#now i have the difficult blurry things to do >:T

[imnotverybright]

i finished the easiest thing to do in my pixel art project and now it's so hard to convince myself to work on it :(

[woso-dreamzzz]

Dogs III

Keira Walsh x Laura Feiersinger x Child!Reader

Summary: You meet Laura

"She's a kid," Keira says," Not a bomb. You don't have to be so worried."

Laura sits at her kitchen table, back ramrod straight as she taps her nails anxiously against the wooden finish. Her knee bounces as she glances at the door.

The custody schedule for you between Lucy and Keira is fairly fluid. It mainly follows Narla's custody schedule but you can still decide to stay a day or two extra at your other mother's house if you want to.

You were with Lucy and Ona this week and now's the swap over so you're coming back to Keira.

Laura had timed her visits to overlap with your weeks with Lucy just because the boundaries were always a little blurry. Keira had never expressed an interest in having the two of you meet, especially not so early in the relationship.

Laura assumes that there were lots of talks between Lucy and Keira about how to approach your interactions with their partners. With Ona now at Barcelona with you, it was difficult to keep you away.

Keira's described you as highly social so there was no way you'd just avoid someone so, with your meeting with Ona imminent, Keira had put out feelers to see if Laura would have liked to meet you too.

She had gotten into this relationship knowing that Keira had a kid. It was hard not to know when the whole community (players and fans) had blown up one day when you'd been revealed to the public. Laura hadn't gotten into this relationship with the idea of never interacting with you.

She thought she was ready but now all she can think about is how anxious she feels.

The ring of the doorbell feels like a death sentence and Laura remains rooted in her seat as Keira goes to open the door.

"Mummy!" You cheer, slamming into her legs to hug her tight.

Keira stumbles a little, her hand moving to cup the back of your head with a soft smile on her face. "Hi, pup."

"She's had breakfast," Lucy says, unclipping Narla's leash to let her run free in the house," And she's got a few leftover snacks from yesterday."

"Okay. Thanks."

"Oh! And we went to the carnival yesterday and Ona won her a few stuffed animals so they're in her bag."

"I'll chuck them in the washer," Keira says, grabbing your bag," Who knows how long those toys were hanging up there."

"I'm going to head off then. I'll see you at training on Monday."

"Pup!" Keira calls," Mum's going now! Say goodbye."

"Bye, Mum!" You chirp," Love you!"

"Love you too."

The dance swings shut and Laura's breathing picks up a little bit.

You're a bit preoccupied with Keira and don't even seem to have noticed Laura sitting there.

Keira's crouched down at your height as she looks through your overnight bag and all the new toys you have as you try to explain each one and how Ona won it for you.

"Hey," Keira says softly," I want you to meet someone."

You frown, head cocking to the side in confusion. "Why?"

"Well, you know how like Mum and Ona are dating now?"

"I like Ona," You say," Has puppy called Coco."

Keira nods. "Well, I'm dating someone too and I'd like you to meet her."

Laura holds her breath. She'd been warned in advance about meeting you. She knew that you hadn't exactly taken well to Ona at first. She's prepared herself for this kind of thing.

Little steps first.

Keira turns you around and points at her.

"This is Laura, my girlfriend."

You frown at her, hair swaying as your head tilts even further to one side. "Is Laura?"

"Yep. This is Laura."

"Play football too?"

"Does Laura play football too?"

"Yes."

"She does," Keira says," She plays for Austria."

You frown deepens. "Austria is country? Like England?"

"That's right."

You take a step towards Laura, wandering over until there's barely any space between you, head tilted up to stare.

"You like puppies?"

"Er...yes, I do."

Laura crosses her fingers.

You don't talk for a moment before a massive smile appears on your face. "I love puppies!" You point at your t-shirt. "See! Puppy on my top! Is called a King Charles puppy!"

You seem so excited now and Laura feels all of the tension melt away as you rock back and forth on your feet, waffling on and on about dogs.

"We have puppy!" You tell her," My Narla!" You turn around. "Narla! Narla!"

Narla pokes her head up from where she's made herself comfortable on the sofa and you shoot off to get her.

"See," Keira teases," She's not that scary."

"I don't know," Laura jokes back," Any kid with that much knowledge about dogs is a little scary. She's so tiny. Where does she keep it all?"

You haul Narla off the sofa and into your arms, toddling back to Laura.

"Is my Narla!" You tell her and Laura has to smother her laughter at how resigned Narla is to this treatment," Mum says is West Highland Terrier! She's pretty!"

Narla huffs a little bit and cranes her head back to lick you on the nose, sending you into a peel of giggles.

"Why don't you put Narla down?" Keira asks gently," And go and find your big dog book for Laura? I'm sure she wants to learn about other dogs too."

You nod quickly, placing Narla gently on the floor before you're off like a shot to your room.

"She's got a big dog book?"

Keira nods. "Every breed in the world. She likes having it read for her bedtime story. I think I might have memorised it by now."

You come sliding into the room, both of your arms wrapped around your dog encyclopaedia.

Laura slips off her chair and goes down to your height, smiling at just how excited you are.

"So many puppies," You say," What you want to see first?"

Laura glances back at Keira, who nods, before smiling back at you, getting comfortable on the floor.

"Why don't you show me your favourite breed?"

[zentraex]

Wishing on World Wish Day is a funny thought. Magic doesn’t exist in our world. Still, trying doesn’t hurt, right? Maybe your favourite fictional character comes to life?

Remember: English is a lot different than German. I apologise for any grammar mistakes.

Trigger Warnings: Manipulation, Yandere, Mentioning of Masturbation, Stalking

From Another World

Monday, 29. April 2024

Dear Diary,

Today is World Wish Day. Normally, I don't believe in that, but what's wrong with giving it a try, right? After all, no one will know but you, so it's worth a try, even if it's just for fun.

I'm totally obsessed with this anime: "My Hero Academia". It's been a long time since I've watched the anime and yet I can't stop throwing my money out the window for merch. After all this time, I still read fanfictions about Katsuki. I wish someone like him would exist in real life, or better yet, he would exist, explicitly. Do you think he'd like me then? I hope so. I like him so much that my heart wouldn't take it if he hated me.

With red cheeks, you close the book and grin to yourself. It's a silly entry, but you still love to think about "what if..." situations.

And what better day to try than World Wish Day?

Maybe, just maybe, the wish will come true after all.

You giggle again, what a stupid thought.

_

A loud noise that you can't assign wakes you up the next day. Tired, you rub your eyes and glance at your phone's clock.

It's an hour before your alarm goes off and you need to get ready for school. Smiling, you lie down again, but the rumbling in your apartment startles you up.

Your parents are on vacation and you should be alone.

A burglar...

is your first thought. Your heart pounds against your chest as you reach for the baseball bat in your closet. It was a gift from your childhood friend. You don't have any contact with them anymore, but you find it difficult to detach yourself from things.

Who would have thought that it could be of use after all?

The sleepiness is completely gone and adrenaline is pumping in your veins. Completely in a state of euphoria, you are not even silent as you rush into the living room, club firmly in your grip and ready to strike.

Of course, the burglar notices you. Your footsteps are not quiet. But don't worry, someone like him would even notice you if you sneaked up.

It's dark, you can only vaguely see his head turned in your direction.

You swing with full power...

...

...

...

... but suddenly it explodes, your bat. The blast causes you to fall back to the floor of your room and the smell of smoke blocks your nasal cavities. Your breath is shaking and your body trembles.

Was the explosion real?

You don't even have time to think about it, because a few milliseconds after your impact, the burglar grabs you by the face and pushes your upper body down. You can feel how he puts pressure on your body with his legs, not only immobilizing you completely, but also causing you immense pain.

What do you do in such a situation?

Right! Crying and begging.

"T-Take what you want," you begin as fat balls of water flow through your face. "Just not the family pictures, my mother is very attached to them. Please don't take my beloved father's trophy either, he's so proud of them," you sniff. "A-and please don't take the necklace in my jewelry box. It's a family heirloom."

The otherwise silent room fills itself with your sobs as you tell him about the things that are worth so much to you and your family. He doesn't say anything.

You're scared. Your field of vision is blocked by his hand, it stinks of smoke, you are immobilized and everything hurts. All the while, the burglar is silent.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he says after a while.

"Huh?"

The grip on your face comes loose and your watery eyes show you a blurry gray vision of a man. His voice sounds like Bakugou's.

"You kidnapped me, why are you begging like a baby now?"

It takes a while for you to be able to process the info. The last heavy drops roll down your cheeks and your vision are clearing. There is a man in front of you and he has light, spiky hair and a prominent face that you would recognize anywhere.

"B-Bakugou?" it slips out of you. "A Bakugou cosplayer?"

He looks and sounds one-on-one like Bakugou, your beloved anime character.

At the mention of his name, his grips tighten again, eliciting a whimper from you.

"I'll give you ten seconds. Tell me who you are and how you know my name. Why am I here?"

"I-I'm Reader a-and I know the character you're cosplaying because I'm a huge fan of him, a-"

He interrupts you by putting a hand on your mouth.

"Figure that I cosplay? I'm real."

Shit, I'm dying at the hands of a maniac...

He looks at you for a while before speaking again.

"I'm going to let you go now, turn on the lights. Don't do shit, you’ll regret it."

He doesn't let go of you until you nod. For the first time, you can breathe properly, but your limbs still hurt unbearably. On shaky legs, you walk to the light switch and then turn towards the person.

Now that you can see it closely, you notice that he looks like the real Bakugou down to the smallest detail.

Crazy...

When you look into his eyes, you notice how he looks around the room. Your whole walls are full of him, your bed is full of plushies, and your closets have a whole bunch of Bakugou figurines. Even your pajamas have a Bakugou pattern.

"Are you a stalker? Shit, ended up with a lunatic."

"What? No! I'm just a huge fan of him."

He then just clicks his tongue and crosses his arms.

"Stop talking like I'm not real."

In the meantime, your pulse has regulated itself again. Maybe that's why you find the courage to raise your eyebrows skeptically and cross your arms.

"No, you're not. Bakugou is a fictional character. You really need to get help, my friend."

Then he says with gnashing teeth: "No, I'm not."

"Oh, yes? How do you think I get all the close-ups of you?"

He seems to pause and steps closer to the images. His gaze scans them all: the moment he collapsed in front of Deku after fighting him, when he was kidnapped by the League of Villains and sat tied up in a chair, when he fought Deku and Ochako with Ida on the team, and many more. More precisely, all the defining moments of his life are glued to your wall, just not from his perspective.

He has to swallow as he lets it sink in.

Could you be telling the truth?

No way, right? He experienced it! He can feel and think, how can he be fictional?

But then why do you have all these memories?

Suddenly, he is plagued by a headache and nausea almost makes him spit up.

Was his life just a show for people like you? Was it never about saving lives? To be a hero? All his work, courage, heroic deeds were not self-willed, but written by someone?

But he's here now, isn't he? He's made it to the real world, so he's thinking for himself now, isn't he?

But how did he do it?

His gaze wanders to you, who looks at him expectantly.

It must have something to do with you. After all, he's in your house for a reason, right?

Did you bring him to life?

"Look, I'm serious. I'm real. The explosion earlier, can anyone else do that?"

Your eyes widen, you've totally forgotten about it in the heat of the moment. A normal person can't do that, so how did he do it?

You are silent and your silence gives him the answer he needs.

"See? Maybe I was fictional, but you must have brought me here somehow."

Me?

Your gaze wanders to your journal and the idea that your wish has come true pops up.

Can it be?

Impossible...

It was just a stupid thought, a little joke to yourself. Magic doesn't exist in your world, but how do you explain this situation?

Suddenly, your heart is beating like crazy and your body is getting all hippy.

Bakugou Katsuki? Real? In your house?

However, the fan-girl in you only comes out briefly when you realize that you're not just standing in front of your big hero in your pajamas, but he's standing in your fan-girl room.

You can't even put into words the shame you suddenly feel when the blush goes to your head.

"S-So you're real, huh?" you say quietly. "That's cool."

Nervously, you play with your sweaty fingers and quickly realize how overwhelmed you actually are.

What are you doing now? What's the best way to deal with the situation?

"What do we do now? My parents are on vacation, so you can't stay here forever."

He frowns thoughtfully and asks, "How long are they on vacation?"

"Four days to go. I don't know if that's enough to find a way to bring you back to your world...", you murmur.

Bakugou pauses for a moment.

His world, huh? The world in which he is only fictional, controlled by the ideas of a stranger.

Does he really want that?

_

By now you're at school and Bakugou is alone in your house, bored. The TV program only brings junk, which is why his gaze wanders around your room all the time – nothing better to do anyway.

Something has been confusing him since the beginning of his arrival...

This strange feeling...

This feeling of...

Pride?

Proud that he is being loved here like this. Of course, in his world he also had fans, but no real ones. It elicits a grin full of arrogance from him.

He wants to feel it, recognition, appreciation, love.

Without much thought, he goes out and runs in any direction.

You are home in a series of apartment blocks close to the city center. So, it doesn't take long until he hears the first people talking about him.

"Oh my God, look at this Bakugou cosplay! How good is that?"

"How well taken!"

"Can I take a picture with you?"

This goes on all the time.

In the beginning it feels good, very good.

But...

Something is bothering him....

That he is not recognized as himself, but only as a costume. He puts his hands in his pocket and walks back with an annoyed expression. Almost at your apartment block, you run into him.

While he remains as still as a board, you almost fall over when you two collide.

"Bakugou!" you breathe a sigh of relief. You look like you've been scared, your skin sweaty and your eyes wide open. "I thought you didn't like it with me or something..."

Something is happening in him again.

He can't even describe this feeling...

No matter what it is, he likes it, very much and he has to pull himself together so that he doesn't start grinning.

"What are you doing out here?"

"I've had a look around here."

You smile and nod in understanding. In the meantime, you have calmed down and can think clearly again.

"I wanted to go to the library today and see if there are some solutions to bring you back. Do you want to come with me?"

Then his brow furrows again and he clicks his tongue.

"I don't have time for that."

Instead of being sad about the answer, you have to giggle. You've already expected such an answer, after all, you know him – and you love him just the way he is.

"That's okay. Here's the key to getting up. I'll see you later."

Deep down, he hopes you can't find a way to bring him back to his world.

_

You didn't find a way, not even for the next four days. Your only guess is that you'll have to wish him back next year on World Wish Day.

Hopefully this will work out...

As much as you like him, your favorite character doesn't belong to your world. Here, he has no IDs, people only know him as a character, he can't live the life as a hero that he wants to and he doesn't have a place to stay.

His life would be a disaster here and you don't wish that for him.

