#raven's blow dart

[theravequeen]

Hello regretevator nation

I turned my pressure OC into a regretevator OC because Sebastian's Wares floor exists

Anyways here's Night Light interacting with Folly, my beautiful princess with a disorder

These r two different conversations btw. Both lore relevant. Feel free to ask me questions or something idk man ✌️

[nightlight-and-co]

OOC: Hey gang!! I decided to make an ask blog for my pressure OCs because I've been thinking about them a lot lately ✨

If you need an introduction to them, you can go here:

As for responses,,,,

I will try to do sketch responses, but no guarantee every question will have one!

Night Light will respond in blue text

Blow Dart will respond in orange text

And Eclipse Eel will answer in red text (I'd do black but I don't want it to be confusing 😭)

Happy Questioning, and thank you for showing interest in my OCs if you do!

Also any answers about Sebastian will be a weird mix of how I see Sebastian and also @novasolstarr's Sebastian (sorry for the tag nova HELP) because i wormed my way into their au like the parasite that i am

Ok that's all enjoy folks!

-TheRaveQueen

[poisonlove]

la maledizione degli Addams²

Pairing: wednesday Addams X reader

Wednesday had been avoiding you, deliberately ignoring the itch she felt every time you were near, focusing solely on her investigation. Though it pained her to avoid the deep connection with her soulmate, her determination to solve the mysteries surrounding her took precedence over any emotion. Her investigations had paid off: she had discovered a secret library that led her to the book with the missing page about Rowan (luckily after the Poe Cup), and she had followed her leads into the woods during Outreach Day, finding the lair of the monster and planning to visit it with Eugene.

But unfortunately Enid had dragged her to the Raven.

Wednesday had chosen to use Tyler as a scapegoat. The normal boy, attracted to her, represented a useful resource for her goals. She knew she could exploit his interest to focus on her investigations while distancing herself from Galpin.

But when she saw Eugene with his backpack ready for their excursion, a pressure tightened in her chest. The disappointment on Eugene’s face was palpable, an expression that struck Wednesday in an unexpected way.

"Don’t go into the woods," she told him, her black eyes fixed on him with an intensity that sent chills down his spine.

"We'll go after the party. Stay close" she added.

At the entrance to the ballroom, the itch she had felt grew more intense. Without thinking her eyes began to search for you among the crowd. There you were. A burning fire ignited inside her and in an involuntary gesture she clenched her jaw, producing a crack that revealed her growing frustration. The sight of Yoko, your dance partner, only fueled her irritation.

Damn curse.

The Addams curse that she had always considered both a blessing and a burden now amplified her feelings, making each moment even more painful.

The image of Y/N laughing and enjoying herself with Yoko struck her like a blow to the heart. A pang of pain spread through her chest as if her soul was being torn apart. Every smile from Y/N, every glance exchanged with Yoko felt like a mortal wound.

Wednesday found herself caught in a tearing conflict: on one side was her untamed nature pushing her to keep her distance; on the other an overwhelming desire to get closer, to reconnect with you even if it meant facing vulnerability.

Her gaze involuntarily shifted to Yoko.

The vampire with her charming smile and relaxed demeanor only amplified Wednesday's frustration.

"Damn it," she thought as her hands tightened around Tyler's arm. She wanted to run away but she knew she couldn’t. Her soulmate was there and despite everything, the urge to move closer was undeniable.

Yoko chuckled softly as she noticed how sparks were crackling around your body. You could control lightning. Likely due to the intensity of Wednesday’s gaze, Y/N turned away from Yoko and directed her eyes in Wednesday's direction. By some twist of fate, you were the only two girls in the entire school wearing black dresses at a party where white was the required attire.

Enid's figure suddenly appeared at the entrance, blocking Wednesday’s view of you.

Damn.

"Wednesday! Oh my God, you look amazing!" the blonde exclaimed, bubbling with excitement. Enid was wearing a beautiful white dress with a touch of purple makeup on her face.

Strange.

Wednesday’s gaze shifted to the girl’s date.

"Strange choice for your date," she murmured in a flat voice. Her eyes shot a cold glare at the mayor's son, the leader of the trio that had tried to attack her twice.

The boy shuddered.

"Oh... he came to make his ex jealous, and I wanted to make Ajax jealous," Enid said with a shrug.

Her eyes darted to Tyler.

"Tyler! Are you Wednesday's date?" she asked in surprise, her blue eyes studying her roommate with intensity. "Yeah," the normal boy scratched his head, clearly embarrassed.

"I’m going to get a drink," the curly-haired boy added, leaving her alone with Enid.

"You know, I thought you’d come with Y/N," the blonde said casually, "You two... I don’t know... have great chemistry," she added with a small smile.

A shiver ran down Wednesday’s spine at the mention of your name.

"It seems to me she's having fun with Yoko," Addams murmured with venom, her eyes scanning toward your figure.

Despite the discomfort that enveloped her Wednesday launched into the dance. Her movements were distinct, rigid yet fluid, her hands tracing sinuous precise gestures, her steps seemingly defying the rhythm of the music itself. But during one of those turns her hand accidentally brushed against another’s.

As soon as the fingers touched a jolt of energy shot through her body like thousands of electric shocks sliding across her skin, like invisible spiders crawling in her stomach leaving her paralyzed for a moment. Her breath caught in her throat and her head tilted back in an almost unnatural movement, her eyes wide open toward the ceiling.

A vision struck her with the force of lightning.

The world shattered around her, the party lights vanishing and transforming into blinding flashes. Screams and distant voices echoed in her ears overlapping in an indistinguishable chaos. Among the flashes she glimpsed Crackstone, his menacing figure looming like an impending shadow. Then, like a distorted image, a wedding: black dahlias, a black dress, hands united in an eternal bond all enveloped in a disturbing aura.

Wednesday's body was as rigid as a tightly drawn string, her hands stiff by her sides, every muscle tensed under her pale skin. Her face was twisted in an expression of pure terror as her breath came out in ragged gasps.

And then, everything faded.

The vision dissolved leaving her shaken and trembling, her head still thrown back. Slowly, she tilted forward again as her eyes refocused on the ballroom now again wrapped in the dim lights and chaotic movements of their schoolmates. But the sensation of disorientation persisted, like an echo of the vision that still throbbed in her temples.

She felt something warm on her shoulders and realized it was your hands, steady and sure, supporting her. You had moved closer during her moment of weakness, your Y/C eyes fixed on her with a mixture of concern and alarm. Your expression was tense, your breath quick.

The curse.

Her body seemed unresponsive for a moment, her legs still unsteady. She felt a strange, dark current flowing between the two of you, as if physical contact had been the catalyst for a force that had awakened within her.

"Are you okay? It looked like a vision," you asked, your voice filled with genuine concern. Your tone was low, meant only for her, as you tried to understand what had happened.

Wednesday took a deep breath trying to regain control over the turmoil inside her, but she clearly felt the effects of the curse coursing through her veins. An invisible tension tightened her chest, pulling her forward, almost as if she were compelled to move closer to you. She took a step forward closing the distance between you and her gaze locked determinedly onto yours.

"Yes... I was dancing with Tyler... then I had a vision," Wednesday said in a flat tone, her dark eyes tracing every detail of your face trying to grasp something she couldn’t quite understand.

"Tyler left," you responded, your voice breaking slightly as if admitting that truth cost you more than you wanted to show. Then you clenched your jaw, your expression hardening and in that moment Wednesday swore she saw a flash behind your irises, a reflection that seemed to conceal a storm.

A question crossed her mind like lightning: were you jealous?

Without thinking Wednesday’s hands moved sliding from your shoulders to encircle your neck. The skin beneath her fingers was warm and she felt a shiver that shook her from within like a fire igniting in her chest and consuming her from the inside. She felt... overwhelmed, as if the tide of sensations enveloping her was pulling her underwater leaving her breathless. Her heart pounded in a way she had never experienced before, a frantic and unfamiliar rhythm that muddled her thoughts.

The itch that had overwhelmed her before was gone.

Instead a heat consumed her and pushed her closer to you, as if the simple touch of her hands on your skin was the only thing keeping her upright.

Maybe it's because we touched? she thought for a moment, her mind tangled between logic and instinct searching for an explanation.

"Wednesday, I..." you began, your voice hesitant, almost fearful, as if you were afraid of the reaction you might provoke.

At the mention of her name on your lips Wednesday barely stifled a moan, a low sound escaping from her throat and echoing deeply in her chest. It was as if the sound of her name spoken by you held a different weight, an intensity that made her bones vibrate and burned inside her. Every fiber of her being sensed that this was different, that there was something strange and unstoppable between the two of you, a force she couldn’t fully understand but could not ignore.

"Cara mia" Wednesday whispered, her words almost too intimate, laced with a subtle darkness that sent a shiver through you. Her hands around your neck tightened pulling you closer with a determined hungry strength.

Your cheeks flushed red, a blush that Wednesday watched with hungry eyes.

For a moment the world around you seems to disappear, dissolving into the silence that exists only between the heavy breaths that bind you together. Her mind is overtaken by a primal desire and all she wants is to taste your lips, to feel the warmth of your mouth on hers. She realizes that she wants to consume you whole as if that were the only way to quell the fire burning inside her, as if that were the only way to make you hers.

For the first time she understands what drove her parents toward each other with such intensity. Why Gomez could never stay away from Morticia, why every gesture between them seemed to almost defy the rules of propriety with their passion. But that thought blends with something else, a deep disgust for herself, for how quickly she has yielded to this impulse abandoning her rigidity and her ideals just because of a single touch from you.

Just as this internal struggle rages, a cold drop hits your cheek followed by another that slides down your nose tracing a scarlet path. The sensation of something wet and viscous on your face breaks the moment and when you look up, a red rain begins to fall, like blood pouring from the ceiling, staining your faces and clothes.

Chaos erupts around you.

The other students begin to scream, pushing against each other in a desperate attempt to escape the ballroom. Bodies collide and stumble in a frantic rush, slipping on the floor now covered in blood. The lights flicker on and off in a pulsing rhythm amplifying the panic.

But you remain still, trapped under Wednesday's gaze, her lips curling into a wicked smile. The urge to run her tongue along your cheek to taste you mixed with the blood overwhelms her.

Suddenly a body crashes into her, shoving her violently to the side. Wednesday whirls around, muscles tense, fists clenched ready to retaliate against the intruder. But right in that moment her gaze goes lank and another vision seizes her, ragging her into a spiral of confused and painful images.

She sees red boots stepping on the ground, staining themselves with the dark red that flows like a river. And then a familiar face distorted by the pain caused by the beast's attack:

Eugene.

[novaursa]

Robert Baratheon x Targaryen!reader.

Aerys goes on his "everyone must burn" rant and his daughter tries unsuccessfully to talk him down. Finally, Jaime snaps and kills Aerys while ordering his father's men to hold the Princess back. She's not guilty, so he doesn't want her dead.

Robert claims the throne and dismisses Tywin's attempt to marry him to Cersei. Instead, Robert declares he'll "legitimatizes" his rule by marrying Rhaegar's sister, who is being held as a political prisoner. He's planning on using the smallfolks' love of her to soften the blow of taking the throne; if he kills her, there might be a riot he can't afford.

In the weeks Robert had spent settling into his new role as interim King, she's been depressed and inconsolable, especially after hearing of her mother's death. Not to mention just about everyone she loves has either betrayed her, died, or is out of her reach; Jaime, Rhaegar, Lyanna, Aerys, Rhaella, Arthur, Barristan, Viserys, Dany.

She's no longer speaking, hardly eating, and alternates between crying her eyes raw or staring numbly at nothing. She's barely sleeping. There is talk she'll starve herself. Hearing about Robert's plans doesn't do her fracturing psyche any favors, but it doesn't matter.

She sees memories of their relationship; meeting for the first time after he sees Lyanna and Rhaegar together; how cold he is to her. Running into her coming out of the library with an embarrsing book, which amuses him. Later finding her sketching him- teasing her instead of being embarrassed, finally seeing her instead of her twin. Still doesn't love her, though.

For all her lashing out at him, she still winds up at the alter.

3 three time skip and Targ Princess has given birth to her first child. It's the first hint of happiness she's shown in years and when Robert is let into the room, he's dumbfounded by how attractive her maternal side is to him.

The story ends with him trying to get closer, maybe under the guise of seeing the child and hoping she won't pull away when he finally touches her. Left open ended.

Thank you! Sorry for the original ask. I scrolled down it after you posted yoir response and went "Holy shit, that's a wall of words!"

I hope I shortened it enough. If not, I'll try again or you can cut anything you don't think adds to the story. Again, so sorry. And thank you if you choose to take on my request.

The Crown That Bled

Requests are closed

- Summary: He married you to keep the realm in line. You married him because you had no choice. And happiness is an elusive thing.

- Pairing: targ!reader/Robert Baratheon

- Rating: Explicit 18+ (just to be safe)

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @oxymakestheworldgoround @idenyimimdenial

- A/N: So, this was still a little too overwhelming for a short story and I've struggled with what to keep and what to discard. This is what I've managed to write with the information provided. I hope this is something you had in mind.

The Sept of Baelor smelled of incense and wilting roses. Smoke curled from brass censers, spiraling toward the high-arched dome where sunlight bled through colored glass, staining the floor in hues of crimson and gold. The bells tolled dully in the distance, sounding more like a funeral dirge than a wedding celebration. The gathered nobles whispered in hushed tones, draped in velvets and silks, eyes darting toward the altar and the lone figure standing beside it—the King, newly crowned and wide-shouldered in his fur-lined cloak of black and gold, Robert Baratheon.

You were not there yet.

You sat in the chambers they'd locked you in, a gilded cage fit for a princess—cold and quiet, except for the caw of a raven outside the window and the steady creak of footsteps as guards paced the hall. Your reflection in the mirror looked like a ghost: hollowed eyes rimmed in red, skin pale and drawn from weeks of mourning and madness. Your silver-gold hair hung in limp strands, unbrushed. You barely remembered the last time you bathed or ate. The food they left was always taken away, untouched or barely picked at. The maids stopped trying to coax you. You no longer spoke to them, or anyone.

They had told you of your mother’s death three nights past, and the sound you made then had not been human. You’d torn the hem of your dress, your nails bloodied your own arms, your sobs had echoed like a broken harp string long after you collapsed onto the stone floor. Rhaella—your mother, the last steady thing in a world of fire and betrayal—was dead, her frail heart giving out after the news of her husband's fate and her son's. You had not wept since then. Not truly. You had simply… leaked tears, as though your soul had cracked and the sorrow slipped through the fissures, silent and endless.

When you first heard Robert intended to marry you, you had laughed. It was a horrible sound, brittle and dry. Then you screamed. Screamed so long your voice disappeared. You spat on the servant who brought the message, shattered a goblet against the wall, and threatened to throw yourself from the tower window. But none of it mattered. You were the last piece left on the board—the only one of value. And Robert, ever the brute, ever the warrior, had turned conqueror and king. He didn’t want Cersei Lannister, despite Tywin’s persistence. He wanted you. Not for love. Not even for desire, though there had once been something hungry in the way he looked at you during court gatherings, long before the war. No, he wanted you to silence the blood in the streets, to win the hearts of those who still whispered your name as they lit candles for the dead dragon prince. Rhaegar's sister. A daughter of the old line. If he couldn’t kill the dragon, he would cage it. Wed it. Breed it.

A knock came at the door. You did not answer.

It creaked open anyway. You didn’t turn.

“Y/N,” a voice said, rough and low and too alive. “It’s time.”

You didn’t move.

He stepped closer, boots scraping the stone. “The realm needs this.”

The realm. You hated that word. The realm had taken everything from you.

Still, you rose. Slowly. Mechanically. The maids came, silent as ghosts, dressing you in the gown that had been ordered. White. As if your innocence could still be claimed. They wove braids into your hair, pinned a small crown of rubies and pearls. One offered you a veil. You shook your head.

And so you walked to the Sept without it, your face bare for the world to see—shattered, exhausted, and empty.

Robert turned when he saw you, and for a moment, something flickered in his blue eyes. Not victory. Not lust. Something quieter. Sadder. He didn’t smile.

You stood beside him, your hand limp in his. His palm was calloused, warm, too large around yours.

The Septon's voice droned on, reading the vows of House and Faith. You barely heard it. Words floated past like wind in a dead garden.

“Do you, Robert of House Baratheon, take Y/N of House Targaryen—”

“I do,” he said before the Septon even finished, the words rasped from his throat like they pained him.

You said nothing. The Septon looked at you, hesitated, then gently prompted: “Princess?”

Your lips parted. The words did not come.

Robert’s hand tightened.

