#so when he's projected into the Real World he’s forced to take on the closest possible reference for a physical form

[semiohazard]

draw a parable one meillion times . Right Now

[existence-is-a-pain87]

Can you do self-aware, Astro and shelly?

Already sort of did one with Shelly, but I can most certainly do Astro! (I've been really wanting to make something for Astro).

Just Go To Sleep...

Yandere!Self-Aware!Astro x Reader

Warnings: Obsession and other general yandere behaviors

--☆☆☆☆☆--

Astro wasn't really interested in you at first.

So what if they could hear a player now? What's that going to change?

Then he learned of your DAMN sleep schedule.

And he was horrified.

What do you mean you don't get at least eight hours a night? What do you mean you've stayed up several times for an hour or two to play things like Dandy's World? What do you mean you've done it when you had to wake up at practically six or earlier the next day?!

And what made it so much worse was your remarks about 'not needing the sleep' or 'being able to handle it'.

That was made Astro start to care. Not about you, per say.

But definitely about your trashy sleep schedule that he desperately needs to fix.

He didn't have many passion projects, but you were going to be a welcome first.

He would make sure you actually would sleep at night.

--☆☆☆--

Astro soon learned you never remembered your dreams. And the few you could remember were never the types of dreams you wanted to have.

Maybe if he could fix this, you'd be more willing to sleep?

Oh, you also take forever to fall asleep?

Okay, he could work on fixing that too.

The only problem is getting his powers to affect you in your world...

That would be an issue he would work on later, he decided. First, we would figure out how to get you to stop playing to late and sleep...

It started off quite simple. Twisted Astro would just spawn a ton more when you stayed up later playing.

However, much to his annoyance, you'd just be happy to have more Astro research and would happily not be bothered as he spawned.

So he began spawning on every single floor until he killed you, and made you give up and go to bed.

Of course, though, his constant spawns made you start to get stunningly good at dealing with him.

So he began upping his aggression the later you stayed up until he would inevitably kill you. Or at least the Toon you played as.

He could ignore the complaints the others voiced at him forcing you to log off and go to sleep, them getting attached to you.

Astro didn't care. He just wanted to make sure you slept.

He didn't even notice he was getting attached.

--☆☆☆--

Astro was the one who heard all of Dandy's rambles about you.

He was a little scared by his friend's obsession with you, worrying for the flower who seemed to crave you.

Craving wholly and entirely you.

Astro tried not to bring up his concerns, especially when Dandy was so gleeful that Astro was putting in so much effort to ensure you had a healthy sleep schedule.

Dandy was just gleeful, his closest friend also liked you.

Astro tried to pretend that he didn't like you, that he didn't understand why his friends and the Toons around him were growing obsessed, that images of you didn't haunt him when he slept and made him crave to have the real you with him.

He was lying to himself.

But Astro didn't pretend to dislike you.

Yes, there were things about you he didn't adore, such as your rashness, stubbornness, and self-hatred.

But your positives far outweighed your negatives.

You were flawed, but these flaws only made the beautiful parts of you more amazing.

--☆☆☆--

Never has Astro been more happy for Vee's soft spot for him.

Why? Because she told him a surprising amount of little tidbits of information she learned.

And he would share some of these tidbits with the other Toons.

He told Sprout and Cosmo about your favorite foods? He caught them later practicing how to make all these treats until they were perfect for you.

He mentioned to Goob and Scraps art projects you wanted to try? He found them working on figuring out how to do it themselves so they could teach you.

He told Shelly your favorite dinosaur- huh? She already knew..?

...

Weird. She doesn't seem willing to explain why she knows anyway. He decides not to ask more if she refuses to tell.

But he does worry a bit now...

Especially since everyone is getting as clingy and obsessive over you as Dandy is...

Including him.

--☆☆☆--

You're haunting everyone's dreams.

Astro's seen it. Whisps of you in everyone's head, being a figure of comfort and even worship.

He saw them adore you. How they craved you desperately. How each viewed you differently, desired you in certain ways.

And how their love became obsession. Desperate obsession that scared Astro.

But what scared him the most was how he, too, had that obsession.

He couldn't dream. But you haunted him in his every moment. Fleeting whispers of you that made him crave the real thing.

He wanted to hold you, keep you in a blissful dream that you'd never want to wake up from, and could return to that dream whenever you pleased. Make this dream to be whatever you want it to be, and make it joyful to you.

He wanted to keep you close, all of his arms wrapped around you. Cup your peaceful, sleeping face as he gently presses a kiss to your forehead. To join you in that dream and be a figure of comfort.

Be one of the few who love you who doesn't allow their obsession to corrupt them and be a figure of peace.

Who, despite the obsession, doesn't act upon the darker urges beyond wanting you near him.

He could control himself, he swore upon it.

--☆☆☆--

Astro was more than willing to help in Dandy's plan.

Why wouldn't he be? It's a chance to finally see the real you.

What surprised him the most was how willing everyone else was to join in on this plan.

Somehow, even Shrimpo and Vee were convinced to help the plan.

It make him fully realize just how much everyone craved your presence. How they were so much more willing to act upon their dark desires.

He realized he needed to protect you from these dark desires. To shield you from the dark things the others seeked to do to you.

He wanted to protect you. To keep you healthy. To keep you happy.

But most of all, fix your damn sleep schedule.

This is why your stubbornness pisses him off. Even now, you stay up late playing the game until he kills you and makes you sleep.