But how do I make it possible for him to live here for a year?

Your front door rings and your face turns pale.

Your parents...

As you walk to your door with your legs shaking like crazy, you swear your heart stopped for a second.

"Reader, you should have told us about the current situation!"

...

"And you could have introduced us to your boyfriend earlier!"

What?

Your gaze wanders to Bakugou, who smirks at you while your mother hugs him.

"My poor son-in-law, you were afraid of ending up on the street after your parents died."

Your father puts a hand on Bakugou's shoulder.

"As long as you continue to treat my daughter well, you can stay here for eternity, Mania."

_

"I found someone on the internet who would fake all this paperwork," Bakugou says.

"Yes? This is good. Do you want me to come with you?"

He shakes his head.

"No, it's too dangerous."

You just nod silently, and turn to your wall.

Sighing, you begin to tear down the pictures on your wall.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to rip it all of. It's certainly creepy for you to see all the photos of you. You live here and I want you to feel comfortable."

"It doesn't bother me."

Surprised, you turn to him.

"Sure?"

"Yes."

You gaze at his laid-back form, missing out on his racing heart.

For some reason, he didn't like it.

For some reason, he panicked.

For some reason, he had started taking pictures of you as well...

_

"Today is your first day of school, excited?"

"No."

"Not a bit?"

"No."

"Not even a little bit?"

This time, you only get an annoyed look in response, after which you just laugh.

Bakugou then turns his gaze to the ground and fights the flush of his cheeks with a frown.

No matter how grumpy or negative he reacts, you always seem to be smiling.

He's noticed how well you seem to know him.

"You don't mean it."

And every time you were right.

No matter what he did, you always seem to like it.

Not even Kirishima accepted him as much as you did.

At school, he quickly realizes that you're incredibly popular.

Especially the boys seem to like you a lot...

Not even Kirishima accepted him as much as you did.

Since he's been in your world, he feels less and less like a hero...

When you leave the house, he follows you in the shadwos. The fear that something could happen to you is so big that he wants to lock you up...

He takes pictures of you all the time. If you take a shower, he'll sneak in and steal a few moments, only to be able to blow off steam later.

When you're sleeping, he lies down next to you without you knowing.

He takes advantage of your ignorant parents to be able to play "couple" with you.

Maybe that's his true self?

His gaze darkens as a classmate embraces you.

Bloodlust leaves him thirsty for violence.

Not even Kirishima accepted him as much as you did.

He’s sure you'll accept it that way as well.

[cts-ryu-writing-desk]

Brian Wished Upon A Star

Here is a little piece that I worked on for you all to enjoy. I am in the process of completing some other projects. I do hope you all enjoy!

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

Brian looked up just in time to see a beam of light race across the sky. A falling star. He often heard making wishes on them would make them come true. What is the harm in something so childish?

"I wish my life was different. That I wouldn't be alone, that I'd have more than just my job. I just wish my life could be different," he groaned getting back on his way home

No one noticed how broken he was as he went through the crowd.

He came into an empty home. The insult to injury of his lonely life. He never dreamed that this was his life. Long ago, in his youth, he always dreamed of a wife, and a family ~ but the way life goes those things he used to want just didn't happen.

He would eventually pass out watching TV in bed. He lay there sound asleep. His body was completely still and not a sound leaving him. He rolled over frowning as his peaceful slumber was being disturbed. It was from the images playing in his subconscious. A shooting star, a bed of roses, him suddenly needing to reach out his hand to the sky as he was being devoured by quicksand.

His alarm blared. It was time to wake up. Eyes were still heavy. Trying to see through the mess of blurry vision. His limbs felt heavy. He would often suffer from sleep inertia. Brian felt weighted down, he was used to this kind of feeling in his arms and legs. He was curious why this weighted feeling existed in his stomach. He wanted to ignore it, reaching over and slapping his alarm clock. Weakly he fell back only to lay there a little longer, reaching for one of his pillows.

He just wanted a little longer to sleep.

But what he didn't expect from this usual morning was to suddenly feel something. A stirring, shifting, almost like movement. His eyes shot open, he couldn't jump out of bed. He was slower. He was weighted down even. There was weight to it. The weight was, it was around his stomach.

Looming down to see his once flat hairy stomach was now rounded and greatly distended outwards. He touched it. And with his fingertips, he could feel grooves like canyons within the skin hidden under his body hair.

"What the-?" He started to speak

Horror sunk in. It felt like slow motion; he was recreating the famous painting by Edvard Munch. Something inside his distended stomach shifted like it pushed out the skin and receded. The movement persisted. Brian could only scream.

“FUCK!” he screamed

His voice rang out through his lonely home. Brian pushed himself off the bed, hurrying to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the vanity mirror. It stuck out so far and weighed so much. He turned to the side. His side profile showed him that his chest had buffed up some too. Putting his hand just up to his nipple he felt painfully tender and a wetness on his palm. 

All the while something moved in his stomach. Brian felt like this had to be a dream. It just had to be. He pinched his forearm. The sting and redness told him otherwise. He could swear he'd seen this silhouette before, or at least this shape. It finally dawned on him.

It was that girl in his office, Diane, she looked like this when he first started up back when she was pregnant. “This can't be right,” he thought “I’m… no I can't be. Men can't get pregnant,” 

Brian darted out of the bathroom quickly searching for his phone. It was nowhere to be seen. Where was it? He tried to think where he hadn't last. Was it near his bed? Did I bring it to the bathroom? No, maybe it was the kitchen? He couldn't be sure. 

A million questions and concerns came rushing through his head. How was it possible, he went to bed just like normal last night. Now he was pregnant. He actually had something alive inside of him. That just doesn't happen. No one just wakes up pregnant. 

Moving around was difficult with the weight in his swollen abdomen restricting his movement. The small sprint around his room was more than exhausting.

A burst of knocks bellowed from his front door. It was too early for visitors. Who the hell was that, again a burst of knocks. He went over to look through the peephole. He couldn't see anyone at first. Then his neighbor came into view. What a relief he figured maybe he could help- “No. I can't let him see me like this, how the hell could I explain this,” Brian thought

Brian watched as his neighbor left. Not a word was spoken.

With a spark of inspiration, Brian went to his computer. Of course, there it was his phone, right by the keyboard. Who could he call in this situation? Could he look on the web for this? How would that go? Man wakes up very pregnant? Was that the correct thing to look up? Oh God, what if he found out it was possible or worse it was a parasite or cancer?

The thing he presumes was a baby moved again. It felt like they were trying to roll over. The web page of his search results was loading. All there were were various links to DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Wattpad of stories and hashtags he knew nothing about. What does mpreg mean? What does ABO stand for? And drawing so, so many drawings of men with round stomachs like his. 

Including a few that made him feel uneasy. Men holding men in loving couple ways with kids around them. He was unable to reconcile what he was seeing with what he was feeling. Regardless if he was or wasn't pregnant, He had only one question lingering in his mind. How is he gonna get this thing out of him?

[s0lar-ch3ri]

Paranomally Hotline #1: Introduction

Many people have their own beliefs. They follow in their own superstitions, read about all kinds of monsters, and we hear about new creations of creatures and places daily. Inspired from already set up and built legends, or entirely original myth, you may have made some ideas yourself. At the very least, you've heard of one. However, to the average person, a myth is all they remain.

Sometimes though, the average person isn't so lucky, and stumble apon a truth: these "tall tales" are fact, not fiction, and could come for you at anytime. With the knowledge that these creatures exist, surviving them can be difficult when nobody you turn to has an idea of what you're facing.

Not, unless, you're calling the Paranomally Hotline.

Specialized in dealing with all entities and creatures of out this world, the Paranomally Hotline believes those who call and will help guide you to safety. Available whenever you need (some places may have more or less then 24 hours available), someone skilled and trained for your kind of situation is there to talk to.

If you don't know who to call, ring the numbers-

"God damn, they play whatever on these fuckin things." A man, appearing about mid 30s, turns the TV off. He gets ready for work, brushing his teeth and getting food to eat. He waves goodbye to his wife, a woman with black hair, and walks into the busy sidewalks. Walking among the people, bag on his side, he keeps going until he reaches a corner.

The scene has changed. As he turns this corner, he runs, panicked, running out of breath. He can't run forever, and hiding feels like a death trap. A creature roars out behind him, and all he wants is to go home, back before this happened.

"Someone please come save me, Lord I beg of you now, spare my soul of this fate just a bit longer," he mutters to himself as he slips into an alleyway. Through his panicked thoughts, something slips into his mind, a crystal clear one: a phone number. As he turns on his phone, which he wasn't even aware still had battery, already has a number put in. Not in a state to question it, he hurriedly rings it.

"Hello, you've reached the Paranominally Hotline, here to help with all entities and paranormals, what's got your ghost?"

"Y-you gotta help me! Th-there's a- a thing! And it's chasing me! And- and- I just want to go home, see my wife again!"

"That's what we're going to do. Now, to help figure out how I can assist you, I'll need you to answer a couple questions. First, do you believe you are still in our world, or does it seem home to somewhere else?"

"Wha-what are y- Yeah, no, it- it's all red- the sky- and it's bleeding- oh my god I didn't notice, it's fucking bleeding- I gotta get out of here-"

"Alright, let's keep a level head sir. When did you get here, and if you remember, how?"

He jumped, hearing a loud roar from this creature. "T-today, maybe 3-30 minutes, 25, gi-give or take. I went into the closet at my job and- look, can we hurry this up? There's s-something ch-ch-chasing me, and I think it's going to k-kill me."

"Alright. This is a very necessary procress, but I have an idea on how to help. Can you make it back to where this closet was?"

"Th-that's the way the monster i- you're trying to fucking kill me!"

"Sir, please. I'm trying to get you home. If you can make it over, and I'm thinking of the right thing, grab the string of the lamp above and pull it to turn off the light."

"No- why should I fucking trust yo-"

Another roar plays out. It's closer.

"...Are-"

"If I’m fucking killed, call my wife and tell her I love her."

"Of course."

The man breaks into a sprint and heads out. His legs are aching, but he has to make it, he has to. Looking straight ahead, he goes straight past the beast, about 30 feet tall and blurry as it roars again, following behind. The man begins to silently sob as he sees the building he exited from up ahead. Running inside, he closes the door of the strange building and locks it as best as he can. He runs down a hallway, where a brown closet door awaits him. It's a dingy closet, brown shelves and a blue school chair. Nothing more or less. He slams the door shut as he hears breakage outside and the loud stomps of feet. Muttering a prayer, he grabs the string of the closet's lightbulb and yanks it down as hard as he can.

Everything goes black, but he finds himself on the floor of the closet. It's a storage one, filled with boxes and shelf racks, the same one he walked into, although one of the shelves has been knocked over just inches from where he once laid unconscious. As he questions what just happened, the reality of what he just faced, he hears his phone hang up, the caller name showing.

The Paranominally Hotline.

[sugarpopss]

Better Uses for Company Time

ALRIGHT first installment of the 90's wall street chubby Aegon. I think I'm just going to do short snapshot style fics for this AU, but idk honestly we'll see. I KNOW that the next one is going to be blowing Aegon after he fills up on hors d'oeuvres at a charity event, that's already in the google doc babe.

tagging the babes I blabbed about this to @khaleesihel and who drew the LOVELY Aegon art that I stared at while writing @who-told-you-this-was-butter

Ummm Aegon is a sleazy trust fund baby, reader is fucken h o r n y, implied fem reader, slight mention of how hot I think Rhaenys is (I'm right)

You weren’t sure if Aegon actually worked at T&V Investments. 

He was certainly around a lot, grab-assing on secretaries and making tiny paper airplanes out of sticky notes and generally being a menace to productivity levels, but he didn’t seem to actually work. 

When you’d first been brought on as a receptionist, you’d been told to just ignore him. 

“He’s like furniture.” Rhaenys had said. You’d nodded, but hadn’t really internalized the information. You were a smidge busy dealing with the fact that you were being shown around  by the hottest hiring manager you’d ever met. 

But it turned out that Rhaenys had a point. Aegon had, in the time since your hiring, become something of a fixture of the building in your mind. His presence was as normal as the weird noises the fax machine made. 

This normalization did nothing to help that fact that you’d wanted desperately to ride him like a pony since your first day at the office. 

It really wasn’t your fault. Aegon was hot, in a pathetic, trust fund kind of way. Besides, you had a feeling he knew exactly how difficult it was to focus when he leaned over the reception desk, smelling of nicotine and too much cologne, and said something absolutely disgusting to you. 

Maybe that’s why you’d gotten the job in the first place; maybe he’d told the previous receptionist that he could ‘help her out of her pantyhose’ and she had straight up quit instead of entertaining Aegon's nonsense the way you did. 

Good for her. 

But you couldn’t quit. In addition to needing to pay the inflated rent of Kings Landing, you got to see Aegon in the office practically every day. It may have been distracting, when he got in your space, but it wasn’t unwelcome. You couldn’t imagine not taking the opportunity to get an eyeful of his pretty face-all soft, rounded angles and big violet eyes, just begging to be looked at, to be given attention. 

It was hard to not give him attention, sometimes. You thought you were decently subtle, at least. You didn’t outright ogle-Aegon may have been an HR disaster in waiting, but not you-just took a ‘prolonged glance’ every now and then. Very casual, very professional, and not at all indicative of how badly you wanted to fuck the guy who slapped your ass when you showed up for your interview. 

Alright, maybe you sometimes gave him a bit of attention. Maybe sometimes you made idle conversation out of his gross remarks, just so he’d keep leaning against the reception desk and you could keep stealing peeks at how the edge of the desk dug into his soft hip. 

You weren’t one to defend objectifying people, but it was completely Aegon’s fault for wearing such tight jeans all of the time. Paired with the soft looking sweaters that probably cost more than your utility bill, he just looked so good all of the time.

Maybe it was how you could make out just the faintest shadow of his collarbones when he moved, or how easily you could imagine smearing your lipstick over his blurry jawline, or just maybe it was how badly you wanted to get your hands up under that stupid angora sweater, onto where you were sure he was plush and warm and sensitive. 

All things you definitely did not spend company time thinking about, of course. 

[dykevanny]

Hehe I got more screenshots. Still finding it difficult to get Vanny and Vanessa in the same room unfortunately, for now that blurry screenshot is the best I can get. So! Interesting thing, the glitch filter multiplies so heavily on each Vanny that this is her jumpscare when you have multiple spawned. (I'm pretty sure her normal jumpscare is more red)

Here's a couple other screenshots while I spam a wall of text about this glitch

So basically the way I got this glitch in the first place was doing the atrium section, hopping over the security barriers to get out of bounds and grab the security badge from the prize counter, getting me security level 4 if I remember right.