You closed your eyes. You saw Rhaegar on the Trident, dying with Lyanna’s name on his lips. You saw Jaime's haunted face as he watched your father burn the city down in his mind. You saw your mother’s hands, trembling as she held baby Viserys. You saw Dany’s face, too young to understand any of it. All of it gone.

“I do,” you whispered.

The bells rang again.

The crowd clapped politely.

And the man who had helped kill your family leaned forward and kissed your cheek, soft and solemn, as if it made anything better. You did not flinch. You did not cry. You did not breathe.

You were a queen now. But there was no joy in it.

Only ash.

The birthing chamber was quiet now, save for the faint pop and hiss of the brazier in the corner and the distant echo of revelers in the Red Keep, drinking to the health of the new heir. It had been a hard labor, a long one—two days and a night of pain so deep it had splintered your mind, left you delirious with heat and blood and the haunting memories of every Targaryen woman who had died doing this same sacred, monstrous thing. You had not screamed, even when the pain was worst. You had whimpered, sobbed, clenched your teeth until your jaw ached, but never screamed. That part of you had been burned out long ago.

But now, as the sun bled pale gold through the sheer curtains of the tower windows, you lay propped on linen pillows, your hair damp with sweat, skin aglow with the exhaustion of survival. And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, your arms were full. A child. Your child. A small, warm bundle swaddled in Targaryen red silk, already calm, already curious. He blinked up at you with wide, unfocused eyes—eyes that were not violet like yours, but a deep, rich blue that reminded you too cruelly of the man who sired him.

Still, you did not hate him for it. You did not hate him for anything. You loved him. Already. Utterly.

You traced his downy cheek with a trembling finger, and for a moment, a smile—small, stunned, wondrous—broke across your face like sunlight through a storm. The midwives had seen it. The maester had noticed. They exchanged glances, hushed and wide-eyed. It was the first expression of happiness they’d ever seen on your face since the sack of King’s Landing. The stillness in you had cracked.

“My lady,” one of them said, gently, reverently. “The King is waiting.”

You didn’t answer right away. You only looked down again, studying your son's tiny fists, his slow, sleepy blink. “Let him in,” you said at last, softly.

The door creaked open moments later, and Robert entered.

He was cleaner than usual, though his hair was still a bit unkempt, and the heavy cloak of royal blue slung over his broad shoulders gave him a warlike silhouette. He looked older, wearier than the man who had crushed Rhaegar’s chest with a hammer, older than the roaring brute who had seized your hand and crown in one swift move. But his blue eyes sharpened the moment he saw you—really saw you, sitting there in the sunlight, your hair loose around your shoulders, the silver tangled and darkened with sweat, your gown undone at the breast as you nursed your newborn son.

The sight stopped him cold.

He didn’t speak for a long moment. He simply stared, his mouth parted slightly, his gaze flickering over you not with the drunken lust he usually turned on brothel girls or serving wenches, but with something far more quiet and dangerous. Hunger, yes, but layered over awe. You were radiant, even with the fatigue etched into your face, even with the bruising along your throat where the maids had steadied you in the worst of the pain. There was softness in you now that hadn’t been seen since before the war, before madness and fire took your family from you. A part of you had returned, and it shook him.

You didn’t look up right away. You focused on the baby, adjusting the swaddling gently. “He’s healthy,” you said at last. “Strong. They say he didn’t even cry until he was cleaned.”

Robert cleared his throat. “He’s mine, then,” he said, trying for jest, but the words came out too raw.

You looked at him. There was no bite in your eyes today. Just tiredness. And something else—something soft and distant, like the echo of a dream.

“I named him Baelor,” you murmured. “After the Blessed.”

He blinked, clearly surprised. “Not… not a more fierce dragon name?”

“No.” You kissed the baby's forehead. “He was born in fire, but he deserves peace.”

Robert stepped closer, more slowly than usual, as if he feared startling you. He was so large that his shadow cast over the bed, over you and the boy. “May I…?” he asked, and his voice faltered. “May I hold him?”

You hesitated. You didn’t recoil, but your arms tightened instinctively around the bundle in your arms.

“I won’t hurt him,” he said, quieter this time. “Or you.”

You nodded, slowly, and shifted the child just enough for him to slip his arms underneath. He moved with surprising gentleness, lowering himself to the edge of the bed, cradling his son as if he were holding a cup made of glass. Baelor blinked once at him, then yawned.

“Seven hells,” Robert whispered, a chuckle caught somewhere in his throat. “He’s real.”

You watched him closely, head tilted, your hands still hovering near the baby’s blanket. You didn’t lean away. You didn’t tell him to go.

He glanced at you sideways, unsure, and something flickered again in his expression. Not just pride. Not just male satisfaction. But need.

“You smiled when you looked at him,” he said.

“I did,” you whispered.

He was silent for a beat longer, then dared to reach out. Not for the baby, but for your hand. Just two fingers grazing the edge of yours. Barely touching.

You didn’t pull away.

Not yet.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

“…Jamil-senpai? Is that you? Ah, I-.. I didn’t expect to see you here, but it’s good to see you again. …How have you been? Have you… gotten a chance to travel the world?”

(Romantic + assume in the context of lots of things left unsaid in the past, feelings never pursued etc., either interaction or hcs whichever’s easier! Congrats on 10k+ Raven!! 🎉🎉)

What comes after Ever After?

“Ah.”

He turns when you call his name, and it’s like cupid’s arrow has shot through your chest, tearing that tender flesh apart. It’s him alright. The boy from 10 years ago, the one you almost gave your heart to—but then didn’t.

Jamil is as viper-like as ever. His form is slim and lithe, the muscle of a dancer—and trained bodyguard—concealed behind a set of demure terracotta robes with golden stitching. Dark, glossy hair falls loose over one shoulder, feathering a swan-like neck, the rest tumbling down his back adorned with beading and bangles akin to glistening scales. The pointedness to his gaze had sharpened with age, almost like he had used a knife to draw on his eyeliner.

His face is like it was before. A mask of placidity, an unreadable emotion set in the grey of his eyes—but you catch the slight purse of his lips when he glimpses you.

“… I didn’t expect to reunite with you here myself. Hello again.” Jamil humbly lowers his head in a bow, the accessories woven into his hair clinking together. Professional, formal. “It has been many a moon.”

Too many to count.

But you know, deep down, you had counted every last one of them. The glowing white orb in the sky as it waxed into existence and waned out of it… Cycling endlessly. Many nights had been spent staring out of a window, arm draped over the sill, tracing the cut of his profile in the crevices and craters of the moon.

Sometimes, using your pointer and thumb, you'd pretend to pluck that pearl out of the sky. You imagined it as a grape. Tangible, easy to have and to hold.

So close, yet so far. Untouchable, unteachable for you. Always wondering about what could have been.

You push down the sadness welling within you, forcing your happiness.

“You look as though you have something to say.” He inclines his head, and his hair seems to spill like wine into a glass. “And here I thought I was the one being asked to share my secrets.”

“Y-You are.”

There’s a faint, melodious chuckle. It blows off the dust that coats your memories, rattling them to life.

Jamil cups a hand around his mouth and whispers. Those lips are scandalous—you feel as though a snake’s forked tongue might dart out from between them, tempting you to take a bite of some forbidden fruit.

“Then shall I steal you away and bend your ear?" His eyes cut to the ongoing reunion, the chaos of it. Students chatting loudly, music bumping, fruit punch sloshing. "I fear that this celebration, amusing as it is, isn’t the most conducive for spinning my globetrotting stories.”

"Oh...!" You lit up. "So you were able to travel?"

"Predominantly for business trips, yes--though I suppose it still counts as travel. You've yet to see it for yourself, correct?" He lays a hand over his chest, offering you the other. "There's time to spare. Let me share the whole world with you."

Your heart flutters at the sight.

Is this... what I think it is? The start of something new?

In a dream-like trance, you find yourself automatically slipping your hand into his. He's slightly cool to the touch, like how you imagine the scales of a snake to be.

The moon.

You're holding it, holding him.

Jamil smiles.

At last, he has you, too.

"And perhaps, while we're at it, you would care to regale me with stories of your own. You have me curious about what it is you've been keeping to yourself all this time."

[pomefioredove]

May I have a chocolate cookie n 3 with chocolate chips and marshmallows 😋

omg I haven't done an RSA reader in a long time but this is perfecttt!! good lord I'm ngl to you guys I live for drama like this, I know che'nya isn't as popular in the fandom but this is worth reading bc I had TOO much fun writing it

order #3, chocolate with chocolate chips, marshmallows

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ especially when upside down

summary: no one ever said that being riddle's ex would be easy tropes: roommate au, fake dating characters: chenya additional info: romantic, gender neutral reader, reader is not yuu, reader is from RSA, riddleyuu real, probably ooc, PDA and kissing warning (this CORNBALL)

Being Che'nya's roommate for the past three years, you've been involved in your fair share of pranks and ploys.

This is, by far, the dumbest.

"This is an awful idea," you say, letting him fiddle with your frilly tie. "He'll be too busy with the festivities, anyway, maybe we should just-"

He pushes a finger to your lips and shushes you, shutting you up.

"You worry more than an elder oyster," Che'nya chides. "Let's be off."

He cavorts you through the gates of Night Raven College, a place you seldom visit- at least, nowadays.

"I just don't think this is the right way to rekindle with Riddle,"

He smirks, his fangs poking his lower lip. "All ways are right ways,"

To him, at least. You drag your feet through the curious crowds, their sharp-toothed smiles taunting you. You probably won't even see Riddle, you reason with yourself. He's probably busy. Yeah! You won't even-

"Che'nya! And- ah! It's you!"

Damn it all.

Riddle might be working, but Trey-

"Wow, it's been a few months, huh?" the vicewarden smiles. "I, uh... wasn't expecting you. Riddle's running a few last-minute checks with the presenters, and then we're all heading to the VDC. You can walk with us."

"No," you say.

"Yes!" Che'nya counters.

Trey smiles and shakes his head. "You two make... an interesting pair. How you ended up so close is a mystery, even to me,"

Che'nya grins. "You might even say we're-"

You slap a hand over his overeager lips and give Trey an awkward smile. "W-we should start walking!"

Trey seems wary, but he is, as always, too polite to ask. The three of you start walking, and with each step, your stomach sinks lower and lower. Why'd you let him talk you into this?

It takes almost ten minutes to reach the coliseum. Night Raven College is much larger than it looks from the outside... or perhaps you just feel very small.

"Alright, Riddle should be around here somewhere..." Trey says, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun. "Ah, there they are."

They? You follow his eyes to Riddle, as red-haired and overdressed as you remember, talking to someone scrappy, scrawny, and nearly his height.

"Who's that?" you ask. Che'nya blows air in your ear, bothering you to say he's unhappy with your lack of attention on him.

Trey leads you to the two, as if marching into battle. "That's the Prefect," he says. "They and Riddle are..."

He hesitates, his eyes darting to the way Che'nya is tugging on your hair to avoid your pout.

"They're what, Trey?"

"Uh... close. Here we are!"

Upon hearing his voice, Riddle turns towards Trey, and the rest of you. He's smiling, his cheeks are round and plump, his face full of color. He looks... happy. It's strange.

...His hand is tightly around theirs. The Prefect.

Your stomach turns.

"Ah, you're all here," Riddle says. He eyes the way Che'nya is leaning on your shoulder. He doesn't say a word about it. "...Uh, a... pleasure... to see you again."

"And you," you say. Che'nya sets a hand on your waist, as if daring someone to ask.

And you stick out your hand, desperately trying to prevent that. "I-I don't think we've met," you say, to the Prefect. "I'm a... a... friend of Riddle's."

They smile. They're sweet, so unlike the other Night Raven students you've met.

"Oh, nice! And you know Trey and Che'nya, too?"

Che'nya perks up. "One might say that we-"

"WE'RE ROOMMATES!" you spit out, preventing him from saying any more than that.

The Prefect smiles awkwardly and shakes your hand. You can just tell they're thinking "these people are weird."

"You go to school here?" you ask. Surely not. If they did, someone would have told you about them by now. Or you've just been spending way too much time with Che'nya...

They nod. "Oh, yes. A few months now. You must go to Royal Sword, right?"

"That's right," you say, crossing your arms. Che'nya teasingly bites your shoulder. No one brings it up. "How do you know Riddle?"

"Oh, it's a... long story," they laugh. "We-"

"We're partners," Riddle interrupts, crossing his arms in parody of your pose. Your knees are knocking together. Why is this so hard?

Che'nya sets his chin on your shoulder, smiling. You don't stop him from speaking this time. "Ah, you too?"

Trey takes a step back, as if planning his escape. You can sympathize with that.

""Too?" Meaning what, now?" Riddle responds, his eyes narrowing.

"We've been tithering to tell you," says the cat. "But we wanted to wait. Where's the fun in no surprise?"

"Enough of this. Spit it out, what's it mean?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

Without so much as a warning (though it might've been brought to your attention with tap of his fingertip on your lips), Che'nya kisses you. On the mouth. In front of everyone.

When he pulls away, Riddle looks more appalled than envious. Trey has backed himself into the wall, and the Prefect is blushing.

"...I see," Riddle says, eyes wide. "You never were one for following social conventions, Che'nya. I wish you the best. Just... don't... do that in front of me again."

"The Prefect should head inside!" Trey blurts out, "Vil is probably looking for them!"

Thank the Sevens. "O-oh- right!" they say, "I-I'll see you all at the VDC!"

They stumble away, obviously just as taken aback as Riddle. Maybe they're meant for each other, after all, you think. You're not as revolted by the idea as before. Che'nya's hand is still on your waist.

"...Go, Night Raven," Trey says, weakly.

Che'nya's chin sits on your shoulder again, and he smiles. You scoff, finding your confidence. "...Royal Sword Academy is a shoe-in for the win,"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Riddle mutters, smoothing out his clothing as if it'll help him with his composure. "Vil Schoenheit is a formidable trainer."

Your eyes dart to the door which the Prefect- Riddle's partner- had run into.

"Mm, but they're right, of course," Che'nya purrs, his arms around your waist. "RSA will win by a hare... I mean, a hair. The heart always wins over the head... especially when upside down."

Riddle rolls his eyes. You smile. "That, I understand,"

[senualothbrok]

Mortal pleasures

Summary: Gale has shown you how gods bond in the astral. Now, you show him how good mortal pleasures can be.

Word count: 2.1k

AO3 link

Disclaimers: NSFW. 18+. Smut. Gale x female Tav/reader.

More disclaimers: Oral sex (blow job). Vaginal fingering.

A/N: This fic is long overdue, because I am a Gale-deserves-a-blow-job truther. Dedicated to @practicallydeadinside-blog who I love more than words can describe!

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

“And that’s how I got this baby.” Karlach smacks the scar on her right thigh with a grin. 

You nod absently. You can barely make out the jests that roar around your companions, their faces illuminated only by the campfire you huddle around on this spring night. Your focus is on him alone.

Gale’s gaze is sharp and hot, his lips curled in a sideways smile. He tilts his head ever so slightly. You do not move your eyes from him. It does not escape you, the dart of his tongue through the briefest parting of his mouth. You bite your lip.

Astarion coughs, slapping his knees as he rises. “And with that revolting tale, I think it’s time for us all to clear off.” 

“What?” Karlach whines. “Already? Boooo…”

“Take a hint, darling,” Astarion drawls. “I’ve had enough of whatever this is.” He makes a gesture of distaste towards you and Gale. 

You flush. Astarion chortles.

“Enjoy the magic, but please keep it down. We know how…verbose…the two of you can be.” 

You shrink at the winks, grumbles and jostling of the rest of your companions as they file away to their respective tents. It was wishful thinking to hope they were not aware of your time with Gale the night before, when your souls bonded in the astral. To think that they could not see how both of you had been transformed by the experience.

There is a chill in the air, but your core flames. There is no embarrassment in Gale’s eyes. Only the raw heat of desire.

“Alone at last,” he breathes.

Tonight, he is unusually quiet. He lets his actions speak. You barely make it to his tent. He wraps his arms around you from behind, unlacing the straps of your bodice with uncanny speed. Your struggle for breath as his deft fingers clutch at your breasts, your shoulders, your hips. You have been waiting all day for this moment. To be with him, to have him all to yourself. To give yourself to him again. 

You grind backwards against his thrumming body, aching for more of his touch. He clasps your chin to angle your neck back, as if he is starving to see your face. Your tongues glide against each other, frantic with hunger, a frenzy of moans. He tastes sweet and strong, like aged wine, and you cannot get enough. You can never have enough of him. 

“I didn’t lie,” you whisper when you break apart to breathe. “You’re a good kisser.”