So, for the sake of their Creators and Gods... For the sake of him keeping his love as pure as he could... To resist the dark urges and obsession he had with you...

Just go to sleep...

[chlorinecake]

☆ ☆ ☆ You’re All Skin n’ Bones, Baby

— ⊹ ⛓️ 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 ♯ Trouble Maker!N.RK x Good Girl!Reader 🍴

⛓️ 𝗣𝗟𝗢𝗧 ♯ When your father, a.k.a the dean of your university, sets you on a quest to help the troubled transfer student from your art class rewrite the rebellious narrative staining his character, you two find yourselves falling for each other, discovering a new art of taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy...

⛓️ 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗦 ♯ Swearing, Awkward Situations, Riki Vandalizes Your University with Graffiti, Name-Calling (Flirting), Kissing (With Tongue), Hickeys (Kinda), Riki Has A Tattoo, Lingering Touches (Nothing Below The Belt), Suggestive Jokes, Reckless Behavior, Some Fluff and Angst if You Squint

⛓️ 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗗 𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗧 ♯ 4.2k ──── 「 生きがい 」

Friday, The Dean's Office,  3:32 p.m.

“Simply put, Riki is a very misunderstood youth, and you, _____, so happen to be one of the few people who sincerely understand him.”

You stared back at your father, who sat in his leather chair at his desk, a dumbfounded expression upon your face as you crossed your arms. “And you're telling me all of this because of what again?”

“Because I need your help,” Riki butted in from where he sat beside where you stood on your feet, drawing your attention back to his casual disposition.

From the way his long legs extended lazily before him to the way his black combat boots hit the ground with loud thumps every time his foot bounced out of boredom, the poor kid was just as big as his behavioral problems...

That is, roughly 187 centimeters worth...

However, in spite of his large stature and occasional bouts of clumsiness, Riki Nishimura was lighter than a feather on his feet when it came to dancing, a.k.a., one of the few things in his life that he found joy in, aside from you, his family, and the comfort of his bed...

Looking back at your father, he gave you a pleading look, hoping that he would somehow soften your heart without the use of any more words.

And it’s not that you didn't want to help Riki...

I mean, he was one of your closest friends, and you otherwise would've leaped at any opportunity to spend more time with him, so long as it wasn't under such circumstances.

In the past, your father never really approved of your friendship with Riki, simply because he had a track record of rebellion according to the other universities he attended and ended up getting kicked out of.

'A homeschooled delinquent,' some would call him, but you preferred sweeter names for him—names that described the real him.

It's just that the whole idea of having you, the “perfect student,” coach a more troubled peer seemed like a poor excuse of a publicity stunt.

Riki was much more to you than that... he deserved better than to be scrutinized like some sort of criminal just for being his authentic self.

And the odd reality was that you and the other kids at your university with allegedly clean records were no different from Riki.

All misguided and all a little reckless here and there...

Taking risks was part of being young, last time you checked.

The only difference is that Riki wasn't as good at hiding those parts of him like the rest of the students at your university were...

They were either forced or pressured to hide behind a mask that resembled good grades, perfect attendance... stuck within a cookie-cutter framework, and exhibiting perpetual compliance to the ways of the academic world—

“Fine,” you sighed, straightening your posture to appear more obliging than you were actually feeling, “but only if you promise not to make this some sort of project, Dad... Riki's my friend, not some charity case to make you look good.”

Your father scoffed at your insulting words. “What do you take me as, some kind of crook? Such a thought never even crossed my mind, _____,” he corrected sternly before continuing, “My concerns for Riki come from a good place and have nothing to do with what I can gain from you agreeing to help us-”

“Fix him, right?” You interrupt, making a shy smirk tug at the corners of Riki's mouth at the awkward tension in the room now.

“Honey, you know that's not what this is about,” your father sighs, getting up from his seat and straightening out his suit. “Riki is not a broken lamp that he should be fixed... but a lost soul in need of positive redirecting.”

“And who better to help than a fellow peer?” Riki winks at you, making you roll your eyes at him.

“Precisely,” the dean finishes, pushing his chair under the desk before making his way to the office door. “I expect you two to run into hurdles on this journey, but hopefully it's a process that helps you both grow... together...”

You shake your head, uncrossing your arms from over your chest as your father’s eyes flicker between you and Riki now.

“Oh, and one more thing, ____... this young man may be troubled to some degree, but he can certainly teach you a lesson or two on respect.”

Slam.

The office door closed slowly, but with its habitually loud locking sound, making your insides shake a bit.

You look back at Riki, who only had a shrug to offer you, though you knew your father was expecting you and Riki to see yourselves out of his office.

So y’all did, all the way to your separate homes, where you would dread the following Monday when Project: “Positively Redirect” Riki would commence!...

⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆

Next Monday, ART Room 8080, 5:30 p.m.

The bottom of your ass was stinging given how long you had been sitting in the uncomfortable desk chair.

Your back had also started to burn with a similar pain, and the only thing that seemed to delight you amidst the lengthy "Elements of Art" lecture was once again the tall boy sitting beside you.

The voice of your instructor faded away in your ears as you observed Riki holding an ink pen, gliding its ball-tip against his skin in careful lines.

“You suck at drawing,” you whisper to him.

“And your mother’s a cow,” he retorts plainly, despite the smirk curling at his mouth.

From what you can tell, he was drawing a spiderweb in the shape of a heart on the inside of his wrist; The same romantic spiderweb design that was graffitied on your university's parking lot pavement a few days ago.