Unfortunately there's not much else I can do from here besides go down the elevator and just use my security badge to skip the endo section.

(If you do this without getting the map bot jumpscare he won't spawn in and you get softlocked from entering the endo section ever again. Just a little side note.)

If I try to get the party pass early, timelord Moon insta-kills me. No escape. After doing the Freddy repair I can head up the elevator to Rockstar Row. (thankfully it's pretty simple, which is good because I need to repeat this glitch back from the beginning to make this work.)

From here I can do the glitch with or without getting the party pass. Vanessa acts very.. odd during this mess. I think some part of her AI realizes she's not supposed to be here. Last time she followed the Vannies to El chips before realizing and running off, never to be seen again. This time I led the Vannies to Rockstar Row so I figured Vanessa would stick around. Nope. She wandered around with her idle animation for a while before running off towards backstage, never to be seen again. They were in the same room for a while but I couldn't get a screenshot with both of them in the frame because of the view from cams.

Ironically I'm more afraid of Vanessa than I am of the Vanny swarm. Vanessa is half-giga honestly, like the monty in the daycare. She keeps going after you for a while and her pathing is really smart. For all I know she could pop up at any second. At least the vannies walk slow and are predictable lol.

Speaking of.. because it spawns in Vanny from the atrium (literally all I did to spawn them was walk in vaguely the direction of the escalator near fazerblast. For some reason this time it spawned in 3 at a time, last few times I did this glitch it was 4 at a time. Idk what I did differently.) Anyway back to the topic. Atrium Vanny has a constant tracker on you, but she can only walk. She can't do the horrifying t pose and run that lost and found Vanny does. (Highly recommend getting a save for that point in the game. Her AI is fun to mess around with.) She'll constantly chase you unless you do one of two things (with pretty intelligent pathing most of the time too.) If you use Freddy as a door, like I did. Or if you walk on an elevated surface she can't jump to, for example the boxes near the vent in Freddy's room. Doing this is really interesting actually. If you get her stuck behind a door she can't access (Freddoor or the door to El chips, since you need to crouch to get in.) She just keeps skipping to your location. But if you jump on a platform they all freeze in place, doing their idle animation but it's basically walking in place. It's very hivemind behavior lol, that's how I get the majority of these screenshots.

It's really interesting to me and I'm definitely gonna keep messing with it lol. Hope this ramble was more entertaining than a boring wall of text, this glitch is really fun to experiment with, if you'd want to hear/see more about it I'd totally be up to share more screenshots the more I experiment with this glitch :)

Oh my god i am obsessed. Overpowered vanessa (who can Find you) just going oh shit . Wait I’m not supposed to be here. What the fuck why are there 500 of me. And just sprinting from the room is so fucking funny…… and then she is never seen again omg.

Also TIMELORD MOON LMAO…

Ur not boring at all this is quite fascinating. The vannies skipping around in a single file line is fantastic. Also yeah vanny jumpscare is usually a lot more red oh no…her LED eyes ran out of battery:(

[adarkrainbow]

what exactly is 'the bad “woke movement'. you mean Disney's attempts at political correctness in their casting choice? describing it as "woke" is a serious misuse of black slang.

I was a bit confused at first since I have switched the subject out of the Disney Snow White controversy some times ago.

I am sorry to inform you that the use of "woke" as a deragoratory term to designate the people we once called ironically "Social-Justice Warriors" is actually not a "black slang" anymore. In fact I didn't even know it was supposed to be a "black slang" originally, my perception of it was that it was originally a term that was created on the Internet in a positive way, to designate people that were actually fighting against all sorts of discriminations and social problems, and opening their eyes to the wrongness of societies and modern age... Only to then be switched, by the Internet itself at first, and then by the media who took the word back, to be used as a designation of extreme social-justice warriors, or people who'se extreme self-righteousness, mixed with either hypocrisy or just ignorance, resulted in them coming of as a more mad or harmful than helpful.

If you do not like me using the term, unfortunately for you you'll have to go after pretty much every American media, then after after European media - and I am not even counting the politics of both America and Europe! The term "woke" has left its Internet-exclusivity a long time ago, and now is used even in non-English speaking countries (such as France) to designate the extremes to which some people or groups carry on the "social war". Now the thing to be careful of is that many extreme-right or very hateful people will use "woke" as a way to degrade or humiliate rightful defenders of things such as feminism, transgender rights, homosexuality, etc, etc... So I want to insist: I am not susbscribing to any extreme-right ideology, and I know very well they are using this term for their own negative agenda.

But I am not of the extreme-left either, and as someone who saw very well the dangers of any kind of extremes, I have to recognize that there is indeed a bad, extreme "woke" movement, that ranges from the ridiculous to the hateful. It exists. To imagine that all fights for the right reasons are done with the right means is to be too naive.

A very recent case - which is not woke, because it isn't about social justice or social blights, but about ecology, however it illustrates VERY well the stupidity and hypocrisy of some of these modern extreme groups. In France there is an extreme ecological group that has been making a lot of noise and some extreme actions to alert people and authorities about climate change and asking for something to be done. Interesting, right? Good, right? Except that their actions are VERY dubious in effect. For example some times ago they did protests related to, I think it was the droughts and water supply handlings? I can't recall exactly the why of the protest - but they did so by destroying entire fields and putting several farmers in difficult position because they had their entire crops gone. It wasn't some big mass-industrial farming, it wasn't genetically modified stuff, it was just your regular farmer with his fields, and he had his whole crops destroyed by the group's protect - which wasn't even aimed at him (if I recall there was something about them mistaking his field for another nearby, or something). Now my memory of this case is very blurry as you can see - but one other case popped up just two days ago so I can clearly tell you the problem this time: a few days ago, the group protested against the instalation of a toxic waste disposal site near a city and precisely near a river that passed by the water's city. To protest that and alert the city's citizens, they poured tons of products in the river's water that turned it bright, glowing green - to show them the fear of toxic products reaching them by the water.

But what's the twist of the story? To make the water bright green, they poured ACTUAL toxic chemicals and colorants in the water, which resulted in killing numerous fishes of the river. It went viral on the Internet, the whole "ecologists kill fishes" thing, but it shows how by ignorance (here ignorance of the toxicity of the products you use), those who fight against pollution become the pollution-makers themselves.

Now, that was not related to social things so "woke" isn't to be applied to them - but it is a good illustration of how fighting one extreme can lead to another. But if you want a case of "bad woke" actions I have a perfect one for you - which is from before the term "woke" was taken back by the media. It was something that happened in the French part of Canada (and in general when you want some misguided and extreme woke behavior, you can go to Canada, they are very talented here at misguided good actions). It was a gesture done by Christian (Catholic) religious groups, related to the whole dreadful rediscovery of the horrors of the special so-called "schools" they had prepared for First Nations kids. You know, the ones with mass graves and such. To show that they wanted to bury the past behind them and reject the discrimination of Native-Americans, they decided to collect all sorts of old classics of French childhood literature that had depictions of First Nations people deemed offensive (for example Lucky Luke and Asterix comic books)... and they burned it in a huge bonfire.

Of course, thats CERTAINLY the best way to prove you want to help the people you have persecuted and killed for so long: do not give them money, do not change the laws, do not actually do something for them, just become book-burners! That's CERTAINLY going to help and that's CERTAINLY going to make you the "good guys".

You see what I mean by the "bad woke" movement? It isn't a movement in itself, but just the extremes these attempts at "good" and fighting against discrimination can lead to. Sometimes to the point of just coming off as a new form of discrimination. Another case, that was in France, and done in Paris. I personally think that it was a dubious idea, and maybe someone will disagree with me, but it was a project brought forward - to handle the help provided to rape victims. The whole idea was that man should be banned of all groups, organizations and help systems brought to rape victims, because in the politician's words, women had to stay between themselves, and rape victims had to cut all ties with men to get better. Another similar dubious "woke" incident (it happened, just like the one above, in Paris, because Paris recently went through a wave of bad-woke incidents and propositions thanks to the local government in power), was when a "set of safe space" was created, from which men were banned - all men - and which only welcomed... "Women and transgenders". The phrasing and formula might seem weird, and that's literaly how it was said, and it took not a long time to understand the problem: it welcomed all transgenders, and all women, but banned all men. Aka: transgender men either had to be banned from it, because they were men (so they lied upon saying they welcomed all transgenders) ; either they were allowed in, but thus not recognized as actual "men" and still considered women.

You see how there's some good intentions buried down there, but in effect it is twisted and warped in another form of discrimination?

When it comes to my worries about the new Snow-White movie, it isn't about an active, harmful, reverse-discrimination type of "bad woke". But I do fear about the "accidentally harmful" and "plain ridiculous" bad-woke. To handle the idea that a character named "Snow-White" is black is something that needs carefulness and intelligence - and Disney's had the bluntness and grace of a hammer wielded by an angry bear recently. I have one precise fear for example that I keep repeating around: if they choose to still refer to Snow-White's name as a reference to the fact she has a lighter skin and thus is beautiful because of it, and given they have chosen an actress with a light skin tone - it can result in a scenario enacting "colorism" fully. Aka, a practice and set of worldviews put in place in the slavery and discrimination-era America, about how the lighter the Black person's skin, the "better" and more "beautiful" they were. This resulted in practices such as putting "lighter" Blacks above "darker" ones, for example choosing Black people with light skin to oversee "darker" slaves and the "lighter" ones being given a less harsh treatment than the others.

Its a whole another cesspool of discrimination born of the horror that was America in this era - but it is still something that Afro-American people fight against and dislike today, and something many media have been accused of doing by putting "lighter skinned" Black characters in the position of "prettier" or "better" characters than "darker skinned" ones.

No need to tell you the whole dwarf issue is also a big "bad woke movement" move on the part of Disney. To answer to a loud minority that thinks the dwarfs roles in Snow-White is backward and insulting, they simply decide to erase them from the story... Despite the role of the seven dwarfs being something that many actors with dwarfism enjoy and defend because it was often their first entry into the acting world, and despite the fact that the original Disney seven dwarfs were positive and complex characters that were far more compelling and powerful than many other Snow-White adaptations (in fact, that's the problem, the reason the dwarfs are seen as "backwards" today is because so many post-Disney adaptations reduced them to goofy, joke secondary characters as flat as a cardboard cut-out). There are tons of ways of making the dwarfs strong and badass and cool and powerful characters - and it has been done before. (Just remember how the dwarfs in the original Disney movie are the only ones who stand up to the evil queen, and the only ones who make her VISIBLY AFRAID as they hunt her down to kill her in revenge).

So we come with the mixed and complicated result we have: Because a role is deemed "problematic", it is erased and replaced - but as a result, erasing an opportunity for actors with dwarfism to become famous and appear in a big blockbuster seen by millions is perceived as discrimination against said actors with dwarfism, as they are replaced by so-called "normal" people. They could have simply worked on making the dwarfs' characters a badass role the actors could have had no shame of playing, and they could have just gone wth what the original movie did - make the dwarfs the true heroes and protagonist of the tale. But they rather decided to close the door and make actors with dwarfism even less visible on screen.

I hope it clarifies my whole position on the subject.

[cyber-streak-2]

Title: Time To Go

{Based off the Swap AU that @jsab-fujii and I created together.}

———

The Treecko and Duskull duo had known the terrifying fact for a while. They had learned the fact—the truth of what was going to inevitably happen. Nearly every single moment after discovering that, it was always on Duskull’s mind.

If it had just been one of them disappearing, that would’ve been bad—Duskull didn’t want to leave Treecko behind, and he didn’t want to be alone. But, it was worse with the fact that it would happen to both.

He just... the Duskull wanted to live peacefully with Treecko—he didn’t want to disappear—he didn’t want Treecko to disappear. However, after everything, every Pokémon from the future would disappear—including the two of them.

That was, unfortunately, a guarantee.

It was a terrifying thing.

Duskull didn’t want to go away. He didn’t want to die. He was sure that nobody would want this to happen. What... would it be like? Painful? Painless? Sudden? He had questions, most of which he doubted could be answered.

At least until it happened. He could figure it out himself at that point.

How did Treecko feel about this...?

“Duskull...?” He heard his friend’s voice, and turned to look at him. As he did, Duskull noticed something—his vision was blurry. He could feel something dropping from his eyes. ...Oh, he was crying...

“I-... um... I-I’m...” Duskull stumbled, trying to find the right things to say. He could say that he was okay... but that wasn’t true—he wasn’t okay. He wasn’t calm, he was terrified.

The Duskull was sad, he felt stressed, he didn’t want this to happen...

Treecko had never been the greatest with these sorts of things—but, he could at least try to help his friend—and, at the same time, he already knew how the little Duskull felt. He didn’t like seeing him like this.

Duskull could begin to hear Treecko to talk, but his thoughts—the scary thoughts of what was going to happen, were growing louder. Oh, Arceus...

He was only snapped out of the thoughts—focusing on Treecko again—when, all of a sudden, everything felt... heavy.

Duskull nearly fell down to the ground, if not for the fact that Treecko had carefully managed to grab him before that happened.

Why... was he feeling like this...? Did-... did it have something to do with what was going to happen to him and his friend...?

Still in the arms of Treecko, said Pokemon got down into a sitting position. He looked exhausted. Duskull was beginning to realize that, he, too, was feeling the same.

Exhausted and heavy... like it was difficult to move—difficult to stand—or float, in the Ghost-Type’s case.

“...We’ll be fine, Duskull.” Treecko tried to reassure his companion.

Duskull whimpered, and hugged his friend—his face against the Treecko’s chest, while he wrapped his arms around him.

Now, he was beginning to notice something something else: Specks of golden light coming off the both of them.

Were... were the two of them even beginning to glow...? With a quick glance, he knew that it was happening to the both of them, not just himself.

“I-... I don’t want this to happen, Treecko.” The terrified Duskull whimpers, his body starting to shake slightly. “I... don’t want to disappear. I don’t want us to disappear.”

“I-I’m scared... I’m so scared...”

Treecko wrapped an arm around the shaking Duskull to return the hug, while his free hand was carefully placed on top of Duskull’s head.

“Everything will be fine... I promise.”

The two of them were silent for a good while after that—both were unsure what to say, but, Duskull found his friend’s presence calming, and vise versa.

At least the two were together.

As things started to feel more... bad—more strange—Duskull looked back up at his friend. “T-T... Treecko...” The Ghost-Type muttered—he never got to say anything else to his friend.

Seconds later, the frightened Duskull was engulfed in the golden light... and was gone. Treecko frowned, placing his hands back down into his lap.