He smiles against your lips before he plunges back in, lapping eagerly at your wet warmth. You are drunk from his musk, the sourness of sweat, the smoothness of sandalwood. You are not careful as you whip open his robe, shoving his sleeves down his arms, pushing them desperately down. You need to see him. You need to feel and smell and taste every inch of his quivering flesh. 

He lets out a little laugh, surprised, not displeased. Then, with one swift motion, he wrenches your breeches off your quaking legs. You gasp at the force of it, the smouldering in his eyes. His fingers dive behind your panties, already damp with desire. He almost rips them off.

“I want to show you more,” he pants. “Everything you could possibly imagine. Let me show you.”

A crackle of blue thread sizzles between his fingers. A spasm of bliss tears through you like lightning, sending you gasping for breath. You burn for more of it. But you steel yourself. 

Since your night together, you have not been able to get the idea out of your mind. You have been ravenous for it. And now is your chance.

You pull back.  

“No.”

Gale falters, the blue light of his magic fading into the purple of his glowing chest. You press against him again, licking at his bottom lip, gently sucking it into your mouth. He buckles against you.

“No?” 

You smile, teasing but resolute. 

“Yesterday, you showed me how to bond the way gods do.”

Your hand trails down his abdomen, following the hairs that meander from his navel to his groin. His breath hitches. He hangs on your every word, your every move. You are not a wizard or a sorcerer, but he is under your spell.

“Today, I want to show you how good mortal pleasures can be.”

His eyes flash. Before he can object, you push him downwards and back, so that he is reclined on his bed roll. Uncertainty blinks across his features as you pull his briefs down to expose the thrust of his cock. You clench your thighs as a string of moisture trickles from your folds.

He stares at you on your knees by his side. You lean forward, taking hold of his shaft, so thick and long in your small hands. Dark pink and purpling, veins drifting down to a wiry nest framed by the muscles of his lean thighs. You wet your lips. His cock pulses in your fingers, a bead spilling from its tip as he exhales sharply.  

“Gods,” he heaves.

You bend over. You are acutely aware of the way his body is suspended in the anticipation of pleasure. You can feel it vibrate, chasing after your touch. The tent is awash in his purple flame. You flare with yearning as you flick your tongue into his slit, gathering this first trace of his salty sweetness. He arches his back and groans.

“Has anyone ever done this to you?” 

Your tongue traces a slow, winding stripe down the underside of his cock. He trembles. You look up at him, mouth open, eyes wide and expectant.

He swallows. “A long time ago. Once, when I was very young. It was…quick. Clumsy. Messy.”

You suspected this might be the case. There was no way Mystra would have ever lowered herself to give Gale such a human gift, and you cannot imagine Gale asking any lover for such raw, unbridled ecstasy.  It makes you even more desperate. You want nothing more than to give this to him now.

“We’ll rectify that.”

You drag your tongue in a smooth circle at the base of his cock. He stifles a whine as his hips roll closer to your mouth. Gale’s longing is so palpable that it throbs wet and hot within you. But when you look up, he is frowning. He reaches towards you. 

“My love,” he huffs. “You really don’t need to-”

You anticipated this. Gale prides himself on giving, not receiving. He never asks, for fear of being turned away. He cannot fathom that anyone would get on their knees to show him their adoration. That anyone would ache to give him this most mortal of pleasures.

“I want to, Gale.” 

You take his straying hand and run your mouth over his palm. His eyelids flutter as your tongue flickers softly over the pads of his fingers. 

“I want to taste you. I want to show you how good this feels. Please let me show you.”

It is not completely selfless. You have been dreaming of doing this to Gale since you shared a moment in the Weave. You enjoy this act much more than he knows. He will find out just how much you enjoy it.

He grasps for a response and fails. For an instant, you savour the sight of Gale rendered speechless by your designs. Then you resume your position, your face tilted upwards beside his growing hardness. You can see him unravelling at the sight of it resting against your cheek, hovering beside the shining plumpness of your lips. His brown eyes are almost black, dilated in a stupor of need. 

“Or does this not feel good?”

He lets out a guttural moan as you slide his cock into your mouth. Your lips tighten around his girth as you roll your tongue around its head. You pump forward and backwards, once, twice, three times. With each stroke, waves of molten heat blaze through your centre, your clit swelling against your folds as you rock. Moisture trails down your chin as you draw back and look up at him.

“Do you like that?” 

The sound that escapes his lips is a muffled plea. His face is flushed, helpless, urgent. 

You grin. His back bows as you take him back inside you. You take your time, drawing out his pressure points, feeling for the rhythm of his pleasure. The slick sounds of you lapping and sucking at his cock fill the tent as you drive his length deeper and faster into you. Something about these wet, gulping noises makes you suddenly, overwhelmingly voracious.

“By the gods…”

You cannot decipher all the words that start tumbling from Gale now. You glide hungrily down to the hilt of his cock, thrusting it against the back of your mouth. Small bursts of his pleasure trickle down your throat like nectar as he shifts and sighs. Every blast of his yearning pools like lava in your belly. You whimper into his shaft, your hips grinding down into the bedroll, searching frantically for release.

As the storm surges within you, you realise that his groans are growing louder and closer together. You can feel him hardening, stretching your jaw with each tremor of your arousal. He fills you up so completely, there is almost no space for breath. You are famished, gorging yourself on him. 

You are abruptly aware of urgent fingers pressing between your thighs, demanding entrance. You sit up, turning to face him.

“Allow me,” he rasps.

You shake your head, trying to push his hand away. He does not budge.

“Please. Can you not tell what your pleasure does to me?” His gaze is ravenous. “Let me. Please.”

It was not your intention to allow it. You were to give and not receive. But you are powerless to resist as his fingers nestle into your gleaming folds. When he finds your throbbing clit, you crumple against him. His groin rises to meet you, his cock twitching at your undoing. You suck him back into your mouth with a needy cry.

You do not need a tadpole to know each other’s feelings now. You can taste the hardness of his desire, as he can feel the wetness of yours.

You shudder against each other as the world becomes a chaos of purple spasms. All you know is the whirling of your tongue around the head of his cock as he traces frenzied circles around the centre of your fire. A hot stream of slick melts between your thighs as he bucks against you. You can no longer distinguish between his moans and yours.

As his fingers flutter in their maddening dance, your mouth quickens to match his speed. You are aware of his muscles tightening as you grind against his hand, rubbing at every coiled nerve until it is ready to snap. Your whines are muffled vibrations against his skin. He lurches and keens as you lap and slide up and down his shaft with increasing fury, pushing you closer and closer to the edge of ecstasy.

Then the ache within you explodes. 

The world shatters into blinding shockwaves of white heat. It is all you can do to keep your mouth wrapped tightly around his swelling cock, your only anchor as you drown in the searing surges of your pleasure. As you writhe through the aftershocks, you feel a convulsion down his chest, snapping through his hips, jolting at the back of your throat. 

He shouts out a strangled sound, his toes curling, his free hand clinging to the side of the bedroll. You quiver as the taste of Gale fills your mouth. You swallow each rush of his delight as he rides out the peak of his climax, his features twisting in the beautiful anguish of release.

You remain in that position as your breathing returns to normal. Slowly, your vision clears. His cock is still half hard and glistening as you part from it. You brush away drops of his spend from your lips and chin as you sit up, steadying yourself. 

He looks up at you from where he lies panting, his tousled waves a tumble around his head. His face is radiant with passion. His chiselled abdomen heaves with the exhaustion of bliss. The mark on his chest glows a muted violet.

“That was…”

He has no words for the experience. His gaze is bright with awe, gratitude, adoration. Swollen with love. It glints with desire, still pure and unquenched.  

You beam. “That’s how mortals do it.” 

He pulls you into his arms with a throaty laugh.

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

Liked this fic? Check out my other work.

[trashogram]

He Chose You (P. 4)

Lucifer/Reader - Lucifer picks you to be his baby mama. Rated E

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 13.5 | Part 14 | End

You’re resting against the trunk of a tree at the top of a little hill.

It’s picturesque — the hill is gentle, sloping down to a field of tall yellow-green grass. You can smell it, wafting up with the pollen from golden flowers. The sky above is alive with pinks and oranges bleeding into yellows and whites. A symphony of coos, chirps and pitter-patters of tiny things skittering around have an oddly calming effect as you settle back and allow yourself to exist. 

Eyes closed, you hear the sound of something larger than a mouse rounding the tree trunk. 

“I got it!” A feminine voice breaks the calm.

You don’t have to look to feel the other person at your side. They lower themselves to the ground, knees brushing against yours when they cross their legs to sit next to you. 

You don’t have to look, but you do. 

There’s a woman with you now, with hair so long and blonde it’s almost white. Her chin, lips, nose, and eyes are delicate and soft.

She’s not wearing any clothes, and you can see faint scars and wrinkles against the uninterrupted expanse of her skin. 

“It’s so pretty, I’ve never seen one so red.” The woman is happy to see you, speaking with all the familiarity of a sister. 

She presents an apple to you, taken from behind her back like a surprise. 

It is red. Red like an oversized ruby, or a still-beating heart full of blood. All except for the missing chunk made by delicate teeth, yellow-white meat peeking through.

You accept her offering without a word. Even when it’s imperfect, you’re mesmerized by the fruit.

“I took a bite. I’m sorry.” She gazes at you, eyes flinty. “Does that bother you?”

You shake your head vehemently, holding the apple between your hands as if it’s the most precious thing in the world. “No, of course not.”  

The woman’s lips quirk up into a satisfied smile, growing bigger when you lift the apple to your mouth and bite into it. The taste is extraordinary — sweet juice bursts against your tongue when the crisp flesh gives under your teeth with barely any resistance.

You savor the first bite out of necessity but soon you’re ravenous. You can’t get enough. 

Your companion exhales gently through her nose and looks up at the colorful sky. She seems to relish in the breeze that passes by, making the leaves above you rustle and the tall grass ahead blow back quietly. 

The apple is almost gone when she looks back at you, teeth showing as she grins. “Careful there!”

She giggles, reaching out to tap the hand of your hand in warning. It’s all playful, even when you pout and draw back. 

“You’ll eat the seeds if you keep that up.” She says. “Something might take root and grow if you do.” 

Her words give you pause, but only for the length of four or five heartbeats. The core of the apple is no less refreshing and before you know it, you’re holding the stem. 

“Thank you.” You tell her earnestly. 

The stem rolls in your palm, until it appears to wiggle and your brow furrows. In the back of your mind, you think you should be more startled to see it moving on its own. But when it grows pink-gray and ringed, and you realize it’s a worm, you simply place the flat of your hand on the ground below and watch it find its way into the dirt. 

Sudden warmth against your cheek has you looking back up. The woman is inches from your face. Her eyelashes are dark and long and you could count them if you wanted. 

The woman kisses you without a word, hands coming up to cup the back of your head. Surprise does spark up your spine as her tongue darts behind your lips. It’s as if she’s drinking deeply from you before she lets go. 

“Forgive me. I wanted another taste.” She giggles again. “It’s even sweeter than I remember.” 

Your face burns. You open your mouth, ready to ask the questions burning the tip of your tongue before the thud of footsteps sound from behind you. 

She frowns, light leaving her eyes as she glances behind your shoulder. “Oh I was hoping we’d have more time.” 

Her eyes cut across to yours. “Wake up before he sees you!”

———

A wave of pure, unadulterated nausea swept over you as soon as you opened your eyes. You laid still for a long moment, trying to reign in the urge to vomit before you deemed it safe enough to observe your surroundings. 

A vague sense of confusion surfaced through the malaise when you realized that you were in your living room. There was a carmine blanket tucked around you, and with moderate difficulty you raised your head to see that, yes, a fluffy pillow was resting under your head.

Your reality conflicted with the still-present smell of tall, wet grass and a chill from the summer breeze against your skin.

With ridiculous care, you turned your head back into the pillow and muffled a whine. You couldn’t recall feeling a hangover of this caliber ever before in your life.

‘Wait.’

You weren’t hungover. Well, maybe you were but not from alcohol. 

Your neighbors had invited you to dinner, then drugged you. 

Already sick, you forced yourself to breathe deeply before shifting on the couch and pulling up the blanket. Despite confirming that your body was still clothed, you found yourself shaking. 

It didn’t make sense to you how anyone could do this regardless of their intentions. You could not fathom why two people willing to harm you in one way hadn’t done more than that. 

Your relief was short-lived, as dull and diluted as it was, when you twisted to lay back down and came face-to-face with:

A black glove, some aspirin and a glass of water sat on your coffee table.

You blinked rapidly.

There was a small business card in stark contrast to the otherwise colorless ensemble. It was thick stock, white, and flashing fancy golden script:

Lucifer Morningstar

Your stomach dropped as an unnaturally white face with glowing yellow and red eyes flashed in your mind. 

The hallucination you’d seen last night — his image faded from your mind and you were left drifting in a blank, black void. 

No thoughts. 

———

The headache and nausea were considerably lesser when you woke up again. 

Looking at the items on your coffee table — ‘glove, aspirin, water still there’ — you looked at each one and for one, strangely hopeful moment you didn’t see a card. 

Oh no, it had just fallen on the floor. 

———

Lucifer Morningstar 

It was an odd business card, with its little red, white and gold designs on the edges. Fireworks, you eventually guessed. The ‘i’ in both first and last name were punctuated with them as well. 

As you’d popped the aspirin in your mouth and downed the water, you flipped the card over. You could feel your eyebrows rising to your hairline at the hastily written message on the back:

Proof you weren’t dreaming. 

Please Call Me

1-666-666-6669

Pacing was out of the question. Your limbs were still unsteady no matter how much you willed them to function. 

You were trapped on the couch trying to accept what your brain had been screaming at you since you awoke for the fifth time. 

How much time had passed? 

                                      Heaven and Hell were real, and so were God and the Devil. 

            And the Devil had paid you a visit. 

———

The indent you’d made into your stupid, hand-me-down sofa was probably permanent now that you’d spent who knows how long just rotting there. 

Contemplating, processing, fearing. 

Fleeting memories of tantrums you’d thrown as a child paralyzed you. Moments in your life that you’d already regretted so much they kept you up some nights — randomly, provoked by nothing — piled up in your brain. Each one harshened that sinking feeling inside your body. This kind of horror was the kind a person feels right before they die. 

How long have you been judged from above for your wrongs?

Were you already doomed to Hell? Is that why Lucifer himself wanted ‘to meet’ you? Did he make it a personal habit to visit each lowly sinner and taunt them?

God was real, so did everything actually happen for a reason like so many said? 

Why did bad things happen to good people? 

Was your dog in heaven, waiting for you and you’d already disappointed her by getting a one way ticket in the opposite direction?

———

You figured out that the ringing in your ears was actually your phone’s alarm when the natural lighting in your apartment was almost gone. 

You managed to get to it on the other side of the room half-stumbling from your seat. 

“Hello?” You rasped.

“… So you finally decided to answer your phone.”

———

It took you banging on the door and shouting against its old, glossy surface before Cass Farrow cracked it open. 

A myriad of expressions crossed her painted face before she opened the door fully. When she faced you, she smiled. 

“Honey! It’s been days! We didn’t wanna bother you but we were worried! It’s good to see you up and about!” 

The way she acted, as if nothing was wrong, as if the world had turned upside down, had you balling up your fists. Your ragged nails delved into the skin so deeply you could feel the sting of blood.

“I-I need…” You couldn’t stop the copper taste of saliva filling your mouth. 

You would not throw up. “I need to speak to your boss.”

Cass blinked owlishly at that. “My what?”

‘Why? Why? Why are you shocked?’ You shouted in your mind.

“Oh honey,” The low tone did nothing to soothe you, only raise your ire. “I don’t know what —” 

“The Devil!” Your raised voice made the elderly woman jump. “Or Lucifer, or Baphomet — whatever the fuck you call him! I need to talk to him.” 

You scrambled to grab the business card you’d stashed in your pocket. 

“You had him in your apartment, so I know he’s in there somewhere.” You said while waving it in Cass’s face frantically. 

It was deja vú when Mrs. Farrow eyed the card and her face paled considerably. 

“Oh.” 

———

Lucifer wasn’t ‘home’. At least, he wasn’t in his personal Airbnb via the Farrow residence. 

However, Cass waved it away. “He’ll think it’s you or about you or something to do with you and come running.”

Trying to push yourself and demand she tell you more proved to be too difficult. All you could do is stand with your arms crossed, waiting while the (clearly practiced) worshiper combined a series of dried plants in her hands. 

Cass gathered them up and laid them carefully on a side table before fiddling with the furnace and a long lighted match.  