You always found it endearing how Riki's right wrist would be full of inky doodles by the end of each lecture, thanks to him being left-handed.

Though, other people found his habit to be odd… immature, even... and you never understood why those people even felt the need to speak—

“You’re really making an effort at this character development thing, aren’t you, babes?” You ask sarcastically, tilting your head at him now.

“Yup,” he answers matter-of-factly, eyes still trained on the inky design staining his pale skin.

You took in the expression on his face—the way his lips often poked out slightly like a duck whenever he focused on something.

It was a sight that always made you giggle inside… mostly because you found cute things to be humorous, but also because Riki had a way of making you feel all giddy for reasons you didn't fully understand—

“Wanna kiss ‘em or something?” He asked, looking you dead in the eye with his own piercing ones.

“E-excuse me?” You scoffed with both confusion and feigned disgust.

“I mean these,” he said, showing you the doodle of a skull on his wrist that had big, red lips to match the crimson bows at each pigtail. “Heard you like it juicy,” he continued, raising his eyebrows at you flirtatiously.

“Shut the fuck up,” you swear, shoving his shoulder slightly.

And with that, the class was concluded, and students were loading up their textbooks into their backpacks in every which direction—

“You’re really not that different from me, y’know that?” He said in a mocking tone, “Especially not with that raging potty mouth of yours...”

“I was provoked to use such language, you dick.”

“Then you have very poor emotional regulation skills for your age.”

...

“I’m leaving,” you say, getting up from the seat and slinging your bag over your shoulder, “have fun making out with your new dOodLe sKuLl giRLfriEnD... Heard you like ‘em skinny, anyways…”

“Pfft... Where’d you hear that crap?”

“Around,” you lied, knowing that Riki wasn't the type of guy to have weight preferences when it came to girls...

He only had personality preferences, and so far, you were his absolute favorite person yet, crumby attitude and all.

“Whatever,” he said, in between your brief voyage to the campus lockers where you put your things away. “Also,” Riki began again, leaning against his locker while looking at his reflection in the mirror, “should I... change?”

“What, your diaper?”

“No, my outfit, stupid. Unless you don’t mind being seen with a guy who looks like me these days...”

His words sting you for some reason, and you know exactly what he was trying to imply with that comment.

The other day, Riki heard your father complaining to an instructor in his office about student's not 'abiding by standards of clothing apparel,' and of course, the poor boy assumed the comment was specifically directed towards him-

“You look fineee, Riki,” you reassure him, closing your locker before caressing the side of his arm gently. “Besides, I'd never feel ashamed walking beside you... ripped jeans, piercings, and all...”

His mind paused for a second, focusing a little too hard on the way your touch somehow warmed him from both the outside and within.

“Hey,” you started, your voice pulling him back from his thoughts, “Earth to Riki...?”

“Y-yea, right... Earth,” he stammered, running a shy hand through his hair before adjusting his backpack over his shoulder.

“Let's get out of here, then,” you chuckled, walking down the hall now as he followed closely behind you.

⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆

Later, On Some Unknown, Majestic Path, 6:17 p.m.

You two made it to a bridge—the crossing road where you and him expected to straighten out the crooked mess of rumors and past infamies plaguing Riki’s reputation.

“You got the letter, right?”

The letter, he heard your words replay in his mind...

The very letter in which Riki divulged a sincere handwritten apology to the Dean of your university discussing his declining academic performance, poor behavior, aptitudes to improve, and blah fucking blah...

Anyone with a good head on their shoulders could tell that Riki was a fantastic artist, but every rose had its thorn, with Riki's impulsive creative side often getting the best of him...

Aside from going against the dress code and skipping classes, Riki recently vandalized school property with a spontaneous mural of skulls, spiderwebs, and other edgy doodles on the parking lot pavement.

Nobody knew he was responsible for it aside from you, and you had no intention of ratting him out for it...

Yes, it was an unusual design to see every morning at the center of such a prestigious university, but regardless of all that, you figured the graffiti looked pretty cool, actually...

Besides, it was an art school for crying out loud; weren't students supposed to express themselves here?

Or perhaps you only felt that way because Riki was responsible for it, but I digress.

“Yeah, I double checked before we left,” he said plainly, looking down the brick road ahead. “Oh, and uh... I know I've never showed you, but my place is actually the small one right over there… with the candle-like furnace on top... you see it?”

“Yeah, I see it,” you smile softly, just as you catch on to him walking ahead of you and down the right path instead of the left one.

“Hey, the dean's office is this way, remember?”

“Uh huh... and it’s still gonna be there when we get back.”

“Bro, where’re you going?”

“Bro, nowhere,” he replied mockingly, still walking away from you, “I just need to clear my head before sending this stupid letter… just in case I run into the dean or something...”

“And would that really be so bad?” You pressed, “I swear, it’s like everyone views my dad like a scary monster just because he’s doing his job...”

Riki felt himself internally gag at the reminder that you were in fact the deans daughter.

“Since when do you, of all people, defend your dad?”

“Hey, I may be a disrespectful fart towards him at times, but that doesn't mean I can't stand up for him.”

“Uh huh,” Riki nods skeptically, “he must be giving you extra brownie points and allowance for that shit or something...”

“Yeah, actually, he is! And I don't plan on sharing any with you, either... not my brownies points NOR my petty cash...”