He stared down, closing his eyes. A single moment passes, before he shares the same fate...

[99liners]

ok yaalllllll, i KNOW no one's going to believe this but the craziest thing happened!!

okay so i had sat to write when i had posted that last text on the blog

then suddenly the lights went out (we have an inverter so it wasn't completely dark) and there were huge storms, like dust storm, thunder and lightning and like huge gusts of directional wind,,, i went out to the veranda/balcony to get that fresh air, shiro was with me too

then about 05 minutes later i hear my brother yelling from upstairs (both my brothers' rooms are upstairs and then above that we have the roof). i heard him asking his wife if she put cloth clips on the laundry that she had just put out on the roof (i had seen her putting the laundry out because i was there too giving dinner to shiro and none of us thought it odd to put the laundry out at night cause it was so hot no one anticipated the sudden storm) idk what she said but i ran up too cause the rope on which we hang the clothes runs along the northern edge of our house so if any cloth falls, it'll fall out of the boundary of the roof

my brother and i reach together and see there's nothing, not a single cloth there and they were all white clothes out to dry

we didn't know what to do, my brother is in despair lol cause those were his favourite shirts and were kinda expensive too

we took our umbrellas and got out of the house,,, it had just started pouring down so heavy winds and rain

we ring up the house in whose backyard, we GUESSED that the clothes might have fallen into.

she is a nice person she let's us in and we go to the backyard, it's not maintained so the trees are all running haphazardly.

we retrieve three pieces of clothing from various places in the backyard (i had to climb a small pile of rubbish lol) now mind you it's me doing all the retrieving lol in that mud and shit. then we flash the lights above and find another shirt hanging from the branch of a tree, luckily the branch was near the window of our kitchen.

then we come back after thanking her and we go up to the roof again as the rain has calmed down and we needed to locate one last t-shirt

funnily i had taken off my glasses after the outside rendezvous cause there were droplets of water on it and i realized that i wasn't wearing glasses after i was already standing on the roof with the flashlight. i have negative power in both my eyes so i can't see very well in the distance,,, my vision gets blurry the further something is

anyways! i still locate the final shirt and luckily again it was hanging near the window of my brother's room

then next we somehow found two pieces of sticks long enough to reach those two shirts

the room one was difficult to reach cause it was a bit far away so two of us had to maneuver it to ensure it didn't fall down (cause then again we would have to disturb the lady and also it would fall in mud) we got it

finally the kitchen one, i climbed up the counter top and just about anchored myself by the window (the window space isn't big enough to fit the whole me) and retrieved it

WHAT A NIGHT

i still can't believe this all happened 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣😂🤣😂😭🤣😂🤣😂 my brother and i couldn't stop laughing lol. this is NOT how i wanna be spending my summer vacation 😂😂😂😂

[emeraldtied]

                                                              1.28.3҉̨͕͕̰̟̔̂́͟͢͜͝2̶҉̹̭̟̈́ͮ͆ͦ3҉̨͕͕̰̟̔̂́͟͢͜͝4̷̡̳̖̆̇͘͟͟͢͝                                                                                                                                  Location ¦ Green Hill

                                                                 -------

“You’ve been staring at this all night. You need a break.”

Kintobor's words were firm, and for good reason given that the hedgehog sitting in front of the holoprojection hadn't even looked up to address him. Had hardly moved, in fact. Just like he had been for the last eight hours. 

“‘M fine.” At least the hero had replied this time, though his eyes hadn't shifted. The only thing that was moving was the pen in between his fingers Tapping on the worn wooden desk every now and again. Emerald eyes were fixed on the video in front of him, muted for hours now, but studying it carefully.

“Stubborn, as always,” Kintobor sighed, his own holoimage shaking its head where it floated well within sight of the hero and the current video feed. “We finally have a moment to breath and you won’t even consider it.”

This time he got no answer, only a subtle shift in the hero’s expression. Kintobor knew that the video Johnny and Dan had brought back could be a major turning point for The Resistance, but he had a terrible feeling the hedgehog was putting too much merit into it. Relying too heavily on it. When the silence went on for too long, and he knew that the hedgehog was hoping the conversation was over, Kintobor eclipsed the video with himself, pausing it in the process.

“Sonic, you’re going to run yourself ragged like this.”

Again, the hero said nothing. At least not at first. He only continued to stare, frowning as he leaned forward in his chair. It was clear he was looking past the scientist, to the video, and it was to the latter he pointed. “Does that look familiar to you at all...?”

Kinotobor had opened his mouth to argue again, to tell the other to take a break, but found himself looking at what it was the hero was pointing to. The image showed the masked figure that had been plaguing them since the war started, blurry but still recognizable; as was the odd red glow from their chest. That odd prism they had seen but a handful of times, always with an ethereal glow to it. 

Now Kintobor was frowning, this was the first time he had ever gotten such a good look at it. He didn’t know what it was. “No, I can’t say it does. Why?”

“From what I can gather it seems t’ be the source of their power,” Sonic informed, standing for the first time in hours to round his desk and step closer to the wall where the video was projected. He stared at the prism for a moment before continuing in a solemn tone. “‘S not an emerald…but I don’t understand why Robotnik would go through the trouble of making something else entirely when he could just use one.”

It was no secret that the madman had all but one of the Chaos Emeralds in his possession, but why the madman hadn’t used them to date was something that neither the hero nor his team could figure out. They could only assume it had something to do with Chaos, the god who was still under the man’s command. The god no one had seen in full since that day in Grand Metropolis, but the threat of them was enough. 

“Perhaps he can’t figure out a way to do so properly,” Kintobor suggested, and it was valid. The emeralds were fickle things, easy to mess up with catastrophic results. A risk even Robotnik wouldn’t take. Not unless he was desperate, and given how things current were, the man was anything but. “The emeralds are sources of magnificent power, channeling that into one task, into one source is incredibly difficult even for him. Even so…”

Kintobor stared at the screen for a long time then, lost in thought, ironically no better than the hedgehog he had just been scolding moments prior. “Maybe…he tried but whoever that is isn’t attuned to Chaos Energy, so he needed an…alternative. Still something with so much power can’t be controlled by an average person. They must be very special indeed.”

“Maybe…” The hedgehog didn’t doubt it, there was clearly more to that person than the average Mobian. But that was only part of the problem. Who were they? Where had Robotnik found them? “How do we stop it?”

“It, or him?” Kintobor inquired, and to that the hero had no answer. Perhaps the answer was one, perhaps both. Even the would-be human didn’t know, but he had a theory. After all the prism was always on the mysterious person’s being. Always. “There is a chance that one cannot work without the other…that there’s a symbiotic relationship here.”

The hero folded his arms over his chest, looking back at the screen. “So…if we take out one, we might take out the other.”

“It’s just a theory, my dear boy,” Kintobor reminded, but looked back to the image. Mental gears were turning, more than they had in the last few months. Maybe, just maybe, they did have something here. “The communicators should have been able to pick up on some of the energy signatures from that day. I can examine it and see what I can find. On one condition…”

The hero had looked at him at that last part, the suspicion in his eyes clear as day. He knew what was coming, Kintobor didn’t even need to say it. Evident enough when emerald hues glanced at the clock on the opposite wall. It was late. Extremely late. With that realization finally came some lax in the hero’s posture, an exhaustion that was kept under such tight wraps those days. But Kintobot saw right through it. He always did, hence his terms.

“Please do get some rest.”

[catastrophe-cole]

Ello mate! Was wondering if i could request a Docm77 x reader who came from the dsmp and was very close to Ranboo. They left the dsmp after Ranboos death and found hermitcraft. Doc tries to befriend them but he reminds them of Sam and theyre very hesitant, until they start getting along. Reader falls for him and tries avoiding him, but Doc knows better and tries to talk to them. U can make up what u want to happen in the end, but i was hoping for an angst/comfort fic

Healed Wound

Word count: 4633 words

Summary: Leaving the Dream SMP behind to pursue a normal life in Hermitcraft was the main intention of your escape from the living hell that you had lived through then. You thought you can move on, but it seems like wound doesn't heal that easily even by time. Though it seems like certain creeper hybrid, Docm, seems to be willing to help you recover.

Genre: Romantic // Angst with comfort //

TW: Blood mention, wound caused by burn, portrayal of panic attack. (It's kinda dark but with comfort)

Author's Note: We don't talk about the word count so please just enjoy this. I honestly love writing about Dream SMP X Hermitcraft stuff. Both SMP have a totally different vibe from each other and it's always interesting to see interactions between hermits and a Dream SMP member.

A permanent scar on someone's body usually is enough to tell you the kind of person they are in a survival world.

Hardcore players who only live on the edge have scars plastered all over their body from their lack of respawn. Battling against fate every night, they view scars as a trophy for surviving death.

And in some worlds where respawn is possible, scars usually stay when the incident that caused it traumatizes the victim enough that it's physically difficult for them to forget.

And you, as one of the former members and also fighter of the now forgotten Dream SMP and a new Hermit, harbour many scars on your body. Both in your memories and your body.

You had left the SMP just a few weeks after helping the Blood God break Dream, Ranboo (and somehow Connor), out of prison.

You couldn't quite bother with Dream as your main objective was to rescue Ranboo and find out why he was kept there in the first place. You were a figure he often looked up to as you were the first person to help him adjust to the server many many moons ago. You had let him do his own thing after taking him in once again during the final battle of L'manberg.

Honestly you didn't hear much of him after he moved to Snowchester. Which is why there's just too many questions lingering around your head as you wait for Techno to come back out of the Pandora's Box with the Enderman hybrid.

The plan was already carefully crafted, you and Philza waiting for them right by the flank of Pandora's Box while Niki distracted everyone else with a wither on the other side. It was supposed to be easy; Dream is absolutely on board with the plan and following each and every order you gave him down to the T. But with Ranboo, something seems off.

You had held Sam at gunpoint with your crossbow as you screamed at Ranboo to immediately take one of the horses and run away as fast as possible. You had hoped to hear the horse galloping away and were prepared to fight Sam with whatever necessary to let him escape; but neither of those scenarios ever happened.

Pulling your gaze away from Sam for a split second to check on Ranboo, you saw him take off his netherite armour that Techno had given him prior. Throwing the metal gear on the ground, while clutching on a piece of paper in his hand.

You were about to ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing, but Sam had acted faster and taken advantage of your confusion to snatch your crossbow off of your hand, and immediately fired the charged rocket right back to you.

The rest from that point was blurry. You had taken direct impact from a highly explosive rocket shot that even a netherite chestplate couldn't fully protect you from. You were awake, but barely.

Techno took over your place as you coughed on the ground, blood seeping from between the crack made on your chest plate as your skin burns underneath. Looking up through blurry eyes, the last thing you saw was Ranboo's guilty look, a silent plea of apology right to you, before Sam had taken his last life right in front of you and the Blood God.

The next thing you know as you're awoken with bandages all over your left shoulder is Phil and Niki, telling you that Ranboo had died that day with his last life to Sam, and Techno had went on a quest to avenge him with Tubbo while you were unconscious.

A few days after that you had gone through stages of grief. Losing Ranboo right in front of your eyes felt like the biggest failure you could've gotten. He was just a kid- He had been through so much, and his life was taken from him right under your nose.

Sam had done it. The name and the feature of the creeper hybrid as he stabs through Ranboo's chest have been recorded clearly in your mind. As much as you want to catch up to Techno and avenge him, you don't think your mind or body can handle it.

The shot of that one single firework burns underneath your skin. It doesn't necessarily cause you severe pain, but every now and then it spikes up and there are nights where you're forced awake because of the burn it left on you.

Phil was the first to suggest that you leave the SMP. He believes that whatever revenge and punishment you want to befall the creeper hybrid would definitely be fulfilled by Techno and his unstoppable bloodlust. Though as much as the idea feels nice to execute, you're not sure where you would go from the server hub once you left the Dream SMP. You've been there for a long time; you don't really have anywhere else to go.

That is, until an invitation came to you from a hermit outside of the SMP. An invitation to join the Hermitcraft server as they're going to start their ninth season. You were surprised by this sudden coincidence. The hermits are well known across the hall of the server hub, so you're quite surprised to get an invitation, knowing well that you don't really have that high of an achievement in building nor redstone to be able to gain their attention.

Before you can ask any questions or be hesitant about yourself, Philza had shut those thoughts away and encouraged you to join the SMP. He convinced you that even though it sounds a little suspicious, he knows that the hermits are good people, having known some of them prior.

You, just wanting to take a break and leave the Dream SMP behind, put a lot of trust in Phil's words and set off to the Hermitcraft server. Hoping to find a community with less war, less fighting, and perhaps finally living a normal, peaceful life and move on from this mess.

Finally entering the server, you were greeted by the sight of a larger group of people talking to each other excitedly, perhaps, about their plan for the season ahead. None of them seems to have noticed your appearance yet, as they seem to be still happily chatting with each other.

The anxiousness of feeling absolutely left out from the group gets to you. All you do as you wait for perhaps an announcement of some sort to happen, is to clutch on the clothing of the left side of your chest, feeling the everlasting burn somewhat comfort you in this awkward situation.

That was all you do until a voice with a thick accent and gruff tone calls out to you from behind with a simple, "Are you alright, friend?"

You flinched, only gripping your shirt tighter before sharply turning back to face the source, with a nervous smile, you took a sharp breath, "Oh! Uh, right. Yeah, I'm alright, uhm. Sir—"

But through your stammering, your eyes widened as you watched the taller figure who looked before you. The first thing you noticed from him was his green complexity, one which reminds you of a creeper- which, makes it clear that this man (?) Is a creeper hybrid.

Another, creeper hybrid.

Images of Sam flash for a split second then. You were reminded by the Warden's golden armour, gas mask, and his empty raven coloured gaze.

It took you a while, seconds felt like eternity as you snapped yourself back to reality, noticing the obvious differences that the man before you possessed from the Warden.

Instead of gold, he was dressed in white lab coat. The left side of his face seems to be mechanical alongside the right side of his body. And weirdly enough, while you're convinced that he's a creeper hybrid based on his height and skin colour, the goat horn that is growing on his head makes you doubt your guesses slightly.

He seems patient to your response, or rather, lack of, as he watches you try to take all of his appearance in. He knows his size and looks can be a bit overwhelming for a lot of people; but seeing that you haven't run nor scream seems to be a good sign to him to wait for you to process things.

You, on the other hand, were almost ready to pull your crossbow that you currently haven't obtained yet to put yourself on defense. But with enough time and enough self control, you finally brought yourself back to reality and managed to convince yourself that this man is not Sam. And that he won't hurt you the way Sam did Ranboo.