The fire blazed to life instantly from the little flicker it had begun as when Cass threw the plants in. It rose higher, and higher, until it had disappeared past where you could see behind the lintel. 

You had it in you to be stunned when Lucifer appeared from out of those flames. He was perfectly pristine and intact when he stepped out, hunching slightly to avoid his top hat bumping into the smoke chamber. 

The devil was as you remembered him, but also worse in that you couldn’t reassure yourself that his visage was merely a product of your fucked up, overly-imaginative little brain. 

He was so… white.

His skin was practically blinding as freshly-painted walls hit by a sunbeam. 

Lucifer stepped into the room with a flourish. “I came as soon as I coul-”

‘Fuck.’ You’d been spotted. 

And there went Cass, out of the living room to hide away in her smelly kitchen. 

“You’re here!” Lucifer cajoled, theatrics on full display as he beheld your presence. 

The top hat came off, held in his hands as he graced you with a bashful smile like he was some gentleman caller and not Not-Satan. 

“I-I didn’t expect to see you here waiting! But I’m so glad you are. Did you get my card? I thought about just leaving the glove because the card can seem so impersonal —”

“I just got fired.” You blurted out. 

The unusually flat face contorted into an anguished expression. “You… you lost your job…?”

“Because of you.” 

“B-because of me ?!” His already youthful tenor of a  voice raised some octaves. “What —”

You pointed a finger in his direction. “Yes! You !”

“You appeared out of nowhere and fucked up my entire worldview. I've had existential crisis-es… cris-ies? I don’t fucking — I’ve had life-altering spirals before but that was fucking nothing compared with this!” 

“And now I’m out of a job and I’m alone in a city I don’t fucking know with cult-worshipping neighbors because I can’t go back to where I was and you’re just standing here like you have no idea why I’m upset!” 

You hadn’t expected to get this far. You hadn’t expected to go on a tirade at all, really. Distantly you felt tears sliding down your cheeks and the frantic beat of your heart in your ribcage. 

Shame, guilt and fear began toiling deep inside you. 

Lucifer had been backed against the wall, hands raised placatingly and expression mirroring your own internal panic. It quickly turned into concern as he took in your sorry state of being. 

“Please, no.” He reached out for you and you retaliated by jolting out of reach. “Oh please don’t… I’m sorry. I'm so sorry. I never… if I’d known…”

He was reaching into his coat and pulling something out before your sight cleared. It was a handkerchief with the red moniker L.M. on one corner. 

The King held it out to you like a peace offering. Or a white flag.

The force with which you snatched it out of his hands was unnecessary but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

“You said you picked me. What did you mean by that?” You mumbled into the handkerchief. 

Lucifer’s mouth screwed up into a frown, brow creasing. “We don’t have to talk about that —”

“No.” You made eye contact, watching him squirm. “We need to talk about it. Explain it. Now.”

“Ahh… ok, yes, um…” He fiddled with the bow tie at his collar. “Well, like I said before, I wanted to wait until we got to know each other because… because it’s kind of a big deal.” 

Your stern frown implored him to continue.

Lucifer winced. “It’s sort of a-a favor I wanted to ask of you. And I thought that if we talked about it over time maybe it wouldn’t sound so monumental… but actually, now…”

The fidgeting worsened, and his nimble fingers had graduated to fussing with the clasps down his front. Eventually, Lucifer yanked his jacket down to straighten it. 

“So, I’ve been around for a really, really, really, really long time.” The Devil started. “And I’ve kind of been on my own for *like* ever and that’s fine, whatever, can’t complain. Normally it’s all about warding off boredom.

“But! Lately, it’s been harder and harder to just —” He made a fist and punched down onto the palm of his other hand to elucidate. “— Just, ahh, not be bored? I guess?”

“And it’s been interfering with all the shit I gotta do. I mean I have no-oo motivation, none at all, and it’s becoming a big problem. The other Sins have actually noticed. Like Satan? You know, we talked about him when we met — yeah, he came up to me not too long ago, saying —”

Your heart stopped as Lucifer’s eyes went completely red, blazing in his skull like magma and accompanied by long horns protruding from his head. 

His voice took on an unearthly, gravelly quality as he, presumably, mimicked Satan: 

“‘We’re worried for you, man. Ozzie says you haven’t been returning his calls. Levi and Bee miss you on their outings but you always say you’re busy. Whatever’s going on, you know you can talk to us, right?’”

Lucifer was back to normal in a millisecond. “And I do know that. I do! But as much as I wanna take them up on it, I just feel like none of them will really understand what’s wrong. I don’t even understand it. Or at least I didn’t until it came to me out of nowhere, like lightning.” 

He mimed being zapped in the head.

“Visits and parties with my brothers are fun and all, but they end... And I find myself all alone more often than not.”

Lucifer sighed deeply. 

“I don’t really have anything to live for,” He stressed. “Except for myself and…” 

“That’s not much.” He snickered mirthlessly. 

You swallowed. The anger, frustration, exhaustion and still-present fear were blanketed by an uncomfortable bout of sympathy. 

Sympathy for the Devil. 

‘Oh shut the fuck up you.’

“Don’t you live for the suffering of mankind or something?” You sniffled, trying to regain your metaphorical footing in the conversation and, in turn, regenerate that anger you’d been consumed by not a minute ago. 

Lucifer looked from the ground to you, the gleam in his cherry-red eyes fighting to come back to life.

“Aha! No, no. That’s-that’s a Bible thing, right?” He groaned, pulling down the brim of his hat in exasperation. “Ugh, I still don’t know why Heaven insists on that overblown press kit! It’s so fucking old! And inaccurate!” 

Lucifer commiserated with you. “Too much involvement from human hands, too. Ya know? I mean people use it to justify some of the most insane shit I’ve ever seen!”

He cleared his throat at your blank expression. 

“Anywho-oo. What was the question again? Oh! Oh, do I live for the suffering of man — no! No, I don’t. In fact, where I’m from? Being in the middle of that suffering shtick gets old real fast. I’ve stayed away from it for a good while now and really I’ve never been better.”

The blond topped off his statement with a smile, showing those razor teeth while also trying to come across as easy-going and candid. 

A beat passed, in which you felt your lips form a thin line. 

You couldn’t stop yourself. 

You snorted. 

Lucifer looked at you as if you’d lost your head as your snorts turned into full-blown laughter. Until he, of course, wanted to fit in like he knew exactly what was going on. 

“Hahaha, yeah…” Hell’s king chuckled nervously. “I am pretty funny, aren’t I? Ha ha… ha.”

 Shaking your head ‘no’, you tried to reign in the body spasms. 

“So when you say you ‘picked me’, you mean you want me to… what? Be your therapist?” You asked. “The Devil needs a friend’s shoulder to cry on? What?” 

Lucifer fixed you with the first look of genuine annoyance you’d seen (directed at you) from him. 

“No.” He harrumphed. “I need a baby.” 

*

Tag List: @crescent-z, @for-hearthand-home, @undertale-is-sansational, @loslox, @navierkalani, @yaimlight, @ivoryviness, @crystalplays28, @flowerempress, @wally-darling-hyperfixation, @altruisticradiodemon, @moonlight-readings, @halparkebitch, @charliecharlie65, @sockgoblin, @cocomollo, @caniseethefourthsword, @squeegeeclean, @crow-twink, @an-emovision

I'm so sorry if I missed anyone who asked to be tagged! I'm having a hard time keeping track.

[lavandulawrites]

Absconditus

Yandere Mello x reader

I’m rewatching Death Note and god I love Mello so much<3 this took longer than what I expected because I was busy and had a writers block. Please send me some Death Note requests<3 (I’m currently obsessed with death note)

Masterlist

Synopsis: Mello decides to take you for himself.

Warnings: abduction, drugging, breaking and entering, Mello is insane (for you<3), he blows up your fucking house

Word count: 1122

Your flat was dark and empty. Just like it was when you left for work. Despite that something felt of. You let your eyes scan the open space and to the bathroom door and to the bedroom door. Nothing seemed unusual, still you couldn’t shake of the feeling that something was not right.

You flicked on the light switch to the lamp that hung over your coffee table. It was old and glass stained in beautiful greens. You sat your purse down with a tump on the dark table. Your shoulder ached and you groaned as you massaged it.

Suddenly you could see movements in your peripheral vision. It was sudden before it stilled. Your heart beat quickened and it felt like it was going to burst out of your rib cage.

You slowly lifted your head and the sight before you made you let out a startled yelp. Right there on one of your dining table chair sat Mello. The light you had lit wasn’t quite enough to properly light up the dining area, causing his beautiful features to be casted in a shadow, despite this you could clearly his piercing blue eyes staring into your soul. His legs were spread in a nonchalant way and his hands were deep in his pockets of his flared low-rise leather pants. He was dressed in all black with a leather vest which was a little bit cropped so you could see his skin. He hadn’t bothered to take of his heeled boots.

He tilted his head slightly at your little sound. “Did I scare you?” his low voice broke the silence. You could hear his smirk more than you could see it.

“What are you doing here…?” you asked with a shaky voice. You wanted to scream, run, but your feet were frozen onto the worn wooden floor and you couldn’t advert your eyes from his no matter how heard you tried. It was like you were in a trance. This must be how a deer feels like in front of the endless jaws of a hungry wolf.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” his voice challenging.

“Please get out of my house” you straightened your back at you sudden confidence.

He stilled in his movements. Multiple heartbeats past before he slowly rose up from the chair. With his head lowered slightly, he stalked towards you like a ravenous dog.

Your legs hit the sofa resulting in you plumping down. His hand flowed hand reached out and played with a stand of your hair. “I am here to take what’s mine” his voice low, but determined.

Your mount turned dry as you stared up into his eyes. Despite his marred skin, he was absolutely ethereal. You wanted to say something, to scream or run, but you were completely frozen.

He straightened his back before he turned around and walked towards the dining table. He rummaged through a bag that was sat on top of one of the chairs. He turned around to face you with a gas mask in hand.

You furrowed your eyes in confusion at the mask, which earned you a soft chuckle.

His right hand slipped into his pant pocket and pulled out a detonator. “You don’t need anyone else than me. Is that understood?” his voice was harsh and frighting.

He pressed his thumb down on the button of the detonator. A hissing sound could be heard from around the flat and as you let your eyes dart across the room you could see grey smoke coming out from underneath your bookshelf.

You stood up as fast as you could and when you turned to look at the blond man he was wearing the gas mask. “What are you doing?” your voice small.

Your eyelids started to feel heavy and breathing became difficult. You stumbled forward. If it wasn’t for strong arms supporting you, you would have fell head first into the wooden floor.

“Shusssh I got you” he whispered into your ear through his mask. The last thing you saw before your visit turned black was his eyes through the plastic of the mask. They were filled with love, possession and insanity.

You had no idea how long you had been asleep when you slowly woke up. The bed was comfortable, but unfamiliar. The ceiling was white instead of blue and to your right were a window were it should be the bedroom door. You weren’t home. Panic filled your senses as you sat up in a quick motion. You groaned as a sudden ache formed in your head. You clutched your hand against your forehead as your thoughts ran through the last things you remembered.

The sound of candy wrap snapped you out of your thoughts. To your left sat Mello on a light pink arm chair with flower motifs. He looked extremely out of place. He took a bite of the dark chocolate in his hand while staring you down with his blue intense eyes.

“How are you feeling?” his dark voice pleasant and oddly comforting giving the circumstances.

“Where am I? What happened? What did you do, Mello?” your questions running out.

He sighed, expecting your answer. “You are in a safe house. That’s all you need to know. As for what happened” he took another bite of his chocolate and chewed slowly as if he wanted to toy with you.

“I sat off a gas that works as sleeping has and at the same time can be the cause of gas leaks/explosions in homes” he shrugged. “It’s not dangerous as I got you out rather quickly. As for your flat… Well you won’t ever return there so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” he smirked.

“What the fuck Mello?! Are you insane?!” you screamed at the blond man.

His face soured. “Maybe I am. It’s your fault really. Running around without even looking twice over the shoulder” he leaned forward. “Do you understand how dangerous it is? What if something happens to you? What if someone frames you for something you haven’t done and Kira kills you?! Then what?” his jaw clenched in anger.

“I am doing this to protect you! Why don’t you understand?! I love you so much that it hurts! I have never felt that way before and I don’t want to lose you” he rose up and clutched your hand to the point it hurt.

“Please… please corporate. I promise you I will protect you. This safe house isn’t forever, it’s only till things have calmed down. Okay?” a hand gently stroked your cheek.

He wrapped his hands around you and held you in a tight embrace. “ I love you and I will never stop loving you. Ever.”

[ayanominitrash]

Act Cool, Senpai! (Geto Suguru x reader)

₊˚ ♡

Geto-san takes a liking to his cute kouhai, He wonders if he looks good to you.

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖

2nd Entry.

First part here. Third part here. Masterlist.

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖

Nowadays, Geto finds himself taking a longer time fixing his hair in the mirror.

Usually, he’d tie his hair up in a bun once, fix a few strands here and there, grab his school bag, and leave. But it was his fourth time trying to tame his dark locks and he hadn't even realizes it until he was getting mildly frustrated at himself. 

He stops.

Geto lets his arms down to rest for a moment while looking back at the pair of small eyes in the mirror. What's gotten into him? He was never the type to worry about his looks. Sure, he's more of the concerned hygienic type - he's more concerned with being clean and smelling good - which are just common sense, rather than thinking if people thought his hair bun was tied up in the right way or not. 

No, not people. He's suddenly thinking of you, tilting your head to the side, "Geto-san, your hair's a mess today."

He shakes his thoughts away.

No, looks were more like something Gojo would concern himself with. He recalls the time when his classmate would be all up in his face, bearing his teeth and asking him if they all looked perfectly aligned. He groans at the memory.

Suddenly, the door to his dorm room slides open to reveal the said classmate, his shoulders slouched with the weight of his eyelids. He looks half awake.

"Suguru...? Why weren't you outside my dorm yet?" Gojo yawns.

"I was just about to get you, you know." He starts doing his hair again, this time not bothering to look in the mirror. "I was just...uh, looking for my hair tie."

"Oh, okay. By all means, please, take your time. I'm not very eager to go see our mutt-looking sensei."

"Satoru, that's not very nice." 

The other blows a raspberry at him.

Geto finishes tying his hair up and collects his things. He pauses and looks at Gojo right when he is just about to pass him through the doorway.

"What?"

"Satoru, how do I look?"

Geto's simple question was met with a wide-eyed Gojo, staring at him with what looked like a bewildered expression - like he had done something as strange as turn his head all the way back like an owl would.

"I mean,” Gojo finally starts, “...you look with your eyes."

The raven-haired teen glares daggers at him.

"I don't know man, what do you want me to say?! You look...the same? I don't know. Why? Did you do something with your face or? Gasp! - did you finally use that face cream I was talking about? Is it good?"

At this point, he was continuously bombarded with follow-up questions about a skin care product Geto paid no mind to, along with him being rocked back and forth by the tall man's hands on his shoulders. Geto eventually swats his arms off of him.

"Forget it, you’re no help at all."

₊˚ ♡

The third period comes by and Geto internally curses at himself when he hasn’t had the time to check himself in between classes, because here you are, already standing at the doorway. He hears his heartbeat in his ears as he watches how your face shows your confusion mixed with a bit of nervousness, eyes darting around the room.

“Hello, excuse me. . . “ You speak up in a small voice. “But may I know where Ieiri-san is?” 

Gojo lifts his head from where it was resting in his arms, “I’ll tell you if you gots some candy on ya.”

“Satoru,” Geto warns. His classmate was notoriously known for messing with his juniors. Not even his seniors were safe. 

“Whhhaatt? I’m just talking to her. Hey, you. Don’t just stand there, come in here.”

Feeling self-conscious, he sinks further into his seat as you take up on Gojo’s offer, hesitantly strolling next to your senior as he removes his arms from the teacher’s table.

“No, seriously, you got candy on you? I’m bored out of my mind here.”

“Only if you tell me where Ieiri-san is.” You put air on your left cheek, making you look like a chipmunk. 

Geto just might die from how adorable you look.

“Well - “

“She was called to the infirmary by Yaga-sensei,” He finally cuts in, much to Gojo’s dismay. “A few of the Junior Sorcerers came back from a mission and need medical attention so she was called in on short notice.”

“You’re no fun, Suguru.” 

“Oh, I see. . . “ You drift off, looking at him then somewhere out the window. “I guess I’ll go to class on my own then. Thank you. Also, here,” You hand a few pieces of peppermint candy to Gojo, who immediately snatches them away from you. 

“None for me?” Geto teases. 

You smile and then approach his seat.

Act cool, Geto thinks. Act cool - shit. 