“Good,” he retorts playfully, mirroring your bratty behavior, “my piggy bank likes being empty, anyways... PLUS, I’m trying to cut back on sugar these days...”

“Well, good luck with that then... citrus helps, though… with the sugar cravings, I mean.”

“I know... that’s why I’m hanging out with you... duhhh!”

“Oh, so you’re implying that I'm sour, now?”

“If the shoe fits,” he shrugs, and a few moments pass before you’re walking through a front door, through his living room, and eventually onto a balcony.

The house was so dimly lit that you couldn’t make out much of anything while inside, other than the smell of tea and leather cleaner.

“What d’you think?” Riki asks, spreading his arms out to show off, “Gnarly landscape, am I right?”

“You’re so right,” you agree, walking over to the ledge and observing the large pasture that made up his backyard. “It’s beautiful here.”

The two of you look over the edge for a while, folding your arms over the stone balcony until you catch him looking off to the other side, something about him immediately catching your attention.

“Woah?” You exclaim, finding your hands in his hair as you turn his head, examining the thing that caught your eye.

“Woah what? Is there a bug on me or something?” Riki asks, bending his knees slightly so you can reach him better.

“No, it's a tattoo.” You clarify, “I didn't know you had any real ones...”

“Oh yeahhh… I uh... I got that one a while back when I was in high school... I have another one, too, but it's under my clothes, so I can't show you until we're marri-”

“What's it say?” You ask with a whisper, examining the fine textures of inky Japanese characters staining the ivory skin behind his ear.

The tattoo in itself was relatively simple, but you believe that's what made it all the more stunning...

“Ikigai...” He answers with a deep voice, looking in your eyes with his own piercing ones, which makes you retreat your touch from his hair, “it refers to something that gives us our sense of purpose... our reason to live...”

The silence is so loud after he says that that the sound of distant birds and wind-chimes fills your ears as if you were wearing headphones.

That's when you hear a door hinge creak in the distance—

“Riki?! I don’t have my glasses on, but your bedroom looked oddly tidy and you never tidy your room, so now I’m worried—”

“In a minute, Grams!” Riki called out in a deep voice, resting his hands at his sides as he looked back at you, the elderly woman having stayed outside, keeping to herself.

Despite her few wrinkles, she was a perfect shadow of Riki, from her similarly fierce eyes, the long legs she stood on, to her plump, duck-like lips—

“What’s the deal with your face right now?” Riki asked, drawing your attention back to him.

“Oh, you mean my beauty?” You returned sarcastically.

“No, the other thing,” he corrected, “…made your eyes go all big and bright.”

“Oh… Possibly shock, then?”

“But from what cause?”

“Grams,” you repeated, looking over the balcony at the same shed-door the woman just came from. “I didn’t know you lived with anybody…”

“I don’t; she lives with me,” Riki continued, flicking a mosquito off his arm. “She’s kind of mental, so I gotta take care of her like she took care of me.”

“That’s sweet,” you murmur quietly to yourself, but he hears you anyway-

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing…”

“You definitely said something.”

“No I didn’t?”

“Haven’t I ever told you how terrible you are at lying?”

“No, actually,” you respond plainly, “But you have told me that you think I’m beautiful... well, indirectly, but it still counts.”

He furrows his brows at you. “When did I say that?”

“Literally a few seconds ago?”

“Seriously?”

“Damn… Now I'm starting to think you didn't mean it.”

“No no no, I meant it!” Riki says, raising his voice slightly, “P-probably...”

“Well, thanks anyway,” you return, looking back over the balcony at the sight of his grandmother roaming their garden.

“I think you're beautiful, too, Riki.”

A silence swarmed between you two now.

Not an awkward silence, but a silence nonetheless.

A pleasant peace…

Riki bit his lip to keep himself from smiling, but you had already noticed his expression by now, poking a finger at the apple of his slightly rosy cheek, making him swat your hand away playfully.

“Stop that or I'll bite you,” he threatens.

“But babyyy… you look so cute when you're blushing,” you teased, making the poor boy feel like he was just seconds from internally combusting because of you.

Riki never got worked up over compliments like this, but then again, you proved to have a stronger effect on his emotions… one that even you father could see.

“I seriously will bite you, ____,” he warns again through a contagious chuckles, grabbing a hold of your wrist at the same time your hand gripped his bicep, making him stop in his actions.

You two shyly meet each other's eyes now, faint smiles present on both your faces until you release your grip on his arm, his touch still remaining at your wrist.

“Riki.” You speak quietly, and for reasons you don’t understand at first… but that’s when he decides to speak up instead—

“I wanna show you one more thing,” he starts, still holding your wrist as he steps up with a strong lunge onto the balcony ledge, resting his foot on the wooden plank attached to it.

“Riki, get down from there!” You shout.

“Not until you join me first.” He reasons with a smirk.

Judging from the way he briefly peeks down at the ground beneath him, you can already tell that he wants you to jump with him.

“Riki… I’m not doing that... I-I can't… and I can’t let you do that, either.”

Funny thing is, you said all of this while doing a lunge yourself, joining the tall boy on the balcony ledge and holding his hand tightly as you let your feet find the wobbly plank next.

“Why not?…” He presses.

“Because… you’re all skin and bones, baby,” you sigh nervously, feeling your heart rate increase with every passing second. “I’m afraid that I’ll either hurt you or that you’ll hurt yourself.”

Riki gives you a shady look now. “You have no idea how insulting that is to me, do you?”