At least, that's what you want to hope for.

So you took a deep breath, clenched your first, before offering the hybrid the best, most polite smile you can mutter.

"I'm alright. I'm uh, just a little nervous. Thank you for the worry. Mister..?"

"Doc. Just Doc is fine." He seems relaxed, and somehow, contended that you've managed to calm yourself to reply to him even though it takes some time.

"I uh, is there anything I can help you with, Doc?" You nervously ask, the hand that was clutching on your shirt now rests firmly on your hip as you hold the ghost of your sword, your instinct never weakened.

"No, not really. But I feel like I should be the one asking you that," he hummed, his eyes seemed to soften slightly with worry, "You seemed to be slightly in pain earlier, clutching on your chest. Do you perhaps have any trouble breathing? Any.. Chronic illness?"

You squinted at his words, feeling slightly offended by the question. Sure you're grateful that he feels concern for you, and perhaps the thoughts that he'd like to help by asking whether you're sick is actually a good thing, you just.. Feel like that's a little bit quick.

He seems to notice your judgemental state before putting his hands up in defense and shaking his head, "Ah- Forgive me. I apologize.. Didn't realize how rude the question must be. I'm just.. Slightly worried about you and was just wondering if there's anything I can do to help."

Help. Right.

"It's.. It's quite alright. Thank you for the concern but I was just panicking a little, you know?" You let out a nervous laugh, shrugging.

Doc is quite an observant individual. He knows you're somewhat still skittish of him and are keeping up guards by the way your hand seemingly always on alert, ready to pull a weapon that you don't own yet. But he's also aware of your backstory and where you're from, so he's willing to be as patient as he can be with you, seeing how even being there seems difficult enough for you.

"I see, well that happens to the best of us. I know it can be a little scary coming to a new place with a bunch of new people you're not familiar with yet," and he smiled. Surprisingly enough, his smile looked really sincere, as opposed to his scary appearance. You suppose that is the first step to trust.

"Actually, if you're not sure on how to start, I can help you set up your base?" He offered, to which, you hesitantly raised an eyebrow. "I mean you don't have to, of course, absolutely no pressure. It's just that if you need any help, I'm willing to lend a hand whenever you need one."

He doesn't seem.. Like he has any further, hidden intention in his words. It feels like genuine honesty in wanting to help you. Something that you haven't seen in many people in your previous server.

So you just thanked him for his offer, saying that should you ever really need any help, he'll probably be the first person you'll come to. Probably. Planning for a far ahead future was not your specialty. Honestly you just want to start off somewhere with a good distance away from everyone and live normally out there.

He nodded. Your acceptance seems good enough. He's not sure whether you'll actually come to him or not; but it seems like at the very least, he's got his intention over to you.

And with that both of you parted ways rather slightly awkwardly after the annual meeting had ended. Everyone began to explore in pairs and groups to gather resources as the first night approached. You, on the other hand, opted to go off to look for stuff on your own, just like how you always do.

You venture up to the North side of the world. Exploring just far enough to not collide bases with anyone who's about to build their giant starter house, you settle in a random tundra biome, finding a slight nostalgic peace from the cold environment.

Weeks pass, and you've managed to build yourself a small cabin with a chimney that regularly breathes out smoke to a far distance. Greenhouse was made, the armory was filled with weaponry, and you're all settled for yet another peaceful, lonely life in the cold tundra.

That is, until someone finds your cabin and are standing right in front of your doorstep as you exit the greenhouse.

It's him, Doc. He seems to be fully geared up already with diamond armour and an elytra. He stood there by your doorstep, seemingly unaware of your approach from the greenhouse as you watch him lightly rubbing his arm.

Creeper can get cold?

"What're you doing here?" After putting down the basket of potatoes to the side and resting your hand at the hilt of your axe, Doc flinched at the surprise before turning to face you with wide eyes.

"Oh my God— you- you scared me a little there," he nervously chuckled, shoulder relaxing as he watched you keeping your distance, waiting for his answer.

"Oh! Right, I'm actually here to uh, check up on you. Xisuma told me that you haven't left your starter base yet and uh, yeah. I'm mostly here to check up on how you're doing."

"That's all?"

"Yes..?"

The two of you spent a good minute looking at each other. You in slight disbelief and him, slightly shivering due to being rather underdressed for the environment.

You were about to tell him that you're doing well, and that you don't quite need any help, but seeing him just.. Standing there in the cold with his armour on doesn't really seem comfortable. You know cold armour can be awful to put on. And considering the distance he might've gone through to get here- You assumed he's been suffering, shivering for a long time.

"Get inside, the fireplace is always lit." You pulled your hand away from the hilt of your axe, an action that he noticed, as you turned you back away from him to pick up the basket of potatoes.

He seems quite.. Surprised, by your invitation. He had expected you to brush him off with formality, but it seems like the sight of a giant creeper hybrid shivering in the cold, tundra biome makes you take slight pity on him.

But he's not complaining! Watching you approaching the door, he instinctively opened the door for you and moved to the side to let you and the basket of potato in, only to follow suit right after you had descended into the kitchen inside the cabin.

"Take off your armour and hang it by the door, don't get snow in my house." You gave him direction as you placed the basket of potatoes onto the small table in your kitchen.

"Oh- Right, thank you." He seems to be still slightly nervous. Is he crossing the line by being in here? You did invite him in, so it should be fine, right? But what if your invitation was out of politeness and he's actually bothering you with your schedule? Doc has never been so parasocial before this, as he just stood there by the doorstep, awkwardly now with his armour off.

"Well, it's a nice place you've got here," he took a deep breath, deciding to break the ice and lead the conversation, since you seem quite focused on cleaning the vegetables you had just picked. "I saw your greenhouse outside, it looks quite lovely with the blue glass. Is it automated?"

"No. I.. Like processing my vegetables by hand," you replied to him while focusing on cleaning the dirt off of a carrot. Hearing his footsteps, you suppose he's just currently walking around your cabin, checking things that are worth seeing. "Besides I don't really know how to build an automated farm. I'm not really.. An expert at redstone. And honestly I doubt I will be in the near future."

From that comment, Doc laughed. Surprisingly a hearty laugh that comes in contrast to his currently freezing body.

"Automated vegetable farms aren't that difficult to create. But I suppose I understand what you mean by it," he looked at the fireplace and the couch near it, turning to look at you for permission, in which you only nod your head at before he let himself sink into the soft surface with a sigh. "I've actually haven't experienced this in a long while."

"Hm?" His last sentence caught you off guard as he seems to have lowered his voice by a note. Looking back to the creeper hybrid who had made himself comfortable at your house, you only watch the fire reflection crackle in his eyes. "What do you mean by 'this'?"

"This, I mean just.. Living, I suppose." He shrugged, leaning back on the couch, "I've spent years in this server, building and creating things never seen before."

"Hunting.. Farming by hand, all of those have become quite a bothersome errand when all you want to do is just.. Break that limit and create something new." He clenched his fist, and opened it, looking down at it with looks that are difficult to decipher from your view. "That's why automatic farms were built. To be rid of those repetitive tasks. Towers that reach heaven to milk whatever the universe gave us and use it to its fullest potential."

He seems to be deep in thought. Has your greenhouse made that much impact on his view in life to the point that he seems to be having a minor midlife crisis?

"Are you calling my farm inefficient and boring?" You laughed lightly, turning your attention back to the vegetables at hand. "I'm no hermit like any of you are, so I suppose it's hard to share views. I quite enjoy the normalcy."

This time, Doc looks at you. Slightly baffled by your sudden chattiness and laughter. It was small; but you laugh. An honest one, it seems.

"I didn't get much of.. Well, this, before. Buildings often come and go in one night. Instead of progressing ahead we were forced to look at the present and always be aware of tomorrow, it's.." you shut your eyes, placing the clean vegetables down as you took a deep breath. ".. Quite tiring."

Silence but the sound of crackling fire sets between the two of you. This was one of the first times you've recalled the old SMP after so long. You're reminded by the constant explosion, the constant fire, and moving from one base to another, it was always filled with running away. Always.

Slowly opening your eyes with a deep exhale, you see that Doc has stood up from where he was seated as he slowly walked over to where you are. Standing right across from you, he offered you that smile again, as he picked up one of the clean carrots.

"Well, cooking all of this by yourself sure is tiring too, won't it?" You exhaled another breath you didn't think was holding, "Do you mind if I lend a hand on this one?"

That was the small start of your, well, friendship, with the creeper hybrid.

Ever since then Doc visited every week or so, coming with small gifts he found or have farmed in his collection of massive automated farms. Everytime you kindly rejected his offer because you don't think you can repay him, he only asked for you to let him help around your greenhouse, by not making it autonomous, but just farming it alongside you, and perhaps stay over for a warm meal served in your cabin that are peacefully hidden away in the tundra.

You don't mind, actually. The pair of helping hands he's given is sure to be welcomed by you. He's been working in your greenhouse for so long he remembered where things are and memorised the whole layout. Not only that, you found yourself growing more vegetables by his constant visit, seemingly wanting to have enough for him to eat when he arrives since you feel like your small portion would never actually fill a man as big as him.

With the overwhelming amount of building blocks you've received, you have plans on perhaps finally building your base. And since you don't feel like asking Doc for more than what he already gave, you find yourself turning to other hermits for help such as Scar, Pearl, and others for building tips. Even to the point that they'd come to visit your cabin and help you first hand.

After weeks of having Doc coming over to your cabin, you've decided that it's about time for you to visit his base instead and perhaps, look around the server some more and check the now existing shopping district.

It became a routine of some kind. One week it would be you visiting him with your very own hand picked vegetables, the next would be him visiting you with some building materials or other items he thinks may be of use to you.

That night was one where you had visited him.

A storm had befall the area in which Doc is working his new project. And you, not being that much of an expert in using an elytra yet after so long not using it, doesn't want to risk flying through the storm and ended up staying by his small camp that he had set up in a small cave near his project.

You thought you'd stay awake through the storm. After all, it's not like you'd let yourself fall asleep somewhere that isn't home. It's unsafe, dangerous, and you'll be exposed and vulnerable.

You're not sure what came over you, but amidst your attempt at staying up, it seems like you had slipped and passed out with your head leaning on your arms by one of the desks at Doc's camp. A view that Doc didn't quite expect to come back to when he finished with his project for the day.

He had never seen you so peaceful before. Asleep, calm, and are away from the world even for a couple minutes or hours.

He would let you be and give you the rest that you're very much deserved (mostly he doesn't want to scare you by waking you up), but looking at how uncomfortable your position looks, he can't seem to find another reason to not take your to a proper bed.

He was about to wake you up, but he noticed the weird, breathing pattern that you're having at times during your slumber.

Your breath seems to have grown heavy and shallow, he can see beads of sweat rolling on your skin as you still seemingly stay unconscious.

Turning your head to the side, he placed the back of his organic hand to your forehead, only to find your cheek flustered red and your temperature slightly burning up.

You were dreaming- or rather, remembering that scene yet again by some bad omen. The fireworks that had blasted your chest burns your shirt right onto your skin, the look that Ranboo had given you that day, the way Sam doesn't seem unbothered by his own actions, it all came back in a flood.

What snapped you awake was the tense feeling of a pair of hands gripping onto your shoulder, shaking you awake, and Doc calling out to your name.

You didn't even realize you were crying until you felt the warm tear sliding down your cheek. You didn't respond to his questions for a few seconds, your hand instinctively crawled up to your chest, right where the firework was exploded, as you clenched your shirt.

Doc called out to you again. This time, you finally look up to him, his words finally registering in your mind as you look at his worried expression,

"Where does it hurt, schatz?" His voice falls a few octaves, you noticed, yet it felt raspier as if he had cried himself. "Please, tell me."

"He shot me here," you finally whispered out. Hand clutching tighter as your knuckles turned white, "It hurts, Doc. It burns every time I remember that place. It burned like a memory every time. But I lived through it, I survived and kept my life despite it. But he didn't."

"He didn't live.. Because I took that hit, he didn't— I should've—"

And he took you in.

Doc was big enough to engulf almost all of you within his arms. Part of him may be metallic, but the humming of the redstone fluid that runs his prosthetic is always warm. Always.

And that warmth melted your heart, and flood came through.

You clutched the back of his coat as you finally let everything out. Through your sobbing you let him know about all the regrets kept inside of your heart. The burning sensation you felt every night on your chest from the wound you received that night. How you often tell yourself that you deserve it because of what happened. That you think you deserve this punishment.

And he listened to it. He holds you firm enough to let you know he'll be there and that he's listening and nothing escapes him. Your secret was heard and your pain was shared. He felt it, as one of his hands carefully rubbed your shoulder where the edge of the burn lay, giving it humming comfort.

"Schatz, listen to me. Please, look at me," he softly called to you. Pulling you away from his chest to cradle your face in his hands as he wiped the tears off of your reddening face. He held you there, pressing your forehead against each other as he helped you breathe by making you match his pattern.

"It was not your fault." He held you, "It never was. Never will be. Fate can often be cruel but you have been through each second of pain it has given you and now you are here."

"You are here, with me. And I will be here with you through it." You cling onto his coat, "I won't let anything harm you and I promise you that. Not even time in the past can do you any harm. I will be here, and I will protect you."

"I love you."

At his confessions, you can only let more tears roll down your cheek as you let him hold you. Perhaps you do deserve to be here. Perhaps you do deserve to live- After all that you have been through. After all the death you had seen. Maybe you do deserve to be here, with him.

And every moon that passes after that night, with him by your side, holding you, loving you and reminding you about how much you deserve to be in the present, you can feel the burn on your shoulder lightened everyday, as the red patch of skin slowly turned light, and the wound have grown into a scar made by the past, healed.

[chalametsimp]

How to Disappear Completely

Pairings: Timothée Chalamet x Reader

Summary: Timothées PR stunt gets released earlier than he was told. You disappear completely and he loses his mind.

Warnings: angst, reckless driving, suicidal ideation mentioned, alcohol,

Word Count: 3,345

Authors Note: title and lyrics from Radiohead (my fave) sorry this took forever my life is a sh*t show rn. I’m a busy b*tch. Love y’all

masterlist

That there, that’s not me

I go where I please

Images of the two of them flooded your brain as you flew down the street to your best friends house. Timothée and HER. Sat far too close for anything about it to be even deemed friendly. Images of him laughing at something she said. You were certain right then that you never wanted to hear that laugh ever again. The sound used to make you whole but now it just sounded like nails on a chalkboard, scraping against the inside of your mind. Your heart was pounding hard against your ribcage, the only thing that was louder was your labored breathing. The volume dialed to zero. Your eyes glued to the road, a twenty minute drive started to feel like at least an hour. “Images shot of Timothée Chalamet and ex girlfriend Lily Rose-Depp sharing a cup of coffee this sunny morning in Los Angeles. Could this mean they’re making a comeback?” You had read out loud, eyebrows furrowed together, voice barely a whisper.