“Here you go, senpai. I have a lot more so you can have this much.” You cup the few pieces of candy in both of your hands, presenting them to the raven-head, to which he reaches a palm out to accept them. At the exchange, he can see how his one hand is much bigger compared to your two small ones. He also notices how soft and clean yours looks. He also doesn’t miss the way a shiver runs up his skin when your fingers graze his.

Your senior looks up at you with that gentle smile of his, “Aren’t you sweet? Thank you for this.” 

He feels a bit guilty taking these from you when he’s not much of a sweet tooth himself - he only learned to eat sweets through Gojo - but he’d be lying if he didn’t want to keep these treats in his pockets and carry them around forever.

Is that weird? 

“You know what? How about I walk you to class as a way of saying thank you?”

Gojo groans, “Noooooo, don’t leave me heeerre - “

“Shut up, Satoru.”

You flail your hands in front of you,” Ah - Geto-san, t-that’s real nice of you b -but you don’t need to! It’s okay. Plus, you might be late to your next class.”

Geto can only smile at you as a facade of his nervousness, “It’s okay, there’ll be a delay since our next teacher might be aiding in the Junior’s mission reports. I’m also gonna need to stretch my legs.”

“Okay…” You look down at your shoes and twiddle with your hands. “Well then, if it’s alright with you, then I don’t mind the company.”

“Are you just gonna leave me here then?”

With a tsk, he gives Gojo his phone, “Go play games on my phone.” 

“What am I, a kid? You think I’m just gonna - ooooh you got a few new ones in here.” 

Now that Gojo’s distracted, he takes the opportunity to put his hand on your shoulder, urging you to start walking out of the classroom.

“Let’s go?” 

You start to nod only to freeze for a moment, staring at something over his head. Without warning, you reach a hand up and pat down a stray hair from on top of Geto’s head. It was like you were giving him head pats. It was his turn to freeze.

“There. Let’s go, Geto-san.”

I think I should mess my hair up a bit more. 

₊˚ ♡ - - - -

Later that day. . .

“Kento, Geto-san was so cool today. He troubled himself to walk me to my next class.”

“So?” 

“Isn’t our senapi so nice?”

Your classmate Nanami, only shrugs at you, never tearing his eyes away from the book he was reading.

“You’re so cold.”

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖

(❀❛ ֊ ❛„)♡ reblogs and comments are appreciated//do not repost my work anywhere

//

Very happy my last post was so well received <3 idk how I feel about this 2nd part tho but I hope you enjoyed reading// ❛ ֊ ❛„)♡

[theravequeen]

Thinking about Blow Dart and how important of a character he is to me. I just took one of my favorite characters of all time and oc-ified him even more. I'm unstoppable

[nightlight-and-co]

Less a question and more an idea that hit me while reading these pages

Related to Blow Dart and his kinda "lurking arouns" thing. What if he lurked around in areas that are Angler safe whenever lights started to flicker? Like up the stairs, near a vent, in a corner, near some crates or next to a room?

Maybe he doesn't show up for Pandemonium, but for any others, that could be neat?

OOC: I didn't really know how to answer this in character sorry 😭 It's sort of long so I put it under a cut

Ok so, I think I'm misinterpreting this, which isn't your fault I have terrible reading comprehension--

But if I understand you right, I think you're under the assumption that Harley's light flickers spawn anglers. They do not!

See, Harley's mechanic is after you get attacked by Hostile Light (or Night Light/Raven after she has been aggro-ed due to removal of light source), he has a rare chance of spawning. Because he spawns due to being angry at you for hurting Night Light, he actively tries to sabotage your game.

After Blow Dart spawns, he will flicker the lights himself, creating a false angler. The lights will flicker, but no angler will actually attack. His hope is that you will see lights flicker, go "oh that's just Harley" and then a real angler will come and kill you because he caught you off guard.

So Harley doesn't really have any reason to hide in angler safe areas (especially because he himself is a ghost, they can't kill him again.) And he certainly doesn't want you ( the player , not anon specifically lol) to find these angler safe areas, because he wants you dead.

That being said, I think this could be really interesting. Harley's lore is that he died via an angler (Chainsmoker to be specific), so him just naturally being scared of the real anglers and instinctively hiding in angler safe areas would actually be an interesting idea 🤔 (I just sort of fear that it would make his mechanic too easy.)

Also with Pandemonium, I think it's funny to imagine him disappearing when Pande spawns. So you see the lights flickering and you're like "oh it's just Harley 🙄" and then you look around for him and he despawned. And then you hear Pande's screams. It would be funny,,

All this to say, I hope I interpreted this question/idea correctly, if I didn't feel free to correct me on it because like I said, I have no reading comprehension 😭😭😭

[waywardprintmaker]

Ominis's earliest memories are that of being surrounded by family.

He remembers his legs dangling above the floor and the velvety feel of their living room chair. Remembers the hoarse caws of ravens through the open window and the faint smell of chocolates he wasn't yet allowed to have. There were the sneering remarks of his brother and his mother's ever-calm voice, urging him to "look this way, darling". The room felt too warm, the fabric beneath his hands too rough.

He remembers his fingers aching from how hard he's gripping the chair's arms, remembers his father's stern voice dripping with annoyance above his shoulder as he paces around the room. There's a sinking feeling in his stomach and a slight tremble to his knees. There's a wand pointed at his face for the fifth time in the last hour. 

At this point Ominis is too exhausted to cry. 

"Please, no more," he says weakly, "It hurts."

His mother only sighs in irritation. "Stop your whining, Ominis. This needs to be done." "But it hurts…" Ominis protests again. "Please, can't we stop?" "No more fussing. This might finally fix you, if you'd only cease snivelling and cooperate."

He remembers the velvet underneath his palms growing damp from the cold sweat of distress. Remembers squeezing his eyes shut though it made no difference. His entire body tensing as if bracing for a physical blow and the air growing heavy with magical energy as his father knelt in front of him.

Ominis pushes his back into the chair in anticipation as the incantation sounds and an already familiar surge of magic hits, heat engulfing his face and eyelids like hot coals pressed against his skin. His eyes sting and it hurts to blink. It feels even worse than the times before.

"Please," Ominis pleads through tears. "Couldn't we stop for today?"

His father gives no response, continuing the incantation with increasing intensity. Ominis tries to shut it out, pressing his palms hard against his eyes, to soothe the pain and hide his returning tears, but he's only given a few seconds of respite before his hands are being pulled away again.

"Hold still." 

Ominis takes a shuddering breath, steeling himself for what's to come. "Please, just one more day. I promise I'll be good tomorrow."

But his father ignores him, touching the wand to Ominis's skin. White-hot agony erupts behind his eyes once more, as the magic bursts through. Ominis yelps and twitches involuntarily from the shock of it.

"Perhaps he's had enough," Ominis's mother says, a rare note of concern in her voice. "Further spells won't help if he's too distressed."

But his father is implacable. "We keep at it until there's results. Now end your squabbling, both of you." He moves his wand closer to his son’s eyes again. 

Another sharp cry is torn from Ominis as another surge of magic assaults him. When it passes, he slumps weakly in his father's grip, dark spots dancing before his unseeing eyes. Firm hands grasp Ominis's shoulders, steadying him. "Look at me, boy. What do you see?"

Ominis feels movement before his face, blinks the pain away. He doesn't want to disappoint. If only he knew what he's supposed to see, maybe he could manage a little white lie, if just to make this stop… but his world remains unchanged, with only the faint impressions his other senses provide of a reality beyond his grasp. He trembles, eyes darting fearfully. "N-nothing. Only darkness."

For a long moment, his father gazes intently into Ominis's blind eyes, as if discerning some subtle change behind the milky irises. At last he draws back with a displeased grunt.

"Worthless. But we're done here for now. We will try again with a modified spell." His voice is cold with disappointment as he turns and strides from the room, indicating the session's end. It is a relief, though for how long, Ominis is unsure. He sinks back into the velvet chair, every muscle spent. Another day of agony awaited on the slim hope that this time, this time, the magic would at last pierce the veil over his sight. For now there is only the dark, and the vast emptiness where shapes and colors should be. He bites his lip to hold back a sob. The relentless throbbing behind his eyes is nothing compared to feeling so alone. He hugs himself tightly, hears his mother walk by, but she only pats his head distractedly as she passes. 

"Go play quietly now. And no more tears!"

Ominis feels a piece of chocolate be pushed into his palm - the promised reward for being good. 

He remembers staggering to his feet and feeling along the wall for the door. Remembers the rough wood of the banister, the hard edge of a window seat. Remembers the number of steps to the stairs as he climbs up to his bedroom and the exhaustion that drags him under like a riptide, offering temporary escape. The piece of chocolate is quickly forgotten in Ominis' palm. What little comfort it once offered is gone. He can feel it melting against his skin, but pays it no mind. It stains his sheets as he climbs under the covers.

He remembers waking to darkness, with stinging eyes still tightly closed, afraid to face a world that sees him only as broken while he remained trapped alone within it.

[blorbologist]

Architects of our Demise | Chapter 23

[ Age of Arcanum AU | Perc'ahlia | M | Updates every 2 weeks]

[ Vax is the Warden of Ravens, Vex is his Champion, Percival is the creator of aeormatons, and FCG is ~vibing~ ]

[Chapter 23: In which the author enters her Brennan Lee Mulligan arc; art used in the meme by the incredible loserwithanartacc!]

Fire.

Everywhere he looks: fire.

It licks up the flanks of the trees, crawls along the ivy, serves as a shawl to the dead. The dead, so many -

Vex’ahlia mouths the Warden’s name. Over and over and over until she gives up. “Brother - brother, please help us.” The familiar twist of a blessing draws a thread between him, her and Trinket. It tightens into a knot.

Acrid smoke burns the roof of Percival’s mouth. The air reeks with it, and dust, and char, and worse. Only the flames are moving around them. No, wait - through the haze he can see distant running, flying, fighting.

A smear of moment through the smoke - blurred points of horns and tusks and claws are quite suddenly defined as a fiend charges; its roar is drowned by the blaze, dwarfed by Trinket’s answering below. He rises to his hind feet and meets the devil head-on. 

It’s all Percival can do to dart out of the way of this clash, skirt around as Trinket mauls the shrieking monster. One of his paws is caught in a devilish pincer. It seems to only make the bear angrier.

Fur and flesh and teeth and scales; he can’t get a clear shot. Vex can, or maybe Vex is simply too furious to stand by. Gold-threaded arrows sink deep into back muscles - with a screech its arm falls limp. Trinket takes back his paw to land a punishing blow, pelt rapidly soaking with blood.

Everything feels slow. Languid; the fires wave at them gently. Percival scans the ground; no sticks or weapons, no one he can help. There’s a severed ear near his foot. His gaze jerks back up - Trinket drives the demon’s head into the back of his mouth, into his molars. The screaming stutters with a CRACK.

What can he do? He can’t do anything.

He should have been keeping watch. Before he can turn his head he’s clutching at a mess of chitin and meat, back forced into the earth. The impact knocks the wind out of him, what’s left is squeezed out by clawed paws stepping on his chest. There’s no air with which to scream.

Percival shoves his forearm against what might be a throat, keeping the rings of teeth at bay. He dropped his gun as he fell - blessed as he is, it’s not far. Stretching for it shifts the beast’s weight. He gasps when blunt claws push through his shirt, break skin on the next reach.

A tendril of drool falls, sizzles away before it reaches him. Pleased gurgling turns pained squeal; Percival can’t see why it staggers off, doesn’t need to. His fingers find his gun and he’s firing and firing and firing until the weight is dead and pinning his other arm. He shoves it off.

Vex appears above him, panting. “Everything alright, darling?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful down here,” he wheezes. She’s already crouched, gently touching his cracked ribs and bleeding abdomen and setting him right.

Behind her (above her) is a brief gap in the smoke. A wound bleeding pre-dawn blues. And a cliff-face.

Shadowed crags prickled with pillars, drifting ever-so-slowly. Veins of brumestone glow white-hot, trying so very hard to stay aloft. The bedrock they are embedded in refuses to comply. Boulders are forced free by the tectonic conflict; they almost float down. The air ripples with a mountain’s groan of pain.

It takes Percival another minute - long enough to be back on his feet, long after he has stopped staring and thrown himself into the fray proper - before he fully processes what he is seeing. He is seeing a mountain-top descend; he is watching Avalir fall.

[From the beginning] [Keep reading on AO3!]

[ravenvsfox]

Rockband AU Chapter 14 (Finale)

That's right folks, the concert is coming to an end. As an homage to my long history of andreil tumblr fic, I'm posting this chapter here, as well as on AO3. I sincerely hope I've served the wonderful readers who have stuck with me all this time 🖤

__________

His face doesn’t even register at first. 

Andrew has become desensitized, defused, having spent months expecting Riko in every crowd, and having trained his own stomach not to revolt at the sight of a threat. He has bracing for the worst down to an art form.

But numbness is the antidote to pain, not fear. The fear still comes. A black hole in the mind, extinguishing cells and sucking down energy until everything and everyone feels stretched thin, fluttering, spaghettified. Andrew’s eyes dart to the slope of Neil’s back, and as he watches, the outline of his guarded shoulders turns to water.

Riko’s smile is hateful; his teeth should be red. Where there are ravens, inevitably, there is carrion. Bad omens yield blood. Andrew has never been allowed the luxury of believing otherwise.

Somehow he manages to keep a steady beat, even with his whole body haloed in outrage. A drumstick cracks in half over a crescendo, and he swipes at the spare strapped to his stool like he’s drawing a pistol.

From the corner of his eye, Renee jerks, and he knows her scan of the room has turned Riko over. She’s pumping on the bass pedal like it’s the brake that will halt this car crash. Kevin hasn’t spotted him yet, or he would surely be regressing by now. The music whines like a kicked dog, because Neil has—briefly—stopped singing. He plays it off like he’s giving the mic some room, taking the edge off a high note, letting the audience plug the gap with their cheering.

His panic is well-suppressed, but Andrew knows its shape well. Every time he’s ever held Neil he’s also held his fear.

(Read on AO3)

Another moment passes, impossibly. Their song, their hard-won anthem, Neil’s song, blows around them like a hot air balloon, lifts them precariously into the atmosphere. He can practically feel the furnace at his back, that wobbling little explosion.

It doesn’t stop the nightmare from unfolding. The movie monster progresses beyond the jump scare and into its next phase: pursuit. Riko is approaching the stage.

The crowd parts for him, bowing and gasping, their seams all ripped. It’s so ugly, their bystander fans, unlocking the door so the bad guy can slither inside. He’s known betrayal like this: thoughtless, grey, stunned and tearful to know it’s done wrong.

Riko makes his progress purposefully measured, darkly composed, hands ghosting across the face of the crowd without ever making contact, mouth curled with poorly concealed malice. Against all logic, he is beloved.

If he turns his attention on Neil or Kevin, Andrew will kill him. It’s not a threat but a reality.

Neil is pooled in light, dripping with sweat, inked and scarred and swallowed by the music he has nearly killed himself to produce. As always, he is such a tidy little bullseye. In a tangential sort of way, he can see the appeal—Neil has been such a problem. It’s just that Andrew and Riko disagree on the best way to solve him.

Before the backseat deal, before cops in his hospital room, Neil had all but begged Andrew to let him run away. He had feared exactly this scenario, his new life bunched around him, foxes and monsters assembled in a barrel to be shot.

I’m afraid that someone else will suffer for my pride, he’d said.

Andrew had replied, it’s not pride, it’s trust.

Stupid. Blind. His eyes have been on Neil’s staggering recovery, distracted by the fibres of their lives grafting together, the burgeoning outline of a future that seemed not only possible but probable. But of course Riko wouldn’t be swayed by his family politics. Of course deals, logic, and fairness are meaningless to him. This is a man who shatters metacarpals for sport. 

The song is nearly over now. Noisy and flush, ecstatic, insisting, even with one foot out the door, even with a parasite lurking in the water ahead. 

As Riko tries to breach the stage, the surface tension he encounters is resilient, difficult to pierce. The whole onstage entourage has noticed him now. Several members have stopped playing, and there is some discord as hands slip from strings, Kevin’s, then Matt’s. Andrew has stopped too, waiting for the drawn breath, drawn weapon. Watching for somebody on his side to crumple, like he’s up on the battlements at the beginning of a war. 

It’s Riko’s move.

Andrew sees him nodding subtly at a member of security, senses the sorry shifting of alliances in the wings. Impossible, with the background checks Wymack pulled. Impossible for anyone but a Moriyama. 