“Be careful, asshole!” You shriek, his strength having tugged at your hand, making you tread even further down the plank now.

“Geez, would you relax, drama queen? I’m doing fineee, see? We’re fine… Just don’t let go of my hand until I say so, okay?”

“H-how am I even supposed to trust you in a state like this?” Your voice comes out just as wobbly as you feel in your knees, being sure not to look down as that would only make things worse for you.

“Hmm… not sure,” he shrugs, “But maybe it would help if you stopped policing me for like... one fucking second?”

“Fine. A second has passed, now can we PLEASEE go back to the bridge—ahhh!”

Riki jumps first, but because you were holding hands, you fall with him, tumbling into the grassy pasture before landing on top of him.

“That was fun, right?” Riki asks while scanning your face, wind knocked out of him; he's panting slightly beneath you, chest rising and falling given the rush of adrenaline he just received.

“Are we even alive right now?” You ask back, seriously not being able to believe that you both survived such a fall... everything around you seemed light, and you weren't sure if that had something to do with your head spinning or something worse. “Please tell me this isn’t heaven.”

“Not unless you really think that’s what being on top of me feels like…”

You gave him the deadliest side-eye you could muster—

“Shut the fuck up,” you curse him, making a light chuckle rumble in his chest.

For a brief moment, you look up, just now realizing that Riki’s backpack was scattered among the grass with all of his school supplies decorating the landscape.

Sighing, you planted your palms on the ground before trying to get up, only for the strength of Riki’s arm to keeps you down, fusing your body’s together.

“Riki, the dean's office is gonna be closing soon, we gotta get going-”

“And my future can wait, ____,” he said, looking into your eyes, “just let me enjoy this moment in the present for a little longer, alright?”

You wait to answer before eventually nodding, watching his chest heave slower now, but still in a rising and falling manner.

“You're nervous about something,” you whisper, even though it was more like a question to him.

You felt your stomach flutter at the way his hand was secured at your waist now, trailing up to the side of your face with his other hand.

“I am,” he says plainly, voice deep and vulnerable, “so please, just... don't say anything or else you'll make this worse for me, okay?”

“You're not about to try and kiss me, are you!?” You ask, screwing your eyebrows at him.

“And just like that, you made it worse for me,” Riki sighs, not being brave enough to meet your eyes anymore.

His hands leave your body, falling beside him as if he were about to start making snow angels in the bed of grass.

“You think you deserve a kiss—of all things—after almost getting us killed just a few seconds ago?”

“I meannnn,” he starts, looking back at you now before repositioning his hands behind his head with latticed fingers, “one kiss wouldn't hurt, right?… Maybe even just a few…”

No words are exchanged from this point.

It just becomes a moment of you two looking at each other, your hands roaming up his torso now as you sit up to straddle him, keeping him pinned to the ground with your weight before placing a kiss on his cheek.

“You're a very odd boy, Riki Nishimura,” you say, watching a smile spread across his face as his skin still tingled where you kissed him.

Your hands find his that were tucked beneath his head and put them back around your body like they were before.

“I may be odd, but the least you can do is kiss me normally,” he whispers, taking hold of your face and crashing his lips into yours, eyes fluttering shut at the blissful contact.

And it feels too good to say it's your first time... It feels too right...

You tilt your head to deepen the contact, making him hum beneath you at the sudden way you took control again, feeling his hand gently cradle the nape of your neck.

“Please,” he says breathlessly in between, catching on to the way your body shuddered when his touch went under your shirt, resting at the dip of your waist, “Don't make me stop yet...”

And all you can do is pant in response, feeling your heart rate increase with the passion as his tongue just barely comes into contact with yours, making you melt into the warmth of his lips even more.

But his delicate fingers are cold as they touch you, not necessarily wandering, but inching their way up from your waist to the side of your ribs, only to pull you closer as your bodies meshed into a sprawl of flustered feelings.

“You just can't get close enough to me, can you?” You ask him through a quiet breath, making him chuckle slightly as your catty question.

“Don't rub it in, dweeb,” he replies with a raspy voice, just as a low groan slips past his pretty lips, and you're just now realizing that you were kissing along his jawline, his head thrown back against the grass as your soft lips kept peppering his skin, “I'm actually enjoying what you're doing to me for once...”

And his last sentence comes out so quietly, you otherwise would've missed it if you weren't right by his neck, humming with each kiss you placed against him, making his grip at your waist tighten slightly until you abruptly pulled away, looking back at him with your own fuzzy vision...

Despite that, you could still make out the lovesick expression taking over his gorgeous features, both his heart and mind in a haze as he looked back at you, purity dancing in his eyes.

“W-why'd you stop?” He stammers, almost pouting as a smirk tugs at the corner of your mouth now, your own cheeks being dusted a rosy hue given the blood rushing to your face.

“Because,” you say plainly, crawling off of him now as he lets out an exaggerated sigh, sulking at the missing warmth of you straddling him, “that's all you deserve for the day.”

“And tomorrow?” He presses, eyes half-lidded.

“I'll tell you after we deliver this letter to the dean,” you say, looking up at the window to his house, “and when your grandma isn't watching us...”

“Wait, she's what?”

Riki sits up now, whipping his head almost instantly in the direction of his house to see what you were still blushing about, and it was none other than his grandmother, clapping in the distance at the sight of you and Riki laying beside each other on the grass.