The saddest part was that you didn’t even cry. The blank expression on your face could only be read as shock or disbelief. Complete disconnection. You had left your phone where you sat, never once checking to look at it as you packed a bag with as much of your things as possible. Your vision had been blurry, grabbing for anything you could.

Blackout. You couldn’t remember pulling into their driveway but there you sat. Face staring blankly forward, unable to move yourself in any direction. Your friend peered out of the window, clutching curtains before they rushed out of the house and to your door. No words were said as you turned to face them, their face was full of pity that you didn’t want. They had seen the articles too, so when you pulled up they were ready. You didn’t want to talk and they sensed that, opting to reach for you silently as you slumped into their chest, legs moving slow to step out of the car. Almost as if your legs were made of marble. Marble from a statue now, a living shell. No thoughts, just Timothée and his hands intertwined with hers at a cute coffee shop that he had never brought YOU to. The two of you walked inside silently.

I walk through walls, I float

down the Liffey

You drifted through the hall, nothing but muscle memory guiding you as you made your way to the bathroom. Nervous for you, your best friend followed you. You didn’t mind and they knew that. No words were exchanged but they knew what to do. Your feet were cemented to the floor in front of the tub now. They turned on the water to run you a bath. While you waited for the stream to fill the tub that you just wanted to submerge into for the rest of time. Your escort wouldn’t let you. So they slipped off your shirt for you, tossing it to the side before helping to get out of your jeans, which fell to the hardwood with a near deafening sound echoing around the thick silence.

“I’m so sorry.” They had said quietly and out loud, but you didn’t hear a thing. You just stepped forward into the tub, water warming the soles of your feet as your hand did the opposite, squeezing tightly against your friends hand. The two of you sat side by side, separated by the tub, heads pressed against each other. Only one of you wanted to be floating down the Liffey.

I’m not here

This isn’t happening

Timothée was having the opposite of your day. A good one. A great one, even. The new PR stunt was supposed to do wonders for his career and the sun was shining. However, he was sure this was his least convincing acting moment, or so he had thought. It was an extremely difficult task to pretend to be interested in anything Lily had to say. He had just finished up a post shoot meeting with his publicist and he had just stopped at a flower stand. He saw it, thought of you and had to stop, picking up a bundle of red roses for you.He drove with the windows down, a kid cudi song blaring through the speakers. Not a care in the world, except the plans he was making in his head for tonight, with you. It was a stark comparison. One that would haunt him for years.

He stepped into the apartment that the two of you shared and called out for you, frown splaying across his face when he was faced with silence. The lights were still on and the window was propped open. The scene before him didn’t look like a good one. You wouldn’t normally leave the lights on let alone the window. His mind immediately thought the worst. What if someone had taken you? Did someone break in? What was going on? You hadn’t gotten ahold of him in a while. A million terrible scenarios flooded all of his senses as he rushed through the space, opening every door. He called out for you desperately now, frantic.

He decided to call you, heart in his throat as he pressed the call button and pressed it to his ear. The loud ring from right next to him made him jump and he lunged forward for it to switch off the volume. What the fuck, he thought out loud. Urgency jolting his body as he scrambled for his keys and he rushed out the door. He ran full speed down the hallway, avoiding the elevator and opting for the stairs. His legs made long and fast strides, skipping steps and nearly falling. His arms caught him before he tumbled down the stairs, feeling bile rise up in his throat. Where could you be? You would never just disappear completely. Not without telling him. He continued on down the stairs, making it down the seven flights without an incident. His chest fell up and down rapidly and only when he reached his car and clambered inside did he calm down somewhat. He no longer felt like he was going to collapse and he sped out of the parking garage and down the street. He spent hours driving around town to places you might be. He cried the entire time. A pitiful sight to see.

In a little while

I’ll be gone

The moments already passed.

By now you were crying too. After the initial shock of the situation and it all hit you, you became a sobbing mess in the tub. Nearly uncontrollable but your friend was able to help you out and into a clean pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, your skin nearly wrinkled. You trudged to their bed with them and curled up into a ball underneath the warmth of the duvet. They simply sat up beside you and rubbed your back in slow circles as you sobbed into the pillow, dampening the pillowcase. You thought about Timothée and HER, tangled up together. You thought about him whispering sweet nothings to her and you felt sick to your stomach. You shot up suddenly to face the only person you were sure really cared about you and proclaimed through tears “I need something to drink. I can’t think anymore, please!” Your tone was so hopeless and desperate and they thought that their heart would break hearing it.

So heartbreaking that they nodded their head, speaking up quietly “I won’t let you drink yourself to death, but maybe a shot or three of gin would do you well, yeah?” They had thought about it a while before answering and when you nodded your head rapidly they were off, grabbing two shot glasses, and a bottle of Hendricks. For this situation, a top shelf liquor was needed. Something nice for something so horrible.

“You’re the best.” You stated as they crawled back in next to you, hand extending a shot glass to you. “You’re the only one I have her-“

They cut you off before you could continue, sensing an oncoming spiral of self pity “You’re loved by so many people, don’t start.” You were grateful for the bluntness and you lifted the shot glass to receive some relief. They poured it up all the way to the brim before doing the same for their glass. “He was a piece of shit for that, and you deserve better.” It was the first mention of him. At least out loud. You wanted to throw up. You wanted to scream. You wanted to break things. You wanted to freak out. But you didn’t. You stayed quiet. It was nice to have someone to keep you from going off the rails. Maybe quite literally.

“Less words, more shots. Please.” You smiled for the first time that day since he left in the morning. It felt nice. Relieving. But only for a mere moment. “Now.” You raised your glass and without waiting for the cheers you downed the shot. A cringe ran through your body for only a second before you raised your glass and whined, silently pleading for more. They obliged and you once again drank it without hesitation.

Yeah it’s gone

And I’m not here

Another two hours had passed and Timothée was losing his mind. He was nearly at his breaking point. He was sat at the top of a lookout on the hood of his car, a great view of the city, sun almost setting completely. Not that any of that matter to him at this point. He knew it was a long shot but he needed a smoke and this was the perfect place, he could keep an eye out and try to calm down. If he didn’t calm down he was sure he would’ve wrecked his vehicle. He looked every place he could think of. Taking time to pass by the apartment, in hopes that maybe, just maybe, you had just forgot your phone and were in a hurry. He was sick with worry and wanted a drink, maybe some weed, but felt it would be distracting. So there he stood, eyes frantically scanning the city, cigarette pressed between his wet lips. His phone was in his hand, dialing the emergency line.

He waited for what felt like an eternity as it rang and he sighed miserably. When the line stopped its trilling he spoke before the operator could. “Please help, I have a missing person, please.” His voice was trembling now “my girlfriend is missing,” he stopped himself before he could continue “my WIFE is missing.” He thought maybe they would take him more seriously if they thought you were married. He felt ridiculous and needy and flustered saying it. He really wanted you to be his wife. The thought of you somewhere far away, never to be seen again made him delirious. He could hardly think straight. The thought of someone hurting you, violating you. His muscles tightened.

“Okay, okay. Deep breaths, how long has she been gone?” He asked calmly, almost with an annoyance in his voice. Maybe not annoyed, perhaps jaded more than anything else.

“Fuck!” He nearly yelled but he was too frantic to even sound sure of himself “I don’t know, maybe ten hours?”

“Hm,” he hummed softly “have you tried to get ahold of her? Looked for her? Talked to anyone close to her?” The nonchalant tone made Timothée want to scream at him. Scream until he couldn’t anymore. But he didn’t. He was thankful for a split second because he had gotten an idea from him. Inadvertently. Without a goodbye, he abandoned the call and got back into his car.

Strobe lights and blown speakers

Fireworks and hurricanes

He figured you would be here. He cursed himself for being an idiot. He was looking for a place, not a person you would be with. Why didn’t he think to call your friend? He wanted to cry but he held back. Your car was there so you were safe. That’s what mattered the most.

He knocked at the door. Quietly at first but then eventually his fist gained some inertia and his actions were more assertive. Tears pricked in the corner of his eyes and he called out to you loudly. Over and over.

To his disdain, you weren’t the person to answer the distressed pleas. He was greeted by your friend, and not pleasantly at that. They stepped out before he could enter and shut the door harshly. They glared at him and he didn’t know what to think.

“You fucking asshole, what are you doing here?” The tone was threatening and he didn’t know why. He felt like a puppy in trouble, tail between his legs.

“What do you mean what am I doing?!” His voice was loud and tears were again rolling down his already red and swollen cheeks. “Where is she? Is she okay? What’s going on? She wasnt home, she left her phone I dont kn-“ his voice was cut off of by your friend. Apparently this was habit for them at this point.

“She’s fine.” They pinched the bridge of their nose, exasperated and exhausted. “You’ve caused quite the mess that I’ve had to pick up. She’s sleeping now and she needs to. She’s had a bit to drink. You’ve got some explaining to do, seems like.” The look shot at him was cold and annoyed. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed them into the living room.

You had indeed had too much to drink and you laid in bed, sleeping not-so-soundly. Your stomach churned and your heart hurt. In the time that he was looking for you, you had managed to convince your friend to keep drinking. They just felt so bad and couldn’t refuse you, not wanting to break your heart further. They couldn’t think of another cure for your melancholy. The only thing they could do was make you something to eat and entertain you. Ultimately leaving you to rest, taking special care to make sure you were laid on your side.

I’m not here

I’m not here

By the time you woke, Timothée had enough time to explain himself and get on the good graces of your friend. Now they sat in silence, his head buried in his hands. He took a shot of his own, just one, to calm his nerves.

He was the first to split the awkward silence, “do you think I could go see her? I’ll try my best not to wake her. Please.” His voice was pained and sounded like he was about to break down again any second. He felt like he was at the mercy of everyone but himself, after everything you had been through today.

There was no answer. You stood in the doorway, peering at him with forlorn eyes. Your friend gave you a nod, almost as a confirmation. The okay signal. Timothée noticed this and turned his head so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash. It was dark inside the house and out. But you could still see his puffy cheeks, the ghost of tears streaking his cheeks. He quickly rose to his feet and opened his arms for you, eyes pleading you silently. You just stared at him.

You didn’t know what to do. You didn’t know what to say. You just stood there. Too exhausted to yell, too exhausted to cry. The well of tears inside of you was dry. Replaced only by liquor. Liquor that sloshed uncomfortably in your stomach. You whimpered at the wave of discomfort that ran through you and he was immediately on his feet, ready to be there if you needed him. “I don’t feel so good. I was going to take a shower, but I heard you..” you shifted on your feet uncomfortably, knuckles gripping a plush towel around yourself. You had heard almost everything but didn’t have the energy to say anything about it. You were too drunk and queasy.

Before you knew it he was guiding you down the hall and you were stumbling on your own two legs. His arm was suddenly on your back and he was scooping you up into his arms. You relaxed in his arms, face burying into his neck. You whimpered quietly. This time, not from the pain, but because you had missed him. It had been a long and terrible day. “I’m sorry.” He whispered against your head, lips pressing kiss after kiss against the top of your head. “I love you.” He carried you into the bathroom where you just stared at him wide eyed and silent. Timothée started the shower, wanting to fulfill your wish and help you feel better. He figured he had done enough to hurt you today.

He had a planned PR stunt. It was arranged by his team and hers. He never once had to confer with her. The images were a stunt and someone had leaked them as clickbait. Even if it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t help but feel responsible. Maybe he shouldn’t have said yes to it. But for him, it was a great career opportunity, and it felt good to gush about you to someone who was a far distant part of his life. There wasn’t a single bone in his body that cared about her anymore, and you knew that. After hearing his side of the story.

Timothée folded your towel when it dropped to the floor and followed after you into the shower. He helped guide you to the shower floor as you started to sink down to your knees. The liquor helped you not notice the pain of the hard surface. He sat behind you as you fell into his chest, coming undone immediately. “I’m so sorry.” He repeated again, not expecting a response. He held your trembling body against him, his fingers tangling in your soaked hair.

“I really thought you had abandoned me for her,” you heaved gently against his skin, tears almost invisible against the shower water that was pounding against your skin. “Oh god that was so terrible. I really thought you chose her.”

“I would never chose her over you. Not in a million years, not in any lifetime.” His own heart broke for the first time that evening as he listened to you, fingertips ghosting against your side, attempting to sooth you. “I thought you had gotten kidnapped, I thought someone had snatched you up, baby. You scared me so bad.” His eyes were now squeezed shut and he rubbed his cheek against the top of your head. “I thought I lost you forever.”

You didn’t answer, a quiet belch rising up your throat. You felt better but still nauseas. He continued, cupping your face now in his hands. “You are,” Timothée started, pressing a kiss to the tip of your nose, “the best thing to ever fucking happen to me. You’re the only one I want. If I hadn’t found you tonight, I would have searched for the rest of my life for you. I would have never ever recovered.” You knew he was being honest and you leaned into his touch.

“I love you,” you murmured, body now leaning against him, resting against his chest, head tucked into his neck “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“Don’t mention it, mon amour.” He leaned back in the tub, moving to lay against the edge, allowing the water to fall on your hurting stomach. “You never have to apologize to me.”

You stayed silent and your eyes fluttered closed, the warm water helping you to forget about the sick feeling.

“I’m so sorry about all of this, I really am.” He whispered against your hair, arms wrapping around your shoulders. “I love you so much, you never have to worry about me wanting anyone else. You’re it. You’re the one.”

He wasn’t sure if you would remember that in the morning, but he didn’t care. He wanted to spend the rest of his life reminding you of that.

[banzaitaka]

Great! Then can I please requests Venti, Diluc, Zhongli, and Bennett with a child reader that tries stealing from the character, then lets adopted by the character?

---

Hi hi

Aight, this was a bit difficult to figure out how I want to write this- I decided to do it like I did with "Awoken beast"

Tumblr deleted Zhongli's part, so sorry I won't rewrite it.

And it also wonolet me upload it with images, so sorry bout that also

Genshin Impact Masterlist

I hope this is what you wanted & you enjoy reading!

TW: abandoned reader, mentions of blood (no major wounds)

Bennett x gn! reader

Diluc x gn! reader

Venti x gn! reader

.