Riko reaches coolly into his jacket pocket for something. What does he think he’s going to do, from the centre of a crowd that is on his victim’s side? A long-distance weapon would be childishly obvious even for Riko, and there’s no easy way up onto the stage. 

Not just because of the crowd control barrier, or the scattered members of security who still seem keen on doing their jobs, but because there’s a whole pack of Foxes baring their teeth. As Andrew watches, Matt casually edges a heavy amp further in front of the only open stairway, enclosing their ranks in a circle of equipment. It’s not much, but every defence Riko has to pass through is another second they can use to rally against him.

There’s a flicker of an altercation offstage, the gesturing streak of a tribal tattoo, and Andrew knows Wymack is fighting for them too.

And as Aaron stares worriedly down at Riko, he takes an unthinking half-step in front of Neil. Something in Andrew’s chest hyperextends in a way it never has before. His vision doubles; his mind is torn in half. He stands, trembling, at his drum kit, feeling eyes ping off of him, hearing nothing but blood.

There are enough of them still going that the song is mostly holding its shape, but it barely matters. The crowd is halfway to another riot over the spectacle of Riko Moriyama with his head tilted back, his hands wringing the bars of the barrier. Evermore, vengeful.

We don’t know how to die quietly, Neil is singing.

strength in numbers, now, don’t you agree?

every day you’re not here is a symphony

out for blood, but there’s no more inside of me

spirit so willing, but the flesh ain’t so weak

I dare you, try taking this key from me

always wondered what it took to end dynasties

if you’re the king, I say long live the queen.

He’s snarling his way through the final verse, and Andrew is helpless not to tear his gaze from Riko so he can watch Neil burn like a terrible, incredible effigy. The likeness of a hero, wreathed in destruction. His voice is a trail of gasoline, and he is shaking, steady, and clear-eyed, match in hand.

The song ends in a stand-off. Half the musicians are holding their instruments like makeshift weapons, half are stunned still. Riko looks poised to strike—but despite his rage carrying him this far, he is not as fast as Neil.

“Wow.” Neil’s speaking voice rises over the final chord, treading on the last hollow hum of sound. Dan’s fingers pinch the piano keys at the root, so that the reverb is cut off. Matt is twitchy, his hands curled into fists. Muscle memory. “It looks like there’s a legend in our midst.”

Nobody moves. As usual, Neil sets the tone, the tenor. The song they just played is still settling into the rafters, the gutters, whispering, try us. If we die, it will be noisy. Neil’s expression doubles down on that promise. His defiance is coiled, hissing.

He wades forward, out of the spotlight, and peers directly into Riko’s eyes as he crouches at the edge of the stage. Andrew spasms violently, and Renee gets up from her own drum kit, predictably, moving to hold him back. He looks at her sharply. He won’t be stopped today. Her lips purse, but she shows him the surrendering flat of her hands. 

“I didn’t know you were such a fan,” Neil goads into the microphone. “Front row and everything."

There’s a gush of laughter. The cracks in Riko’s expression worsen. He looks deeply aggravated to have the power shifted even slightly into Neil’s hands. Like this, it couldn’t be clearer that they are all above him, and he is down in the pit. Whatever weapon he has, whatever threats, he wasn’t expecting to be invited to use them.

“What a big night,” Neil continues. “Three acts under one roof. Or, well. Two and a half.”

Riko’s mouth twitches, and the audience ‘ooohs’ dramatically, laughing, booing, some of them filming the interaction on their cameraphones. They’re watching a drama they’ve only seen play out from afar, now in hair-raising proximity. And it's almost cinematic, isn't it? Riko, a dark focal point in the crowd, untouchable. Up above, the whole retinue of Palmetto Records spread out behind Neil like wings.

“Just joking.” Neil smiles, without an ounce of joy. “We’re always messing around, saying things we don’t mean, aren’t we Riko?” He holds the microphone out, wagging it in his direction. It could be playful, if you didn’t know Neil.

Riko leans in, taking the bait. There’s a brief, cruel whistle of feedback. “I am just here to support an old friend.”

Neil retracts the mic before his sentence is even finished. “Really? So support him, then. Come up here.” The crowd erupts in cheers. 

“What are you doing?” Kevin hisses. Some of the audience titters nervously, sensing his stiffening body language even if they can’t hear what he’s saying. Everybody on stage shifts, uneasy, like they’re waiting for a tornado warning to come to fruition. Riko is the most volatile he’s ever been, a spiralling tendril loosed from the eye of his family’s storm, whipping up fallen underlings and scattering deals.

Neil turns to them all with a staying hand. “Trust me,” he says, low, away from the mic. Andrew catches his gaze and presses hard. Be sure. Neil nods. He looks more self-assured than he has in weeks. “He can’t touch us.”

This seems to be the password that unlocks Kevin’s terrified posture. He nods too.

Riko’s face is sour, but he’s clearly trying to titrate some sweetness into it for the sake of the cameras. He calmly starts moving again, cutting obliquely through a crowd that is tripping all over themselves to defer to his gravity. Black hole physics, again. The curious victims, the hungry phenomenon.

The security he has clearly paid off duck out of his way, flimsy as drawn curtains. Riko climbs the stairs unimpeded, with all the eyes in the room glued to his profile. It should be a powerful display. He should be commandeering the stage as he encroaches upon their circle, but it’s increasingly evident that this tide might not turn for him. Not this time.

As Riko finally punctures the seal, walking out to centre stage, Neil’s weight rocks back onto his hip, hyper-casual. 

“This is one hell of an encore,” he says. A smattering of whoops, in joyful agreement. The drama is intoxicating. Neil’s irreverent MC-ing is the cherry on top.

Riko plucks the microphone from Neil’s grip, as if that will give him the upper hand.

“It feels good to be on stage with you again,” he says to Kevin, sneaking a generous, vaguely bemused smile to the audience. Like he had been humbly hoping for anonymity. Like he’s been caught off guard. “Although it is a little crowded up here.”

“Strength in numbers,” Kevin shrugs, tapping subtly at his own cheek. His voice barely shakes.

“It is good to have a support system behind you,” Riko says, eyes flickering to the bought security and docile, unsuspecting fans. “And it does seem to be working out for you. I just hope you can keep up your lucky streak.” He smiles snidely. Or else, he doesn’t say. Or else Tetsuji. Or else dogs, no leashes.

The crowd reacts again, spiking and levelling as they decide where their allegiances fall from minute to minute: Neil or Riko, Ausreißer or Evermore, the phoenix or the raven. It’s the stand-off of a lifetime, even veiled in niceties.

“It’s not exactly luck though, is it,” Neil interjects, stealing a new microphone from its stand a little roughly. “Kevin’s a powerhouse.” Cheers, again. “That’s why we keep gaining momentum, even when someone’s trying to take us down, taking cheap shots. You know, an eye,” he points to himself. “A hand.” he gestures to Kevin. A wide ripple of muttered conversation sweeps over the room. Neil cocks his head. “Monsters do have a habit of coming back stronger, you know.”

Riko’s eyes narrow. His smile fades.

“Sorry, I should be letting you speak, you’re our guest,” Neil says. “What did you think of the show?”

The audience hollers their opinions, trying to sway him this way or that. Riko wrings the mic. “It is hard to judge,” he says, wetting his lips. “When I have seen Kevin at his best, with Evermore.”

“Really,” Neil deadpans. “Because a little former birdie told me that sales are down at Edgar Allen Music. I mean, we even beat you to the top of the charts this week.” He pulls back from the mic, and even Andrew can barely hear it over the scandalized shouts when he follows up, “so how does second best taste, you miserable fucking has-been?”

Riko’s face goes ashen with rage. Andrew starts moving before he’s even conscious of forming a plan. The noise is an avalanche all around them, and amongst it, Riko drops his mic to the floor.

“Do not doubt that I will kill you because my uncle is too cowardly,” he hears Riko spit, fast, barely human. “I have always known the butcher’s son was only fit for slaughter.”

For a moment, there is pristine silence.

And then Riko looks behind him, eerily slow. He can see the moment that it hits him—the echo of his words ringing, amplified, around the room. Andrew’s mic-stand levered forward into Riko’s space, just in time to deliver his threat to the world.

Somebody, somewhere, says, “oh my god.”

Another voice— “was that a joke?”

Up on stage, Neil is wide-eyed with triumph. He pretends to frown. “That seems a little harsh. Feels like you might be projecting your daddy issues onto me just a bit. Sorry for your loss, by the way.”

Riko lunges. 

Something flashes, silver, out of his sleeve. 

Gasps ricochet across the surface of the room. 

Before anything can make contact with the vulnerable side of Neil’s face, Andrew has vaulted over a snare drum, scooped his broken drumstick from the ground, and plunged its jagged end through Riko’s hand.

He watches, stone-faced and satisfied, as Riko gurgles in shocked agony, blood pouring out over his gnarled fist. The concealed knife spins uselessly out onto the stage floor. 

There’s an eruption of frenzied terror from all sides as everyone in the room catches up with the bloody five second skirmish. There are flashing cameras, some of them trained on Riko rocking pitifully on his knees, unmasked, some of them swinging to search Andrew for remorse, some of them lingering sympathetically on Neil’s shell-shocked face. 

And then there is movement from the wings as the venue employees descend, and foundation-rattling footfalls as David Wymack flies into the fray.

“Hey, woah, everyone chill out—” Dan starts saying into a spare microphone, but then it’s clear that someone has cut the sound system. 

The evacuation that follows is both frantic and gruelling, a labour of pushing and pulling overly invested fans against underinvested employees. Security staff waffles or escapes, allegiances compromised. The noise is incredible, a pinprick of a fight followed by this balloon pop fallout. As Nicky would say, no one can claim that being an Ausreißer fan is boring. 

Ultimately though, Andrew is uninterested in anything but Neil, who is still frozen, horribly, at the precipice of sudden fear. He calls his name two, three times, but it takes a hand knotted in his hair to urge him down the slope toward relief. His knees unlock, and he slumps into the safety of Andrew’s side. There’s a thin line of blood trickling down his good cheek, a nearly invisible nick from Riko’s blade, and Andrew’s gut twists painfully. Again, he had almost lost him. 

In the crook of his shoulder, Neil starts to laugh, hysterical. 

“Not here,” Andrew grits, tugging again on the ends of his hair, and then getting a proper hold on his nape so he can move him toward the wings. He reaches up with his free hand to swipe Neil’s blood away with his thumb.

A shoulder check yields the rest of the family falling in line behind them, abandoning folders of music, lurching over equipment. He catches Aaron kicking the knife definitively out of Riko’s reach, and his ears ring with gratitude.

“I think we just won,” Neil says, bubbling over in disbelief.

“At least try and look shaken,” Nicky says, close at their heels, hurriedly unplugging his guitar. He reaches back with an open hand, and Kevin, clearly in shock, takes it. He lets himself be pulled along, bass hanging limply around his neck like an albatross.

When Renee and Allison come up from behind, their hands are also clutched fiercely together, but Allison’s expression is wicked. “I love it when my enemies dig their own graves for me,” she says. Renee tuts, eyes sparkling. 

Dan gets an arm around both their shoulders, and says into the space between them, “did we just win?”

The helpless giggles have stopped, and Neil’s responding smile is sharp, vulpine. Against all odds, the nine of them are escaping on this life raft together. 

“Get to the dressing room,” Wymack commands, wild-eyed. “All of you, right now, no fucking around. I gotta clean up this mess.”

Behind him, Riko looks up from his destroyed hand with bloodshot eyes, a sneer twisting his face beyond recognition.

It’s the last time they see him alive.

______

The dressing room is a chaos of uncertainty, premature celebrating and feverish, immediate re-hashing. There are too many of them to fit seamlessly inside a single room, but they refuse to be split into factions right now.

It reminds Neil of his first night back to Columbia after Baltimore: the whole patchwork team of them sleeping in a tangle, quilted together into one piece.

Their equipment is strewn across the room, couches crowded with jackets and hastily latched guitar cases, Allison’s makeup bag sidled up next to Nicky’s backpack with its tinkling German flag keychain, someone’s heavy duty water bottle with a custom Ausreißer logo overlapping an ‘I <3 Exy’ sticker.

Renee is perched on the arm of the couch, deceptively calm as she braids and unbraids a loose piece of Allison’s hair. Next to them, Kevin, Matt, and Nicky are sharing a bottle of Jack, strung between two foldout chairs and a footstool. At some point, Aaron returns with Katelyn clinging to his arm, both of them looking shaken. Wordlessly, they are absorbed into the semi-circle. 

It’s only when Andrew sees his brother that he loosens his grip on the back of Neil’s shirt and crosses to Aaron’s side. He gets close enough to say something brief in his ear, unsubtly scanning him for trauma as he does so. Neil is surprised to see Aaron nod gratefully, and even more surprised to see Katelyn take the last slug of whiskey, wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, and pass Kevin the empty bottle.

Meanwhile, Dan is speaking seriously to their staff and the concert hall’s over in the corner, doing some fast-talking damage control:

No, it wasn’t a stunt.

Yes, it was a shock to all of them.

But no, it’s not the first time Riko has made threats. Hence the security detail, Dan adds snarkily.

Yes, it was self defence. Clearly.

In Neil’s opinion, none of it really matters. The video footage will be damning. By morning, everyone will have seen the deadly arc of Riko’s rage from a dozen angles. More importantly, everyone will have heard the poisonous things he said, and the way he had implicated the family in his violence to boot.

It couldn’t have been a more picture perfect deposition. Set up, knocked down.

Riko’s mistake was believing himself to be the most important person in the room. He thought his pockets were endless, his influence untouchable. He thought his presence was enough of a threat that he would paralyze his prey, and they’d simply lie down and take the killing blow.

The death of his father had stripped away any remaining varnish of foresight or planning, and he had struck wrongly. Maybe he thought, foolishly, that Neil would be equally affected by his own father’s death. Maybe he thought he was hitting somebody already on their knees. (One of Riko’s favourite pastimes, incidentally.) 

One last fatal fucking blunder. Neil has never been more motivated to stay alive.

It remains to be seen though, if Palmetto has gotten off Scott-free. Neil was provoking Riko, after all. He invited him on stage. But bloodless teasing and invitations don’t exactly hold up in court. And not even yakuza money can un-tarnish a legacy.

When the cops show up, the questions replenish. Wymack is there by now, reporting Riko’s retrieval by ambulance, the fans’ immediate campaign for justice on Neil’s behalf. He directs traffic, tiredly, trying to buy his artists some space, some peace, however he can.

Neil is distracted by the sensation that this is all just for show. Kids playing at due diligence, running amok at the crime scene, pretending their badges have weight. The real decider will be Ichirou. The real verdict will come at night.

And just below all that frustration, he’s thrumming with victory, recognizing Riko’s Hail Mary for what it truly was, and satisfied to the teeth that a titan like Riko had watched the full strength of Ausreißer’s performance, of their bonds, their skill, their authenticity, and he had fallen.

Eventually, unavoidably, Neil is summoned. Andrew shadows him to the hallway where they’re taking people for individual questioning, and shows a stunning lack of reaction when the sheriff requests privacy, almost like he hadn’t heard him at all.

“I want him here,” Neil says simply. Maybe his victim complex has bought him some sympathy. Maybe it’s the sunny orange bandaid on his cheek, fetched from the depths of Abby’s first aid kit. Either way, Andrew stays.

He walks through the same song and dance that Dan had, making sure to step tidily in her footprints, repeating her statement nearly word for word. He resists the urge to reveal even more of Riko’s misdeeds; there’s no point in beating a dead raven.

They turn on Andrew for his testimony, and Neil takes private pleasure in how utterly futile those efforts will be. They would be better off trying to wring blood from a stone. At least that might build some much-needed character.

He takes a detour to the private bathroom on his way back from twenty questions, to take off his sweat-streaked makeup and gather his ping-ponging thoughts. As he cleans himself up in the mirror, his eyes travel the fractured topography of his face. The rosy Lichtenberg figure framing one cheek, and opposite it, an unassuming orange bandaid. Survivor’s marks, both of them.

For a moment, he is overwhelmed with gratitude. He screws his eyes shut, waiting for the intensity of the feeling to ease up from his thickening throat. He’s not taking any of this for granted. He wouldn’t have been able to stand up on stage and invite the enemy in, if he hadn’t known for certain that all his bases were covered.

He washes his hands and splashes his face with tepid water, until the weight of the feeling is possible to carry. When he pushes out into the hall, there’s a security guard waiting for him.

“They just have a couple more questions,” he informs him, jutting a thumb first vaguely backwards at the assembled police, and then in the opposite direction, towards the stage door.

Neil rolls his eyes, but follows him further down the hall, already anticipating the moment that all of this mess has been mopped up, and he can climb into bed. Maybe Andrew’s, if he’s lucky.