“So that's why you've been tidying up recently; you've met a pretty girl,” she says in an old voice, making him hide his face with his hands while groaning with embarrassment. “Awww, don't be shy; she just had her lips all over you... Oh, and I'm his grandmother, by the way!”

“Nice to meet you,” you say while giggling, watching Riki practically crumble to pieces, knowing that his grandma had just seen everything.

"Well, make sure you two don't stay out too late... it's getting dark,” the woman warned, even though it was still relatively sunny outside.

Must be her vision, you thought to herself.

“Got it, Grams,” Riki sighed, sitting up now with a forced smile as he waved his grandma off, the door creaking behind her as the sound of her television program faded off with the melody of her laughter.

“You good?” You ask, catching on to the way Riki's sight pans off now, a certain thought rising to his mind as he took a few shaky breaths.

“Y-yea, I'm alright,” he answers, not meeting your eyes until he asks, “You didn't bite me, did you?”

His fingers find his neck now, grazing over the light pink spot where you had kissed him, but it was only that color because of your lip balm, not because you bit him.

“I might have nibbled, yes...” You start timidly, trying to hold back a smile at the way his eyes widened now, worried that you might mark him. “Don't blame me though when you started it.”

“No, I didn't, you blood thirsty vampire,” he scoffs with over-exaggerated offense. “There's a mark on me now, isn't there?”

"No, you idiot... Besides, I wouldn't want your grandma to have a hickey as her first impression of me,” you correct, getting up from the ground now to collect his scattered school supplies from around the yard.

Your words lingered in his mind for a bit.

A girl like you leaving a bad first impression? The thought seemed foreign to him, but at the same time, comforting...

He was finally starting to see things the way you saw them. You and him really weren't all that different—just two people from different walks of life, upholding varied reputations, but still and all with kindred spirits.

Spirits for fun and adventure... youth and romance...

“Wasn't even worth it,” you mumbled to yourself, picking up the envelope that was now stained with a bit of dirt given the fall.

“What wasn't worth it?” He repeated, looking over his shoulder to find you on your knees in the grass, hair slightly disheveled from all the action.

“Jumping, first of all... and second, kissing you...”

“Right,” he says while drawing out the syllable, side-eyeing you with his legs crossed, “Because I definitely told you to get on top of me and kiss all over my neck like a human mosquito.”

“Trust me, I regret doing that.” You tease, fake gagging, to which he chuckled at you, “Your lips tasted weird, anyway...”

“Pfft... weird how?”

“Sour,” you poke, making him look down in his lap, smiling at the memory of you two in the hallway earlier.

Eventually, he gets up to help you gather the rest of his textbooks, pencils, notes, and chocolate bars that fell from his backpack, holding it open as you loaded it up and set trail back up the hill you just jumped off of.

“And you're sure this whole letter thing is still a good idea?” He asks, adjusting the strap to his backpack over his shoulder as you two walked beside each other.

You take a second to glance at yourselves, taking in the light of your messy clothes, blushing faces.

"Oh, you’re definitely still sending that.”

“Cool… But should I revise it at all since we have extra time?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” is all you say, taking his hand in yours as y’all walk side by side...

⛓️‍💥 AUTHOR'S NOTE — I've had this fic collecting dust in my drafts since July of this year, but @microwvdstrawb3rri3s reminded me that my blog has been long overdue for a new Niki fic, so I decided to post it finally.... Also, I'm adding a special tag here for @bambangan because I REALLY feel like she‘ll enjoy this fic (considering how Niki's character is pretty similar to how I wrote for him in my Flirty TSA Series a while back 🤭)...

tysm for reading this quick lil fic !! ✗⚬ﾒ𝟶 a/n ℓօⓥe always ⋆⋆⋆ and feel free to check out my masterlist for more !!

𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ( 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 💌 ) @squoxle @nishiimuranights @wonbinisbabygurl @ashgonedash @yourmomscuntis2tighy @watamotee33 @addictedtohobi @microwvdstrawb3rri3s

[firestorm09890]

this is going to be an odd post but having finished Don Quixote, I think... Project Moon turning Limbus Company's version of Don into a vampire is not any more of a disservice to her source material than anything else they could've done with her character.

The arc everyone expected from her was that she'd witness the horrors of the city and it'd shatter her whimsy, and now that she's a vampire, she's... definitely going to be doing something different. But you know what?

Nothing like that- having beliefs shattered by seeing the horrors- happens in the book Don Quixote.

He goes through 99% of the story with his delusions intact, unbreakable by anyone or anything. If he sees something that doesn't line up with his beliefs, he says an evil enchanter has changed its appearance. The closest he gets to having his beliefs changed by his experiences is when he starts seeing inns as they are instead of as castles, near the end.

His spirit is broken when he loses a battle and is forced to go home and take a year off of knight errantry... but not because he realizes he was wrong, he's sad because he has to take a year off of knight errantry.

You know how he stops believing in his delusions?

He gets sick, with the text saying it's from depression, and then after a few days of being in bed, he wakes up completely sane and holding the belief that everything he did in this book was stupid. And then he dies.

I'm not going to lie, I don't like the ending very much. And giving that ending to Limbus Don would, despite being accurate to the source material, not be great and would probably be widely considered as bad writing.