Thief no more

(Y/HC) hair, messy and wild. Simple clothing, dirty and torn. Stomach empty, begging to be filled as soon as possible. Their life on the streets wasn't easy, but they survived by taking things that weren't theirs. They didn't like to steal, they couldn't even be proud of themself when they managed to get away with stealing twice as much they usually got.

Which should be considered an accomplishment, seeing they barely managed to get their little hands on anything at all.

Now that they thought about it, it actually had been quite some time since anyone spotted them. Or someone did, but just ignored them. Who would want to help such an useless little thing anyway? Their parents definitely didn't, having abandoned their child for not learning as fast as the neighbor kid.

The (Y/EC) eyed clutched their kryo vision in their scrached hand, the kryo archon seemed to be the only one seeing and understanding them.

The rumbling of their stomach made them grit their teeth to prevent themself to bend over from the pain. They were so incredibly hungry...

Just for a moment, it seemed for them, they felt dizzy and their vision got blurry. So as they looked straight ahead and waited for their eyes to focus again, they were surprised to suddenly see a bag laying on a bench. The person that seemed like the owner was just walking a few steps away from said bench to talk to someone.

It seemed like the perfect opportunity for the child.

---

Their little legs carried them for what seemed like forever, but kept begging the (Y/HC)-haired to stop as they ached with every step, every turn. They were sure someone noticed them, the dizziness prevented them from concentrating and they weren't ready to face the owner of the stolen item if they were caught.

As soon as the child found a place to hide in an alley with a dead end, they let themself fall to the ground. Only the gods knew how the child managed to live like this.

They didn't even wait to catch their breath, immediately emptying the bag in hopes of finding something edible...

...but there was nothing.

Their shaky breath echoed through the alley, soon followed with wild sobs as they completely gave up on life in that very moment.

They wrapped their twitching arms around themself and pulled their bloody knees to their chest. They didn't even realise they hurt themself when they fell to the ground, but they didn't care.

No one wanted them anyways.

(Bennett)

"Arrrgggh! Come on! Why now??", the white haired groaned out as he ran after the child who stole his bag.

Bennett was just about to go on an adventure! It was just his luck that he got robbed right then and there. He nearly screamed out of frustration, but kept calm. He knew he had to keep cool in order to find his stuff.

He soon realized his thief ran a bit wobbly and it wasn't hard to follow them.

"There you are!", Bennett exclaimed with a finger pointed at the child, a gasp following soon after, "Oh my!" He quickly made his way over to them, carefully laying a hand on their shoulder.

They didn't even flinch anymore.

Bennett made note of their current state and pondered on what to do for a few seconds before speaking, "Hey... I'm here to help, okay?"

No response.

"...Are you awake...?"

---

"Ngh..."

Bennett's eyes sparkled with joy when he heard noises from the (Y/HC)-haired and saw them stirr slightly. "Thank Barbatos!", he exclaimed a bit too loudly for the child's liking.

They soon woke up completely, eyes darting back and forth, trying to make out their surroundings. It appeared they were inside an unfamiliar room, maybe some kind of infirmary? They certainly laid in a bed with white sheets.

The child wasn't given much time to ponder about the many questions in their head as Bennett proceeded to shove a plate, filled with a steak and some salad, into their face. "Here you go! Eat up, little one!"

The kid slowly sat up and frowned at the other, both sceptical and surprised of the current situation.

First off: Why does the person they stole from help them?

And second: Why would anyone want to help them?

The (Y/HC)-haired came to the conclusion they were dead. But the sudden pain in their stomach made them scratch that idea immediately.

But that made them even more confused.

Meanwhile, Bennett was staring at them with worry in his eyes, "You barely eat anything, don't you? Heck...you probably don't even have a proper roof over your head.", he mumbled the last part to himself before urging the younger one to eat once again.

With shaky hands, the child finally reached out for the plate, only letting it rest on their lap for a second before practically inhaling the food.

That made the young adventurer smile brightly, "There you go."

Once the plate was empty, Bennett took it back and placed it on a nearby table before scooting closer to the child on the wooden chair he sat on. "Feeling better?", he asked so wholeheartedly, that it made the child wonder once again if this was really happening.

It made their little heart swell up with hope. Maybe there were actually people who cared for them.

They nodded and smiled at him, "Thank you...", their voice came out scratchy and quietly, but it was enough for Bennett to hear.

"No worries, really! You know, I was once alone as well, but then I was taken in by adventurers.", Bennett laid a hand on their shoulders, "And, and I'm sure this is very sudden, but, if you are in need of a home, a family, I'm sure my Dads have a spot in their hearts for you too. They are pretty amazing!"

(Diluc)

"Master Diluc, your bag!"

Diluc immediately turned around, his crimson eyes locking with the ones of his thief for just a split second before they disappeared into the increasing crowd of the city streets. The red-haired frowned at the pain in the other's eyes before turning back to Charles, "I'll be right back. Please go order a meal at Good Hunter, anything is fine."

Charles, even though he was slightly confused about his boss' request, nodded, "Sure."

And with that, Diluc turned on his heels to run after the child.

He began to slow down once he got to a less busy part of the streets and looked around, looking for a possible hiding place the child would most likely chose to hide in since Diluc was certain his thief wasn't able to keep running for long.

And he was right.

As he walked closer to the entrance of an alley, the sounds of uncontrolled breathing reached his ears, making him lay a hand on the edge of the wall and take a look inside the alley. Diluc bit his inner cheeks at the miserable state the child was in, they were still so young...

The red-haired began to walk deeper into the alley, careful as to not scare the child too much.

It didn't take long for the child to notice the approaching adult, making them pull their knees further against their chest. They only assumed the owner of the bag was the one who found them, so they mustered all their leftover strenght to apologize.

"I-I-I'm so sorry, sir! I know I'm a disgrace, I- shouldn't have-", their own shaking made it difficult to speak, but even if it didn't, their voice only came out scratchy, having not used their voice for a long time.

Diluc knelt infront of them and started to put the items back in the bag, "Hush, it's good that you acknowledge that steling is bad, but you are by no means a disgrace.", when Diluc was done, he took the bag in one hand and tapped the child's arm with the other.

The unexpected warmth of Diluc's voice made them tense up slightly, and the tap on their arm made them look up, into the crimson eyes of the other. Though Diluc had no smile on his face, it held no annoyance or anger in it, but a soft and understanding expression.

"Come, a friend of mine ordered some food for you."

---

The child was sitting on one of the chairs of Good Hunter with their legs dangling over the left side while Diluc cleaned and bandaged the wounds on their knees.

Meanwhile they munched on the Tea Break Pancakes like a wolf.

"So that's why...", Charlse had muttered to himself when Diluc first came into view with that poor child.

After Diluc was done with patching up, he stood back up and watched the child eat, finally relaxed. He had actually seen them around quite a few times, but only in the most inconvenient of situations. That way, when he finally had the chance to look for the child, they were nowhere to be seen.

Once the child finished their food, they let out a satisfied sigh, they have missed the feeling of being full for so long. It actually made the usual stoic man smile just a little bit.

But it was gone as quickly as it came, right in time to not be seen by the child themself as they turned to look at him with teary eyes and a big smile of their own, "Thank you so much...!"

Diluc only shook his head and ruffled their already messy hair, "Not for that, little one....I won't let you be all by yourself...", he didn't mean to say the last bit out loud, but luckily it came out in a whisper.

"I'll be taking them home now.", the red-haired stated, looking at Charles who only nodded. "Have a nice evening, master Diluc!"

The child looked up at Diluc in confusion, "I don't...have a home...", they muttered, but Diluc shook his head again and took their little hand in his gloved one, "Now you do."

(Venti)

"Oh, no! My bag!"

Believe it or not, Venti actually hoped this would happen. Even though he hasn't been in Monstadt for a very long time, he quickly pick up on the people in need within the tall walls around the city. And that little child was no exception to this, quite on the contrary.

Venti tried on multiple occasions to get a conversation going with them, but they always ran away from him. The only thing he could do to help was leaving food at places he saw the child hide in before. Which is a good idea looking at the surface, but the dogs and cats that wandered around the streets made it difficult to work out the way Venti hoped for.

So while he pondered about another way to help the homeless child, he made sure to give them an opportunity to steal his bag. That way they were forced to communicate with him, once he manages to catch them. It was definitely not Venti's favorite option, but it was one.

Discarding the light conversation he had with a drink buddy of his, he run after the thief, already rehearsing how to approach them in his head.

At last, he found them cowering in a corner of a deadend of an alley. He halted for just a moment before he started to walk towards the child, pulling out his lyre to play a relaxing melody. It soon overplayed and soothed the child's hectic breathing, but left them confused.

Pulling their brows together, they lifted their head from their arms at looked at the source of the music. Their eyes widened upon recognizing Venti as the owner of the bag they stole, but they couldn't bring themself to say something, or move a muscle.

Venti smiled warmly at them and plucked at the last few strings that ended the song, "Hehe, hello there, little one!"

The child just kept on staring at the other, wasn't he supposed to yell at them? Punish them?

The anemo archon knelt down before the child, "It's nice to finally meet you!" Venti's voice was as cheery as always, full of friendliness.

Venti then pulled out a box out of nowhere, leaving the child stunned, almost as if they were not close to dying at that very moment. The blue-eyed had to chuckle at that.

"As long as that sparkle in your eyes doesn't disappear, so won't the happiness you're are bound to experience in the future."

Giggling to himself once again, he watched the child eyeing the box as he opened it, revealing freshly baked cookies.

The (Y/EC) eyes of the child widened in recognition and their mouth began to water.

"Take as many as you'd like!"

---

The two of them soon made their way to get proper food and new clothing for the child. The (Y/HC)-haired kept looking up at Venti as they held hands, still confused, but so so so happy. As the day came to an end and Venti still didn't let go of their hand and said 'goodbye', tears began to forn in their eyes.

"You didn't think I'd just leave, did you? Hehe, no, you're stuck with me now!"

[andydona-chan]

Midnight Snack

Read at AO3!

Late ectober fanfic, there might be more to come, I’ll see what I can do, I want to make sure is complete in AO3 at least.

*-*-*-*

Wes couldn’t believe his eyes, what he saw in the video was something so extraordinary he couldn’t even believe it himself!

It wasn’t the footage he was expecting about Danny Fenton, though that was something he could still try to find, right now, however, he was going to run back the video and record with his phone what he could, this was gold!

Maybe it hadn’t been the most brilliant idea, to sneak inside the school at night to check on the security recordings, he had seen the room earlier that day and thought that if there was any other place to find evidence to finally uncover Fenton as Phantom. It was just after ten, he could use a couple of hours to work on this.

If it had been anyone else, maybe they would never know where to look, he went back to the videos from the dates Phantom started to show publicly, the first-ever mention of Phantom - Invis-o-bill, pfft - had been reported back in their first year, along with a ‘food ghost’, he was lucky the situation had been at the school or the recordings would be difficult to check, so armed with the dates of the ghosts attacks, first those at school and then the ones outside but during school days, he started checking the videos.

At first, he had felt a bit angry after noticing that at a certain point some videos had been modified or cut out, maybe Foley had managed to erase evidence, sometimes some kind of interference or different event was happening in front of the ‘evidence’, but who else would have done that … - was that a ticking clock? Anyway, he couldn’t have gone through every tape, there must have been some ‘blind spots’ that Foley chose to ignore.

He had been looking into that when ‘speaking of the devil’, walked into the school just shortly after the janitor left. Of course, they had been caught on camera cleaning after the whole ‘food ghost’ incident, but after the trio left, only the janitor had stayed behind. So what was Tucker Foley doing back at the school?

According to the video, it was around 8 pm on the recording, Foley had accessed from behind the school and had gone to the trash containers that still had the loads of meat that Danny and Sam had picked up, Wes had noticed that Tucker had only been allowed to pick up the vegetables. 

Part of the recording showed that Tucker indeed got himself in the container and tried to find the best pieces of meat or at least the ones that were almost complete or less damaged, it was gross, Wes had never considered that the boy would do something like that, he knew he liked meat, but this was excessive even for him.

However, Tucker didn’t just get his loot and leave, no, the boy piled it up and then sat down against the wall while playing with his PDA until much later, Wes had fast-forwarded to the point where things changed. The scene got illuminated, he couldn’t see it, but he was sure it was the moonlight, especially after what happened right after.

Foley stood up, he put his PDA in his bag and then placed it somewhere else, then he removed his boots, glasses, and cap, once he was down to only his clothes, he looked up to the sky…

Wes couldn’t hear it, but he could tell there was something affecting the recording if the blurry lines were something to go by, was it trembling? Was it the wind? Was it a howl? Going by how Foley started to shapeshift in front of the camera a moment later, it was a howl. 

Foley seemed to be going for a dramatic change, twisting and bending while the change took form, he became bigger, broader, hair started growing on his limbs, his back popped his t-shirt to shreds, his face must have been the biggest change, the snout of the wolf that looked back to the container seemed really scary and filled with long fangs, he sniffled the air for a moment and then looked back to the pile he had dug from the container and then he was on all fours like a wolf would do, but bigger and very intimidating.

Wes saw him eat the meat with some strange fascination, he couldn’t tell if he was impressed or scared, it was amazing, even more so since he was sure not even his friends knew about this… Many things would be really different if they knew, so when he got back to the point where Tucker accessed the school, he pressed record on the screen of his phone...

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Learn to Fly

CW: Self-loathing, some internalized victim-blaming, references to parental death and grief, VERY vague reference to past noncon once or twice

Note: I made a decision to switch a little of the timeline around, so Laken and Chris’s breakup at this point happens after the original conversations about the Speak Out Arc start happening but before the Olympics themselves. I’m folding this bit into the larger Speak Out Arc.

Follows Time Apart and It Doesn’t Work As Well As You’d Hoped

-

He curls up on the couch in the coffeeshop, sipping something warm he barely tastes. It might have coffee in it - he feels a little drowsy, and that usually happens when there’s just a little caffeine.

Maybe that’s just because he hasn’t slept since Jake was hurt, not really. And he’s slept even less since... since he and Laken broke up.

Outside, there's unseasonable heavy rain. The clouds are low and heavy, a deep gunmetal gray that blocks out the light and has the streetlights on at 9:30 in the morning. The raindrops seem less to fall than to slam into the ground with terrible violence. 

The baristas talk in low voices about how grateful they are for the rain, burying the wildfires outside the city in a deluge the heat can’t overcome. Chris likes the rain, too, if only because it reflects the inside of him, suggests that the world can tell he is a storm within himself and reflects it to him.

He takes another sip.