There’s a larger secondary dressing room, originally intended for the monsters’ use, abandoned as overflow storage in favour of the other room’s good air conditioning and generous stores of liquor. It’s another few paces before he realizes that that’s where he’s being led.

His pace stutters. He watches the slightly stiff set of the guard’s shoulders, and glances backwards to see that Andrew is no longer being questioned by the cops. Probably, he’s looking for him elsewhere. Neil is alone.

The guard raps twice on the door, his hand eclipsing the Ausreißer logo still printed on its temporary placard. He ducks out of the way before the door can swing inwards, taking up his post on the wrong side of the threshold. Neil teeters forward on numb legs, and the door closes immediately behind him. The lock fastens with a click.

The room is soundless. No vacant hum of equipment, no chatter, no movement, no distant signs of life. There are more guards posted in each shadowy corner of the room.

Riko is slumped miserably next to Tetsuji on the couch, who looks nearly as unwell as his nephew, sick with barely contained ire. His other nephew is sitting delicately in a high-backed chair, his reflection watching Neil’s approach in the mirror.

It’s immediately evident that the man is Ichirou, because of the way everybody else’s posture defers to his. Nobody breathes until he does. He is shockingly young, and it matters shockingly little. He is dressed for business: his suit is tidy and black, as are his leather gloves, and the charcoal of his gaze.

Had there been an ambulance at all? Neil wonders, scattershot. Riko’s hand has been bandaged, his fingers bloodless and splayed loosely at his side. He’s actually shaking, awaiting retribution from the brother he’s never really known.

The silence continues to fill the room like a run-on tap. Neil’s thoughts continue to unravel: How did they get to New York so quickly? Were their eyes already on this concert? Were they aware of Riko’s plan? Are they here to enact it?

Neil maintains even eye contact with Ichirou’s mirrored double, waiting for his instructions. In many ways, this man is his boss. This could be a kind of audition.

Still, there’s something deathly wrong about seeing the Moriyama retinue here, where mere hours before a benign assistant had offered Neil sparkling water, and they’d plunked their duffel bags down and squabbled over nothing. Nicky had been microdosing. Kevin had been doing some truly heinous vocal warmups.

And here’s the lord of the Moriyama empire, sitting at a vanity table, cast in the dramatic light from the LEDs.

Whole minutes come and go before Ichirou stands. Neil’s pulse throbs unevenly.

He was so painfully close to living a real life that he’s almost in disbelief, seeing the end approach like this. He’d been ready to die his whole life, and now, in the eleventh hour, it’s coming as a shock.

But Ichirou doesn’t move toward him. He breaks eye contact entirely, and walks over to his brother instead, peering down into his pale face, looking almost curious. Waiting for something.

It’s then that Neil realizes that Riko isn’t slumped in defeat, but in sickness. 

His shaking is actually convulsions, tight rippling spasms, like he’s fighting his own body’s reflexes, defying chemistry.

“Ichirou,” he chokes, garbled. A froth of saliva runs from the corner of his mouth down towards his collar. His weak, injured hand tries to grab for Ichirou as his brother reaches for his face.

Or—not his face. His neck. Two gloved fingers to Riko’s pulse. He glances in Neil’s direction as Riko’s shaking body goes limp.

Neil stares. For a moment, he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.

Ichirou says something to Tetsuji in light, even-toned Japanese, and he stands, edging away from the cooling body.

Because that’s what Riko has become—a body. Dead in an instant. Something fast-acting had clearly been razing his system since before Neil had even walked into the room.

“Is this what you had hoped for?” Ichirou asks. His English is crystal clear, a cool glass of poisoned water. “The ultimate dissolution of Evermore?” Dissolution implies a whole host of behind the scenes moves much like this one: the liquidating of its assets, the hacking of losses. Even Tetsuji can’t manage what no longer exists.

Neil shakes his head once. Lying in this moment doesn’t even occur to him. “I didn’t dare to hope for it. But I’m not sorry it’s happening. We will both be better off without Riko’s grudges.”

Ichirou tilts his head, neither pleased nor displeased by Neil’s callousness. “There is no band without its frontman.”

“It’s good then, that you have other investments,” he replies carefully.

The twitch of a lip, and then Ichirou is turning back towards his brother, examining his bulging, glassy eyes, his swollen tongue. Monstrous in death, as he was in life. 

“Leave us.” 

The door is cracked open at Neil’s back, and he takes the exit route gratefully, turning and escaping into the velvet darkness of the backstage corridor.

______

The rooftops in New York City are more ambitious than they are back home. 

The skyline is a little toothier, a little more death-defying, more heart-racing. There are hundreds more feet to fall, but the vantage point is undeniable; you can see everything from up in the rafters. There is a fledgling piece of Andrew that wants to see everything. 

The night Riko Moriyama dies, Andrew climbs the eighteen flights of stairs to the top of their hotel, breaks the lock on the service door, and lets the warm night wind of the city buffet him back from the edge. He might have taken the elevator, but he needed the burn of exertion to ricochet his dissociating brain back into his body.

Neil was nearly killed tonight. Twice.

His memory keeps jamming and replaying the image of that knife—glinting so close to Neil’s face that he could see its reflection in his shocked wet eyes. Before Andrew could recover from that first close call, he’d turned from the bumbling sheriff’s half-baked interrogation to find that Neil was no longer behind him. Fresh panic clambered overtop of its twin, and the combined weight nearly took him out at the knees.

Back out on the edge of loss again and again. The dangling precipice, the ten story drop.

The vertigo had only started to subside when Wymack informed them all that the police were delivering Neil back to the hotel. Something about taking precautionary measures—apparently dodging a public execution makes a person irresistible to the paps. Andrew knew there was more to it than that. Neil would have come to them first, unless something else had happened.

He’d been gone before Wymack could finish speaking, Neil’s bag hoisted over his shoulder. And when he hadn’t found him in their room, or the lobby, he had come here.

The thing is, he’d never asked for Neil. 

He hadn’t felt that he’d been missing something, because he’d been missing everything, every important thing, since he was old enough to want. Life had given him instincts and taught him not to trust them. People had swarmed and receded like fickle insects, drawn to sweetness or light, then uninterested in his darkness, his acid. 

He wasn’t made to be stayed with. He wasn’t meant to be understood. But then, Neil.

That old trap, love. Mutually assured destruction.

Neil makes him feel like he is the only thing that Andrew’s life had been missing, like the whole muddled picture makes sense now that it’s completed. Neil clarifies all of the hardship, the close calls, the steel-lined self-preservation. He is the future Andrew couldn’t imagine, before.

Andrew takes a drag of his cigarette and looks up at the moon. The view below is a treasure chest of light, bulbs scattered like shimmering coins into the wilderness of the city. It really is a long way down, but he feels calm, steady. Air whistles through the sleek metal fixtures on armoured skyscrapers. Traffic barks and tussles. Andrew sits, and writes, and waits.

“Careful,” Neil’s soft voice calls on the wind. “I’ve had enough close calls for one day.”

Andrew looks backwards at him, a gust lifting his bangs flutteringly from his forehead. Neil stares at him like he’s only just noticed him, even though he’s the one who had spoken first.

“Whose fault is that?” Andrew replies.

“I don’t know,” Neil says, surprisingly raw. “The universe’s?”

“Come here,” Andrew says, and Neil falls forward at once, like he’d just been waiting for the invitation. 

He picks over the coarse cement to meet him at the end of the roof, settling opposite him on the wide, jutting ledge. Andrew tucks his notebook under his thigh, shakes a second cigarette from the pack, and holds it out.

Neil leans in. Their knees brush, and the leather of their boots squeaks together.

Andrew tucks the cigarette between Neil’s parted lips, and bows his head, the smouldering end of his own nudging up against Neil’s.

Somewhere far below, someone is laughing, catcalling, honking at a friend crossing the street, but for Andrew, all extraneous noise has disappeared. He cups his hand around the meeting place where the fire is reaching, trying to catch. Neil’s undone hair tousles in the wind, ruffling against Andrew’s outstretched fingers. 

He studies the tender flicker of orange light over Neil’s closed eyelids: one bisected, one unbroken. He has freckles now that summer has come again, and a bandaid holding them apart like a dam. Smoke trickles loose from the purse of his lips, and only then does Andrew pull back, with some difficulty.

“You disappeared again,” he accuses.

Neil nods.

“Tetsuji?” Andrew guesses, studying his stricken face. 

Neil takes a long pull from his cigarette, and blows smoke up at the sky. “Ichirou.”

The name whips by on the breeze, whirling out of reach. “You’re alive,” Andrew notes. “The rumours must be exaggerated.”

Neil looks doubtful, tapping ash over the side of the ledge. “Not that exaggerated, seeing as he just killed his own brother in front of me.” Another piece of news that is too big to possibly try and catch. It flies from Neil’s lips and out of sight, barely impacting Andrew at all on its way past.

His thoughts churn. He refills his lungs with smoke—hot, medicinal, clarifying—and stays silent.

“Thanks to you, by the way,” Neil says. “What you did to Riko tonight—what you said to Tetsuji before—“ He shivers. “It changed everything. You honoured our deal, even though it was already forfeit.”

Andrew shakes his head once, precise. “What were my options?” 

Neil’s eyes go terribly soft, memory foam soft—gentle, clinging, claustrophobic. “There are always options. You could let the food chain keep eating. Take care of your own interests.”

“That is what I did,” Andrew says simply. He flicks the sputtering end of his cigarette away, and watches it flutter down, down. Then he hooks two tobacco-grubby fingers in the silk of Neil’s nearest armband.

“Am I an interest?” Neil murmurs, just like Andrew hoped he wouldn’t. He says nothing, and Neil smiles as he looks away, staring out at the horizon to get a handle on his own joy. “Do you remember what we talked about on the roof at Eden’s Twilight? All those months ago?”

He remembers every conversation they’ve ever had. He remembers pinning Neil to that roof, in some twisted bid to earn the right to watch his back. To prove to himself that he could do it and walk away. He’d been so obvious, the same way he’s being obvious right now. He can feel it happening and he doesn’t even care to stop it anymore. Neil doesn't respond to subtlety, anyway.

“You said you were interested then, too,” Neil continues.

“In trading secrets,” Andrew clarifies. “In ending your lying streak.”

Neil’s smile grows. “Sure.” He doesn’t bother arguing. Andrew’s fingers are still stroking his pulse. Almost all their secrets are out by now, chopped and jumbled between them. 

Neil takes one last inhale, and tosses his half-cigarette without looking to see where it lands. He scoots closer, letting his legs fall open to bracket the slab of concrete they’re sitting on. Andrew lets him come.

And when he leans in to kiss him, smoke trailing from his wet lips, Andrew snares Neil with both hands around his jaw, and tilts him up into the moonlight. His eyes are so bright even in the shadows. His pupils crowd his irises. Andrew can’t contemplate them without closing the trembling gap between their mouths. 

He tries to kiss a long-lost feeling into him: desire, without fear. A thornless rose. 

He licks the bitterness of nicotine from his teeth, one hand moving to clench in his wayward curls. Neil starts to make a small, unthinking sound of pleasure, but Andrew gets to it first, when it’s vibration alone, and takes it for himself. His free thumb worries the bandaid, the close call, like he could smooth Neil’s skin back to wholeness.

When they part, Neil says, “I’m relieved,” in a small voice, against his lips. “After all that waiting, and fighting, and running away, I actually get to come home.”

“Tour's not over yet,” he replies, distracted. He kisses the sweep of his cheekbone, feeling the warm, scar-pebbled skin yielding to his mouth. He hoists Neil against him, their heads ducking naturally into the gaps between ear and shoulder, face-to-neck in both directions.

For a second, they just feel the heat of each other, there at the edge.

Then Neil presses deeper, dragging lips then teeth over Andrew’s neck, snaking a soft hand up to catch his head when it lolls. “I wasn’t talking about Columbia,” he says—and his face slides down, stopping against Andrew’s chest, and he lays a kiss there too.

It’s almost terrible, the start-stop start-stop of his feelings, the car whining in and out of gear. He wants—he has—so he should lose, next. That’s how the cycle goes. 

But Neil is miraculously un-losable, despite his herculean feats of fate-tempting. He is so far from invisible that he enters a new hyper-spectrum of light. Beyond infrared, warm and glaring.

And if he won’t disappear, then Andrew won’t either. Mutually assured survival. His notebook burns beneath their criss-crossing legs. He peels Neil away from his heart, if only so he can be kissed again.

Just like the first time they were in New York together, at the first show Neil ever played for fun, Andrew knows he will leave the city burdened with more feelings than when he entered it. 

Unlike the first time, he has somewhere to set them down. There is a home here, between them. Two solitary tenants in an abandoned place. A bloody lease, an unpacked duffel bag, a key, a song. A roof overlooking the world.

He will stay here for as long as he can.

______

The rockstar lifestyle, the tabloids report, has claimed another victim.

Riko’s body is found on the bathroom floor of a New York concert hall with a needle in his arm. Overdose. The tragic last resort of a man whose career had self-destructed an hour prior. Scrambling escapism. The spotlight makes the grieving process into a pressure cooker; fame buzzes wrongly in the brainstem.

These are the headlines that Matt recites dramatically over the dinner table at Abby’s. They’re all clustered around the refuse of dessert and spiked coffees, and an old Foxes record is spinning on the living room deck.

“Legendary Raven Sings Nevermore,” Matt quotes, with obvious distaste. 

“Personally, I would have gone with ‘ding dong, the dick is dead,’” Allison says, sipping her coffee. “But there’s no accounting for taste.”

“Do they know that Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven was about the demonic hallucinations of a madman? I looked it up. Like, this wasn’t a chill bird. No one liked it,” Matt says. Dan pats his hand placatingly.

“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Kevin says. He has that familiar thousand-yard stare going, but at least he looks more haunted than hunted these days. He picks at his peach pie and ice cream despondently until Aaron reaches over and crams a forkful into his mouth.

“I know,” Nicky agrees. “He was our own personal bogeyman for so long.”

“Do you really think it was an overdose?” Dan asks. Kevin scoffs darkly. “Yeah,” she sighs, “didn’t think so.”

Andrew is the only one who knows what Neil saw that night. It had seemed uncalled for, opening that particular closet door to his bandmates. He would tell them if they asked. For now, it feels kinder to give them the distance they’ve earned. 

He would have kept Andrew safe from it too if he could. But he’d taken one look at Neil’s wild, fizzy expression and he’d known. He can't seem to lie convincingly when it comes to Andrew. Secrets chafe these days, and anyway, the truth feels much lighter when it’s carried between the two of them.

“Can we talk about something happier?” Abby ventures. “You all did something amazing. Your song is a hit. You made it here together. Let’s not give Riko the satisfaction of letting him have any part of it.”

“Agreed,” Dan says, throwing a squeezing arm around Abby’s shoulder. Neil notes Wymack watching them with a small, grateful smile.

“I have something,” Renee interjects, “that might lighten the mood.” 

Allison tugs on an electric blue lock of her hair. “Of course you do,” she says fondly.

“Jean sent me a file this morning.” She moves to boot up Wymack’s old laptop, abandoned at the top of a pile of music books by the back door. “A prerelease of his first song with Trojan Horse. It’s kind of magical, I think.”

Neil’s still not totally convinced that Jean is lead singer material, and as Renee’s MP3 file starts to trickle out into the room, his suspicion is confirmed. Because he’s not leading—no one is. It’s just his and Jeremy’s vocals on the track, back and forth, quiet and building. 

It’s also immediately evident that there’s something different about these two when they’re together. They seem to meet seamlessly in a middle ground that Neil couldn’t have imagined until their voices took him there. He thought Jeremy might strengthen Jean’s tone, but they seem to soften each other instead.

It’s surprisingly coherent. It kind of makes Neil want to write something.

“I’m glad they found each other,” Abby says quietly, as the music continues to caramelize—low, slow, decadent.

“They’ve got a good thing going,” Wymack agrees. “I guess we should all be grateful that Knox didn’t sign with me, in the end.”

“That was an option?” Dan asks, disbelieving. “I thought he was a nepo hire?”

Wymack shrugs as if to say none of my business. “I still made him an offer, just in case.”

“Damn. Can you imagine Palmetto with Trojan Horse on the roster?” Matt asks, almost wistfully. “Kevin and Jeremy under the same roof?” “There are enough of us as it is,” Aaron says, rolling his eyes.

“I think we all ended up where we were supposed to,” Renee says serenely.

They all sit with that thought for a minute, as the song trickles to a close. Neil casts a sidelong glance at Andrew, who is quiet as usual, slit-eyed with tiredness. His hair is getting long in the back, curving along the line of his nape. 