The story of a girl realizing that the City sucks is about as faithful to the original Don Quixote as her suddenly being a centuries-old vampire because neither of them actually happen in the book and both would change the entire structure of the story if they did happen. Also, "bright-eyed person who believes in justice learns the hard way that the real world is too harsh for that fantasy" is a very common theme in the City that we've already seen with Finn from Yun's office in Ruina, Garnet from Leviathan, and pretty much every fresh fixer out there, so basically I'm saying I support this decision

[seleneprince]

Name: (....) Jordan

From: Coast City

Class: 4-A

Family:

Hal Jordan (father)

James "Jim" Jordan (uncle)

Susan Jordan (aunt)

Howard Jordan (cousin)

Jane Jordan (cousin)

A mechanical prodigy with grease-stained fingers and a criminal record that started off quite early, around her middle-school years at least. She knows everything about machines—cars, bikes, engines, turbines, and even planes. If there are motors involved, she can take them apart and rearrange it with her eyes closed. Probably also making it better than before.

When she's not fixing up something at the repair shop she works in or caring for her precious car, she's building complex projects based on her own schematics to sell them or just for fun. This ranges from LEGOS to actual, fully functioning rockets that 50% of the time won't explode. Most of her inspiration comes from her favourite franchise and from which she has based a lot of her hobbies on: Star Wars. A self-proclaimed nerd with a deep love for sci-fi and the galaxy.

Her dream is to one day join NASA’s engineering division and contribute to their work in space. However, given her record on multiple law-breaking decisions, which includes her little bussiness of selling rather illegal custom designs on demand, there'll be some obstacles in the process. She's currently reforming herself, but it'll take time. Her rebellious streak runs deep, but so does her brilliance.

Mr Hal Jordan is a single father who had no say in getting the custody of his child and the mother remains unknown. Due to his job as pilot, he spends a lot of time away, so she mostly lives with her uncle and aunt. She's grown up playing babysitter and basically acting like a second mother for her younger cousins. It's clear she doesn't have the closest relationship with her family, except maybe for the kids.

Note: She can built a real, functioning lightsaber from scratch. The first succesfull attempt happened in her house's backyard, and caused a small fire, but the results was indeed so impressive she got fans from all over the world begging her to sell it and the authorities had to get involved to make sure she never recreated it again, for national security reasons. Rumour has it she still has a lightsaber hanging around, just hidden so it can't be taken away. No one has seen it yet.

....................................................

Codename: Red Fury

Species: Human

Team: Task Force Z (The Orphans)

Abilities: Wields one of the most powerful weapons known in the whole universe: A Lantern ring. Nearly identical in form and function to that of Green Lantern's, but with considerable differences. The energy is red instead of green, and it uses her anger to function. It gives her the power to affect and use fundamental forces of the known universe, including electromagnetic energies such as gravity, radiation, heat, light, and powerful blasts of concussive force. The ring can also create fields of force formed from an unknown energy that was bound by the users' will. The limitations of such use seem to be the skill, knowledge and imagination of the wielder. She can also vomit, a mix of acid and her own blood, that burns away essentially anything. It's been confirmed the flames come out even in space. She can also fire blasts of red energy fuelled by her rage. This feat seems to be unique, as it recquires a lot of rage to be canalised into those blasts. She has the power to sense and manipulate anger itself, absorbing it to feed her ring, and even read particularly rage-filled individual's minds to discern the motivating factor behind that rage.

Research team note: Much like Green Lantern, she can make all kind of constructions with the ring's energy, which apparently, recquires a certain amount of willpower combined with her anger. As long as she has both, she can make anything her imagination provides. With advanced training in battlefield strategy and arms handling, she’s capable of overwhelming entire squads on her own, given her ability to form multiple weapons simultaneously. *Further tests have shown her constructs remain stable even under extreme stress. Recently, we found out the ring can also evoke some sort of special telepathy, which can be used with particularly rage-filled individuals to discern the motivating factor behind said rage. However, it only works by physical contact and it takes a strong mind to be able to handle the amount of rage of certain individuals, or the user will be overwhelmed and most likely lose control. *This is without a doubt one of the biggest and greatest weapons to the date that we got our hands on. Despite the hundreds of tests run through the years, there's still so much to uncover and so many possibilities to explore. Granted, as long as we train her well, treat her carefully, and never, ever forget what that ring feeds on – Dr Vega

Weakness: As powerful as that ring makes her, probably one of the strongest and most fearful fighters in the universe, it also comes with a powerful downside. The ring essentially replaces the heart and assumes its functions, so removing it from her hand will mean instant death, or at the very least, a cardiac arrest strong enough to stop her inmmediately. Her life literally depends of keeping the ring in her hand.

Emergency contacts:

Susan Jordan (aunt)

Kyle Rayner (neighbour, childhood friend)

Hal Jordan (father)

Note: Subject vehemently refused to list Mr. Rayner as a contact, and only agreed reluctantly in the end through insistent persuasion and under the promise he would only serve as the third option. However, taken in consideration how close Mr Rayner is with her and Mr Jordan's frequent unavailability, it's been decided that Mr Rayner will be the second option instead. The subject is not aware of this chang and it's preferable it remains that way.

Observations: She definitely has come across other Lanterns, judging by her claims about the ring's power and how it works, but we don't have any proof of it and, as far as we've seen, she's a special case. She doesn't officially belong to any of the Lantern corps either, so she's a rogue agent, and according to her, she put a target on her back for the other red lanterns after getting her ring. Details are unclear and classified by Waller, and she has ultimately deemed it unimportant in the great scheme of things.

m.list

Taglist: @jungkooks-tiny-waist @chocolatebananahandshero @coldilikeit

a/n: Red Fury is one of my favourite ocs out of this au. She's awesome. I have so much planned for her in my head.

