mysterious chest you told us about that first night?" Hazel asks as she finishes the jar of cookies. "Ooooh, scones!"

"No, not that." Bitsy moves on to look under the bed. "I'm lookin' for my best chewin' stick!"

"We're here for a stick?" Peggy pauses, then shrugs. "Just don't tell Booker, he might have an aneurysm."

"What's an Anne-your-eseem?"

"It's like your brain poppin' in your skull."

"Wow... I get that all the time!"

"I think that's just bubbles in your ears, Bitsy. I get it too when I-I climb really high and come back down."

"But I don't climb!"

"You do run real fast though, sort of the same thing. ... Somehow."

"I learn so much with you all."

"Well we're a very knowledgeable and well-learned bunch. What's this jar full of?"

"Poppy seeds. If you work with 'em the right way they make you all sleepy and relaxed and not in pain anymore."

"Oh, is that what this liquid next to them is?"

"Yeah!"

"Hazel just drank half the jar."

"Oh. ... It'll be fine, I think. As long as we don't gotta run real soon."

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

Booker and Grumely sprint away from the angry crowd. As soon as just one resident recognized them, the rest followed. Groups of angry, grieving families now chase them with pitchforks, scythes, and anything else sharp available in the clearing.

"GUYYYYS!!! WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!!!" Booker screams as they run towards the hutch.

"IT'S VERY URGENT!!!"

"WE HAVE TO GET MOVING AT A VERY QUICK AND CONSISTENT PACE!!!"

"FOR A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME!!!"

Peggy looks out the window. "Yeah Booker that's not- HOLY SHIT- Bitsy you gotta wake Hazel up!"

"WHAT?!" Booker ducks as a rock flies by his head. "SHE'S ASLEEP?!"

"Well I'll just give her this white powder that makes me feel real fast!"

"Great idea."

Booker groans and looks to Grumley. "We're so fucked."