Neil is grateful that he gets to see all these little changes happening. It wasn’t that long ago that he was studying his friends’ faces for a beat too long, trying to memorize them as they were.

“Send that to me?” Kevin asks softly. Renee nods, pleased.

“It’s crazy to think that Evermore was just sitting on a talent like that,” Nicky muses.

“Evermore loves to squander talent. It’s their raison d’être,” Neil says.

“I thought we were moving on from Riko talk?” Wymack interjects.

“Oh, come on boss,” Allison says. “Let us curse the man’s name.”

“Hey, do what you want,” Wymack grunts, rising from the table. “I’m getting another drink.”

Neil watches him wander off towards the kitchen, putting his hands briefly to the crowns of Dan's and Matt’s heads as he passes between their chairs. The whole house feels so warm around them, each of its guests well-fed and tipsy. Ending up in a place like this feels like a radical stroke of luck.

Except it wasn’t chance that brought them all here, well past the end of the road, to the winner’s table. It was Wymack. 

Again, Neil feels a stab of gratitude watching the family he earned, the unexpected harmony between them. He can almost hear who fits the bass line, the mid-tones, the shimmering tenors and sopranos. Balance. He downs the rest of his drink, lukewarm coffee and over-saturated whiskey, and follows their conductor into the kitchen.

Wymack looks up from the open fridge door when he enters.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he says, before Neil can call him out on leaving the room for no good reason.

“A new conversational topic?” he ventures. 

Wymack rolls his eyes. “I know you’ll exhaust yourselves of mafia-talk eventually.”

“I don’t know, it’s a pretty rich vein,” Neil says, hopping up lightly on the countertop.

“Sure,” Wymack says, closing the fridge and shrugging up against the opposite counter, arms crossed. “Harder on some of you than others though, I’d expect.” He nods towards the doorway to the dining room. Neil follows his gaze through the conversational crossfire to Kevin, looking down into his empty mug with an unreadable expression.

Neil shrugs. “Easier to talk about it once you’ve survived it.”

“I think I want better for you all than survival.”

Neil frowns, unsure of how such a thing could really be possible. He looks back from Kevin to see Wymack’s brow furrowed, his eyes far away.

“He told you,” Neil guesses, in a stroke of clarity. 

Wymack’s gaze elastic-snaps back to meet his.

His shoulders slump, and he sighs, running a hand over his face. “The night Riko went off on stage.” Of course. Of course Kevin had gone to his father first. “Shoulda known. Only a kid of mine would always be so determined to do something that scares the shit out of them.”

Neil doesn’t know what to say to that, so he agrees, haltingly, “he’s his father’s son.”

Wymack squints. ��I can’t tell which of us you’re insulting."

Neil shrugs again. “Either or.”

Wymack scoffs, uncrossing his arms restlessly. “You’re an equal opportunity smartass, are you?” Neil smirks and looks at the floor, studying the speckles in the linoleum, the line of grime where the mop won’t reach. “How are you holding up, by the way?”

He looks up, and something in his chest seems to peer upwards also. “Honestly? I’ve never felt better in my life.”

Wymack’s mouth twitches. He eases himself up onto his own stretch of counter, so they’re eye to eye. “Even after selling your soul to that pack of crows?”

Neil smiles thinly. “You’re assuming I had a soul to begin with.”

“You have a soul, kid,” Wymack says. “Trust me on that.” The conviction in his eyes is almost too much for Neil to withstand. 

“Well,” he starts, looking back out on the dining room. Dan is roping Allison and Nicky into sloppy three part harmony on some old power ballad. Aaron has skyped Katelyn in on the abandoned laptop. From the sounds of it, she’s winning a bet against Matt on something or other. Kevin has stopped staring at his empty cup, and is pouring himself a fresh coffee. “I’m happy to give it up for them.”

“Hm. Just eighty percent of it, last I remembered. Try and hold onto the other twenty, okay?” Now he nods towards the other side of the table, where Andrew is making no effort to pretend that he’s not staring back at them. “Whatever you haven’t already promised to him, anyway.”

Neil doesn’t believe in souls, but he is starting to believe in promises. If souls were real, he thinks they would be like an exchange, not an essence.

Something of his thought process must be showing in his expression, because Wymack sighs. “We’ll make a selfish man of you yet.”

“It doesn’t get much more selfish than becoming the frontman for a band when you have a homicidal maniac on your tail.”

“I said selfish, not stupid,” Wymack says flatly.

“Alright, fine,” Neil says, fighting another smile. He hops down from the counter, eager to rejoin his friends. “I can be selfish. I’ll be selfish for the rest of my life.”

“Within reason,” Wymack calls at his back. “Within reason, Neil Josten.” 

Neil laughs as he retakes his seat at the table, his composure in joyful tatters. Andrew stares. In lieu of an explanation, Neil reaches out and brushes his fingers, selfishly, against the soft hair at his nape. Andrew bows his head, just an inch, and indulges him.

______

With the past finally buried in its unremarkable plot, Palmetto Records begins to climb to new, impossible heights. The future is still uncertain, but it is wide.

Subunits crop up occasionally between Foxes and Ausreißer: unexpected pairings, features, and swapped producing credits. If you strain your ears you might find Dan’s harmonies warming Kevin’s to a simmer, or a lick of violin under a thrashing drumbeat. 

If they’re not working together they’re hanging out together, constantly photographed in each other’s pockets, flipping off the camera at Eden’s Twilight, or sharing smokes in the studio parking lot. The fans joke that the nine of them should join forces for good—someone has to give Jeremy’s all-star crew a run for their money.

More staff is hired, including a much-needed publicist, audio engineers, roadies, and a loyal security team. Even with a heavy tax on their earnings, Palmetto is flying. Aaron buys his own apartment as soon as he can. Andrew buys a Maserati. 

Trojan Horse puts out a record called Le Corbeau Doré, which becomes a critical success, and sweeps that season’s awards, much to Neil’s chagrin. Meanwhile, Thea Muldani debuts as a soloist under Edgar Allen’s label, and her stage presence is so large that it fills both halves of the gap Evermore left in its wake.

There’s a cork-board in Palmetto's foyer, streaked with polaroid photos of Wymack’s investments: 

Renee and Allison kissing with Dan cheesing next to them, partway through dragging Matt into frame. Kevin smiling uncertainly at Renee, violin tucked under his chin for the first time. Matt and Nicky submerged to their waists in the lake, with Neil and Aaron hoisted up on their respective shoulders, partway through a vicious chicken fight. 

Kevin sitting next to his newly revealed father, both of them coincidentally pulling the same stressed out, nose-pinching pose. Ausreißer’s original line-up, looking back at the interloping photographer from their circle around the backyard fire pit.

And the new and final line-up: Nicky giving Kevin bunny ears at the same time that he gives Neil a teasing pinch on the cheek, Aaron and Andrew slouched shoulder to shoulder, Andrew’s hand curled casually around the side of Neil’s neck. It was summertime, after a sticky outdoor gig, and their tattoos were out, the whole parade of fierce and gimlet-eyed unmentionables. 

Andrew often stops to look at Neil in this photo, half of his sweaty hair pulled back from his face, auburn with dark tips. His scar was starting to heal up, closer to the clean white reaching prongs he sports today. His piercings glint. His eyeliner runs. He’s grinning with all his teeth. He is so cleanly and entirely a monster. One of theirs. 

In the photo, Neil had just gotten his chest piece, and it’s peeking out from his open collar: the god Hermes in his winged sandals. Thief, trickster, emissary, connector of two disparate worlds. In a tangential sort of way, it suits Ausreißer’s themes: exceptions to rules, fugitive personalities. Some gods are monsters, and vice versa.

And around his wrist, beneath his armband, where it’s almost never seen, there’s a snake in the same style as Andrew’s hydra, and it is eating its own tail. A small, hungry infinity, just for Neil and Andrew to see.

______

Three years after he first stumbled upon the monsters, five years after he drowned the memory of his mother, Neil’s life has become fantastically selfish.

Ausreißer haloes each stage like a sundog, stamping the sky with its circle of brightness, its fiery heart. They banter before they play, stealing the mic, stepping on each other’s jokes, each of them pulling at a corner of the crowd’s favour until the mood parachute-billows above them all.

Andrew still keeps his heartbeat in his drum kit. Aaron starts to care less about appearances, Nicky starts to care more, and they meet in the middle as family. Kevin’s fortitude has its own musicality. He warms each song in the palm of his healed left hand, and faces his second chance with clear eyes. They pass the vocal line to Neil, and watch him herd their wayward melodies home.

Before long, they start playing arenas. Nicky has stopped calling them misfits, and started calling them rockstars.

Tonight they’re playing a sold-out show, and Neil is running down the open runway toward the crowd, freedom racing over his skin in an unbroken current. His in-ears are dangling, and he’s laughing. No shadows can touch him in a spotlight this big.

The camera pans over the audience, a sea of armbands, waving lighters, real and fake tattoos, black and orange merch, and tear-streaked faces.

The panorama shifts, and Foxes comes into frame, hollering from the VIP section. Matt was clearly midway through an air guitar solo, and he doubles over in caught laughter. Allison models her Ausreißer tank top, plucking it away from her chest so people can see the logo in full. Renee is pretending to try and intimidate the camera, armbands crossed. Dan is mid cattle whistle, fingers to her mouth. Katelyn and Erik are cheering next to them, sharing a gaudy banner that says the guitarist is mine.

There’s a gaggle of staff beside them too, including Wymack, who pulls the brim of his cap down to cover his face—but below its curve you can still clearly see his grin. 

Neil points to them all, fizzing with good, clean adrenaline, and says, “the whole family’s here tonight!”

The crowd stomps and roars in approval. The camera switches back to the band, broadcasting Neil’s face in HD, and for a minute he doesn’t even recognize himself. Gleaming black piercings, makeup smudged out into the roots of his scar, hair wild, smile huge. He looks fierce, but he looks nothing at all like his father. Nathan never looked this happy in all his days.

And just like the first full Ausreißer performance Neil ever watched, he is struck with a profound feeling of belonging. He’ll take them to the Grammys. He’ll take them to Elysium.

The perspective on the big screen changes again, flitting to Andrew at his drum kit, golden, sweat-soaked, infinitely larger than life. There’s a flicker of his true expression, tilting upwards, relaxed, before he can register the camera. And Neil doesn’t have to turn around to know where that peaceful gaze is fixed. 

But he looks back anyway.

And across the din of the crowd, across the endless stage that carpets the distance between them, through the rush of music which connects all broken people and lost things—their eyes meet.

[neo-neos]

✨My favorite AFTG moments and quotes✨

Disclaimer and spoiler warning!!!!!: These aren't all "famous moments" and I am aware some of those are most definitely missing. But, these are moments that made me laugh or had me wide-eyeing the book. They are personal favorites mostly but I hope it brings you a little joy as well. Spoiler warning: TGR is in this at the end too.

The Foxhole Court

- Chapter 4 - “I’m not a math problem” “But I’d still solve you”

- Chapter 4 - "You are a conundrum," Andrew said. "Thank you." "No, thank you," Andrew said as he slipped past Neil without a look back. "I need a new toy to play with." "I'm not a toy." "I guess we'll see."

- Chapter 8 - But desperation was a valuable lubricant (Yes, I took this out of context but it was too good)

The Raven King

- Chapter 5 - "You have a way of making people want to kill you," Andrew said.

- Chapter 7 - Kevin reacted the way Neil expected everyone would to the truth: with a horrified demand that Neil leave immediately. Andrew, though nodded in the face of it and told Neil to stay. He stood his ground when Neil asked him for murder and gave him a key to their house. But that didn't count, because Andrew was Andrew, and this was definitely the last turn he needed his thoughts to take. He dragged his attention back to the task at hand and vowed never to listen to Nicky again.

- Chapter 9 - When Neil started to argue, Andrew hooked a finger under his chin and forced his mouth closed again.

- Chapter 9- "Sometimes you're interesting enough to keep around. Other times you're so astoundingly stupid I can barely stand the sight of you."

- Chapter 12 - Betsy nodded but asked, "Where are Nicky and Kevin?" "Nicky tried to hug Andrew and almost got himself stalked with a kitchen knife," Wymack said. "Kevin was smart enough to get him out of here."

- Chapter 14 - "Don't you dare 'Coach?' me, you malfunctioning retard."

The King's Men

- Chapter 2 - "Is your learning curve a horizontal line?" Andrew asked.

- Chapter 2 - "I can walk," Neil said. "Proud of you," Wymack said. "Didn't ask."

- Chapter 3 - "I didn't think I was a personal problem. You hate me, remember?" "Every inch of you," Andrew said. "That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you."

- Chapter 4 - "All right. I'm going out for a bit. Might be a while, so eat without me. Wish me luck?" "Luck," Neil said as Matt kissed her goodbye.

- Chapter 7 - "Ninety percent of the time the very sight of you makes me want to commit murder. I think about carving the skin from your body and hanging it out as a warning to every other fool who thinks he can stand in my way."

- Chapter 7 - "What about the other ten?" Neil asked. Andrew ignored that. "I warned you not to put a leash on me." "I didn't," Neil said. "You put that leash on yourself when you told me to stay no matter what. Don't be mad at me just because I was smart enough to pick up the other end of it."

- Chapter 7 - "Drama queen," Neil muttered.

- Chapter 8 - It was Friday, January 19th. Neil Josten was supposed to turn twenty on March 31st. Today Nathaniel Wesninski turned nineteen years old. (This one is personal. I apparently share a birthday with Nathaniel HAHA)

- Chapter 8 - "And I need you to derail that one-track fucking mind of yours for two seconds."

- Chapter 8 - Nicky started to say something, but Andrew sparked his lighter an inch from Nicky's face in silent warning.

- Chapter 15 - Neil took a careful step toward them, trying to convey silent support and backup, but Katelyn was too afraid of Andrew to look at Neil. Andrew leaned forward to get in her face and jabbed a finger into her temple. "You are a tumor," he said. "I should have cut you out and thrown you away when you were still benign. Now it's too late, so here we are. Don't you dare fucking speak," Andrew said, voice savage, when Katelyn opened her mouth. Katelyn clamped her lips together and finally darted a terrified look at Neil. Andrew seized her chin and forced her attention back to him. "Do not ignore me. Your life hinges on how well you can listen. Can you listen?" - Chapter 17 - "You're crazy," Neil said to Andrew in an undertone. "This is news to no one." Andrew said.

- Epilogue - "Your close calls are getting old," Andrew said. "I thought you knew how to run." Neil affected confusion. "I thought you told me to stop running." "Survival tip: no one likes a smart mouth."

The Sunshine Court

- Chapter 1 - "That man is overdue for a high-speed, head-on collision."

- Chapter 3 - "He hasn't played a clean game in years," Keven admitted, "But he knows how to follow orders. If you tell him to submit, he will." "Literally the most awkward way you could've worded it," Jeremy said.

- Chapter 4 - "You're a better fit than I am," Jean said, a touch grumpily. "Unhinged optimist."

The Golden Raven

- Chapter 2 - "A single word is seldom rude enough to make a point."

- Chapter 2 - "Isn't that ridiculous?" "Most things about you are," Jean pointed out. Jeremy laughed. "Yeah, you're probably right. But Jean? I'm glad you're here, too. Our lives are better with you in them." "Mine would be better if you would stop talking."

- Chapter 5 - And while he couldn't remember how yogurt worked out, he knew she could correct him. (This sentence was just funny to me because the first 3 times I read "and while he couldn't remember how yogurt worked.")

- Chapter 6 - Jeremy couldn't help himself. "Must be nice, liking both. I bet it makes things easier." "Stop dyeing your hair. The bleach is rotting your brain." (As a pan/bisexual myself... Valid.)

- Chapter 7 - "Just heard the news - that's fantastic! We're so happy for him!!" Kevin's responds took only a minute: "Unexpected, if I'm being honest." Then, "Andrew would have burned the judge's house to the ground if he turned on Aaron. Maybe he knew that?" Jeremy idly wondered if that was a joke.

- Chapter 9 - "Filing that one under the list of things no one asked you," Andrew said as he lit up.

- Chapter 15 - Jean pressed a thumb to the bruises on Jeremy's throat. "His name." "I can't give you that," Jeremy said, scooting toward the edge of the bed. "I told you it was an accident. He was just worked up and drunk." "I don't believe you. Cat has never bruised Laila like this." "Maybe Laila's not as good with her tongue." ___ "I will tell her you said that."

- Chapter 17 - "You're very lucky they have me on a leash," he said in French. "You're in America," the striker said. "Speak English, you illiterate fuck."