He hasn’t showered in three days. His hair is dulled with it, like a penny left too long in the dirt.  He’s dressed himself like he used to, back before when he was still learning he was a person and not a pet - in one of Jake’s hooded sweatshirts over his compression shirt, so oversized on him it’s nearly a tunic, and a pair of mesh basketball shorts. His knees still look knobby, he thinks.

He can see the ghosts of the bruises there that used to never quite heal before his Sir sent him to his knees and made new ones to lay over them. He can see a couple of scars, some from training when the baton would crack into the backs of his legs and send him dropping like a stone, some from gymnastics, some from just being a kid.

Chris’s eyes lower, to look at his own hands holding his coffee cup. He put star stickers on his nails last night, and a few of them have already peeled off. Those that remain glitter, just a little. 

Something about the sight of it - the memory of when he put star stickers on Laken’s cheekbones at a concert until they sparkled under the starlight, laughing, a blur of bright eyes and dark hair - makes his throat nearly close, sends a new rush of tears to burn hot behind his eyes.

He has to close them to hold them back.

“You’ve had a hard time of late, have you, then?”

The voice is a rumble, cracked with decades of cigarettes and too much liquor, but Chris remembers it, anyway. At least, he remembers it now.

He turns to look up at the old man, in his shirt and slacks, a bit bent with age. There’s a merry twinkle in his slightly rheumy eyes, though, that shows that a young man is still there, under an old man’s experiences. There’s a slight smile on his face, warm and welcoming. 

Chris swallows, struggling to find the words. They flit away from him, he has to chase them down, but eventually he manages to clear his throat and says, “I, I, um. I know you. You, you, you knew my dad.”

“I did, at that. Worked with him for years.” The old man settles onto the other end of the couch, giving Chris plenty of space, a nice wide berth for safety. “What’s got you looking like a television commercial for depression, hm, Tristan?”

No one calls him that. 

Chris feels his heart twist, a little. 

By the time they saw the meteor, Tris, it was already too late for anything but a blink or two. When it touched down into land, it was so big the end of it was still in space. Can you imagine anything so big? Can you?

No, Dad.

 The earthquakes alone would have been immense thousands of miles away. Imagine, you’re eating leaves, living your life, and you see a shadow - and then in an instant, the world is shaking and you’re breathing glass. How does life go on after that?

I, I, I don’t know, um, um... how how does it?

It just does. That’s what’s amazing, Tris. It just goes on.

“Nothing. I, I, I broke up with my, my partner is all.”

“Hm, that nice young person who comes with you to the shops?” The old man nods, slowly. He’s got his own cup of coffee, plain black, steaming gently into the air-conditioning. Outside, the rain creates a curtain that walls them off from everything else. Chris can’t even see all the way across the street. He can barely see a woman with an umbrella racing from her car into the nail salon place off to the side. 

“Yeah, them. I’m, um. It wasn’t anything they they they did.”

It’s something I did.

It’s something I am.

It’s something I’ll never stop being.

“Well, breakups do happen now and again. Usually the one who does the leaving isn’t the one who does the moping about and staring at rain, though.”

“I didn’t want to.” Chris sits back, keeping his coffee cup in one hand. The other drops to his stomach, to tap, soothing his nerves at being so close to a man he knows and doesn’t-know. His memories are there, fuzzy and hazy from being overwritten by fear and pain, but they’re there. He knows this man, Mr. Malley, who would watch him sometimes when his parents went out, or when his father needed to stop by work.

The memories are there, but they still hurt. 

His head starts to throb, a pulsing pain behind his temples. 

“I didn’t-... I, I love them, I d-didn’t want to.”

“Well, now, that’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Are you moving, then, Tristan?”

It hurts to hear his name, but it hurts in a way that feels good. He was that person, too, before he was Chris. He hums, low under his breath. “No. I, I, I just… you know, um, I’m just. I’m… hard. Difficult. To, to, to, to be with, to, um, to-... there’s a bunch wrong with-... with me.”

“You sound like your dad.” Mr. Malley laughs, a deep chuckle that rumbles more in his chest than out of his throat. “You know that? You sound just like him.”

Chris ignores the pain in his head and he turns, now, to look fully at Mr. Malley, blinking rapidly. “My, my, my dad?”

“Yep. Paul was a good man, and a good dad, but before he was that he was a scared boy with a baby on the way and a plan that might not work.” Mr. Malley sighs. “A scared boy who’d always had it a little rough, trying to make the world work for him when it did nothing but work against him. You were always his spitting image. He’d probably be tickled to see you still are.”

There is a sense, in Chris’s mind, of a blurry man with short red hair, sitting near him but not quite touching him, speaking with animation about how there are dinosaurs that lived closer to human beings than they did to other dinosaurs.

He remembers a man whose eyes sparkled with animated focus when he talked about the world millions of years ago, who loved him by sharing the information he held within his own mind.

He and his dad had understood each other, in ways that no one else did but his mother, and Chris was beginning to see that it had been her determination to know him that had fueled his mother’s actions, her endless support. The same way Jake and Nat were determined, and stubborn, and kept trying even when they got it wrong. 

Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, but that doesn’t… that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying. 

Maybe he got it wrong.

“He never broke up with your mom, but oh, he thought about it. You know, when he came to work with us, he had a plan. But plans… they have a way of going off the road and into a ditch. He worried he couldn’t make it work, he worried that it would be too hard for Ronnie to be with him and have a child, too.”

Ronnie.

Chris’s throat closes up, and he closes his eyes. 

All right, Tris, I got you these so the noise won’t bother you so much. We’re going to have a good day at the parade, okay?

“Her family never liked him, for one. That’s a rough spot to be in, I think.” Mr. Malley is quiet for a moment, sipping his coffee and watching the rain fall. “Ronnie didn’t see it that way, of course. That woman was a freight train and God help anyone who got in the way. My late wife, God rest her soul, helped Ronnie with some things when her own family wouldn’t. She’d come over big as a house, eyes sparkling. You were a kicker, she used to say, kept her up all hours of the night. Just a girl, still, your mom, but she had a steel spine and she wasn’t going to live any life but the one she wanted. But your dad… he worried, that it would be too hard on her.”

“Having, um, having me would?”

“No. Having him. Paul was a smart man, you know. He knew his job would be trouble. He gave her chance after chance to go, if she wanted. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? She didn’t.”

Chris looks at his phone, lying on the little table in front of the couch. There’s some text messages he hasn’t looked at. Couple of voicemails he hasn’t listened to. 

“Maybe he, he, he didn’t want to keep hurting her,” Chris whispers. 

“Hurt’s a part of living, lad, take it from someone who’s given out his fair share of it and more.” Mr. Malley hums. Outside, a car pulls up, almost bumping the curb. “Perhaps you’re meant to separate from your young partner, Tristan, perhaps not. It’s like I told your dad, way back in the Stone Age. You choose if you love someone, to be sure, but they choose if they love you back. You can’t decide that for them.”

“But, but I’m-... but, but I’ve been… what I am, it’s-”

“I know what you’ve been made to do,” Mr. Malley says gently. “You don’t have to explain, lad. We knew.”

Chris’s lips tremble. He doesn’t want his coffee any longer. He sets it down next to his phone, on the little table. The baristas talk quietly about a date that one went on the night before, there’s a low sound of machinery. It all filters into Chris’s mind, a cacophony of sound he picks apart or doesn’t. Right now it’s hard for him to think around all the sound, but he tries. “Then, then, then why… if you knew, um, why… didn’t you-”

He can’t finish the question. 

Why didn’t you save me from it?

“We couldn’t. It’s shite, is what it is, but we couldn’t. And by the time we could, you were with that nice young man who you live with now. I’m sorry for the time you lost, Tristan, and sorrier still I can’t give it back to you somehow. You’re your dad’s child through and through, but you’ve got your mother in you, too. You know what Ronnie did when there was something she couldn’t get through?”

Chris turns to look at this man, who knew his mother and father in ways he never could have. He swallows. “What?”

“She went over it. Or around it. Or blew it to smithereens and went through the wreckage. Whatever it took. They tried to kick you out of school when you were a wean, she fought them ‘til they realized they’d never win against her. They tried to tell her you wouldn’t read, she told them to go, well, to go sit on a thing or two and not to tell her what her boy could or couldn’t do.”

Chris thinks of Nat sitting next to him on the floor, patiently encouraging him to keep trying to turn the letters into words, despite his headaches, his tears, his certainty he’d never get reading back.

You will, Chris. I know you will. Just keep fighting for it. They won’t take anything from you forever, I won’t let them and you won’t let them either.

Don’t let them keep you from yourself.

“They told her she’d never have a happy life, having a wee one so young, but she built that happy life anyway with her own two hands and dared anyone to try and knock it down.”

“Someone… some, someone did, though.” The gunshots, his mother’s eyes going dull and blank, her whispered I love you so much, Tris…

“Sure. Yes.” Mr. Malley’s expression goes serious, and sad. “But it took breaking into her house at midnight and bullets to stop her. You’ve got plenty of your mom in you, lad. Plenty of your dad, too, he was always a stubborn git himself. Do you love this person you’ve broken up with? Hm?”

“Yes.” The answer comes without hesitation, even though his voice shakes and his heart races. “I, I, I do. That’s, that’s why I don’t want to-to keep hurting them by, by, by by being messed up from what, um, from what happened to me, I don’t… I don’t want to keep h-hurting them-”

“Let them decide how they feel about that,” Mr. Malley says, voice gentle and low. “Plenty of people are hurt and find their way forward together after.”

Jake and Kauri, laughing in the kitchen as Jake spins Kauri around in a circle, dips him backwards, presses a kiss to his nose that has him giggling. 

Antoni at the stove, sighing but with a smile on his face, watching them. Being pulled into the hug not quite against his will, all three of them laughing then. Kauri bright and sparkling, Jake a deeper harmony, Antoni soft and genuine. 

“Maybe it won’t last, maybe it will - but don’t let a hard past keep you from the people who love you. I’ve seen many ruined by believing you may only be loved if you’ve no pain inside you. We’ve all got pain, lad. Carrying it together’s a sight easier than trying to go it alone.”

From the car parked right outside, an elderly man unfolds himself, opening an umbrella to shield from the driving rain. Mr. Malley looks up and smiles. “Ah, right on time, must be ten sharp. That’ll be Cilly. D’you remember Cilly, lad?”

Chris looks as the man shuffles his way inside, pushing open the door. The little bell over the top jingles and the baristas cut off their conversation, standing up straight to call out a familiar greeting to a regular customer. 

He squints.

“Not… not very well,” He confesses, a little ashamed.

“Ah, well, that’s not a problem. He and I’ve known each other a long time. I was an angry man for a while after my wife died, you know. Seemed a crime that I should outlive her, when Christa deserved to live to a hundred and six if she so wished. Cilly helped me carry that anger when I needed to be angry, and he helped me put it down later on.” 

He gives a wave to the man - to Cilly - who looks at Chris and then back to Mr. Malley with clear surprise, then heads towards the counter to make his own order. 

“Be angry, Tristan,” Mr. Malley says, a little heavily, leaning over to him on the leg as he pushes himself, with a grunt of effort to his feet. “You may need your anger, in the days ahead. But if you’ve a love to help you carry it, who wants to help you carry it and who will be angry right there with you, and you love them back… well… don’t let the wickedness of others keep you from the happiness you could have. You’ll be a poorer person for it.”

Mr. Malley walks away without another word, leaving Chris by himself again on the couch, tapping at his stomach, thinking. He keeps looking at his phone, thinking about all the texts he hasn’t read, the way he’s refused to call them back when Laken kept trying to reach him.

He leans over to reach out.

He stops, hand hovering just above the plastic with its colorful case, the sensory sticker on the back of it that Laken had bought him. 

What happened after all the dinosaurs died, Tristan?

I, I, I don’t know, Dad.

Trick question, buddy. They didn’t. Paul’s eyes, bright and vibrant, gesturing to a bird in a tree nearby. Nothing stays the same and lives forever except alligators and sharks.

Right because, because they’re perfect.

Exactly. Dinosaurs died, sure, but they didn’t die, too. They just changed to suit the world after the one they knew how to live in was gone. Imagine, Tris. 

Imagine what?

Imagine the world destroyed and in darkness, buried in ash. Everything you know is gone, ruined, wrecked beyond repair. And imagine… imagine that you learn to eat seeds and little mice instead of big animals and leaves. Imagine you become smaller and smaller. Imagine that your arms turn to wings, that your bones hollow out to carry you higher above the piles of ash that turn to grass and to life again.

What? I, I, I don’t, um, I don’t understand-... Dad, um, I don’t, I don’t... know what you mean.

Right, sorry. Just... imagine you’re a dinosaur.

He’d laughed. Okay.

Now imagine your dinosaur family is gone, and you have to become something else. What do you become? Being a dinosaur means dying, right?

Um. Right.

So imagine that you look at death and say, no thanks. No, you’re not going to be over. This isn’t it for you. Even a meteor the size of the entire sky can’t end you. Instead of dying out, no, you look at history, at geological time, and you say…

Paul had trailed off.

Say what? What, what do I say?

Don’t tell your mom but-... you look at the end of the world and you say... fuck this, I’m going to learn to fly.

Chris picks up his phone, finds Laken’s name and photo in his contacts. It’s a photo of the two of them together, Chris and Laken smiling and laughing as he smears whipped cream on their nose and they smear a cross of fluffy white into his forehead. 

He dials.

They pick up on the third ring.

“Chris? Oh my God, Chris, are you okay? Are you-... are you okay, baby?” Their voice shakes, and he closes his eyes. 

This time, he lets the tears slip out and run down his face. “H-Hey, Laken, um, I, I, I-... I’m… I wondered if you, um, if you could, uh… are you busy?”

“Am I-... Chris, where are you?”

“The, um, the coffeeshop-”

“I’m on my way. Don’t you dare fucking move.”

At their usual table, at their usual time, Cilly and Sean Malley start to talk amicably about the week ahead. But he keeps an eye on Paul’s boy, where he speaks a few sentences and then hangs up the phone, looking out the window at the rain.

It’s twenty minutes before a new car pulls up outside, and umbrella-less, the partner Sean has seen with Tristan before comes racing inside, a blur of black clothes and black hair and brown skin. Paul’s boy stands, and his partner throws themself at him so hard the two of them fall backwards onto the couch.

They start laughing, and shortly after to cry. 

Their hands come up to either side of Tristan’s face, and they lean forward to kiss the scar on his forehead. He can’t hear what they say to each other, but he doesn’t need to. 

Ronnie, he thinks, would like this spitfire person that Paul’s boy is so in love with. 

That’s one wrong put right, at least for the moment.

One more to go.

Sean smiles and sips his cooling coffee.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears

Just Go On from Kimmy Schmidt