[lipstickchainsaw]

Act 3 mostly left behind the elements of the show that I was most interested in, and had the most to say about, but I do want to talk about episode 7, which was fucking gorgeous and extremely well done.

I've seen people say that the good timeline Ekko and Heimerdinger find themselves in is the result of Vi dying, as if this timeline is a Wonderful Life view to paint Vi as the 'real' jinx, but I don't think this makes sense (for one, I don't think this episode gives us a new perspective on Vi, and Vi isn't the one seeing this, so it isn't giving her a new perspective on herself, either).

No, the point of Ekko's half of this episode is to give him a new perspective on Jinx, by showing him who Powder could have been. Last season, he was the most prominent person to argue that Powder was dead, and that only Jinx remained within the girl he was once friends with. This is not an unreasonable position for him to hold, given that she's killed a bunch of his friends in the Firelights over the course of his resistance to Silco's regime.

But this girl he meets here is not Jinx, and when he sees her, he initially reacts with the same hostility he would to the one from his timeline. Even when he figures out that he's in a different timeline, he isn't able to get over that, to stop projecting the image of Jinx onto this young woman who's done nothing wrong and suddenly sees her boyfriend acting so cold and distant to her.

This culminates in him asking the (really insensitive regardless) question of whether she was the reason Vi died. He has so internalised the view of Powder as Jinx/as a jinx that anything having gone wrong must have been her.

But she shoots back that, really, that's on him way more than it is on her. It's downplayed in season 1, but Ekko is the one behind the inciting incident of the show. To wit, he rips Jayce off, charging him double for the stuff he's buying, and then sends his friends to rob the guy's place, little rascal that he is. It was a fun little prank for a kid to play on some rich idiot who could just bounce back from that anyway, right?

And then everything went horribly wrong! Ekko lost his mentor, his closest friends, one of whom came back different, as his home was turned into a twisted parody of itself, and he had to find himself a sanctuary from which to launch a resistance movement.

We're naturally drawn to compare this Powder and our Jinx, but I think the subtler difference here is between the two Ekkos. It doesn't get a ton of emphasis, but we see from the way the people around him respond to him that this Ekko was very different, too. He hasn't had to grow up way too fast, and take up way too many responsibilities for someone his age. He hasn't become as angry as the Ekko we know, hasn't had cause to rage against the many injustices of a system stacked against him on both sides.

This Ekko is a relaxed, content, brilliant and recognised for it, genius little inventor, with a beautiful girlfriend who loves and supports him in his endeavours, and a wider family looking out for him to prepare him to step into a wider world of great possibility.

The way he conceptualises himself, as a resistance leader, a fighter and a protector, a boy saviour, he isn't ontologically any of these things. He isn't condemned by fate to step into those roles, doesn't become them out of some innate characteristics he just has. He is that way because circumstances forced him to become that.

And the same is true for Powder, for Jinx. She isn't inherently a jinx, regardless of what anyone including she herself may believe. She isn't the manifestation of misfortune for all, and he knows this. When he took her down in S1e7, and Jinx showed the suicidal Powder inside of her, he recognised this, and it's what stopped him from killing her then (even if she tried to blow him up.)

Even in that episode, she confronts him about this, calling him 'the boy saviour' in a tone that's halfway to an accusation. 'Why didn't you save me?' is what she halfway chokes out, where was her saviour (much in the same tone she'd use for herself when announcing herself as 'your big fat hero', because she wasn't able to believe in that concept either)?

Neither of them was able to address the matter then, because Ekko was still reasonably upset about the people she killed, and Jinx was dealing with a lot of complicated feelings she was expressing with violence, but it's his time here, with this Powder that gets him to reconsider.

'I've never seen you give up on anything,' and all that.

It helps that he meets a different Jinx who is, with some effort, willing to let herself be saved without trying to kill the person saving her.

(And not to be too down on our Jinx, Vi's death clearly hit this Powder hard, and she never quite built up the confidence to pursue her own ideas as a result.)

[medtech-mara]

Origins of Medtech-Mara

I was tagged by @clockworkvenus to discuss the origins of my username, thank you so much for thinking of me.

I wont be tagging anyone bc I am really late to the game as always.

I honestly havent done a tag in so long, but I'm watching a BS race at Monaco, so why not.

At first I was saying that its pretty boring because it was meant to be a placeholder, and if we want to just take it as that that's the tl;dr

however if you want to know the REAL reasons as to why and how, we got LORE.

I'd only been taking VP for about 2-3 months, i wasn't in the community and i hadn't touched tumblr since 2016 or so? I had posted in a few cyberpunk discords, but I was just not really that deep in. I was LOST into my campaign.

So I had UPPED my VP game one day and I thought: "Holy shit, this photo is TOO fire to not show off to the world..." I heard that the cyberpunk community was decent on tumblr so i thought why not.

So when I named the blog; I was thinking maybe name it after our project— only we hadn’t full decided where our story would end up taking place. Chicago was always up in the air but we thought we’d come up with something else instead? So I wanted to make a statement that said: I’m a ttrpger first, cyberpunk 2077 is just a means of visualizing things for my ass who has Aphantasia. And well Mara is a medtech after all? Unique class to the ttrpg I made her from, Cyberpunk RED.

So I didnt think that I would even get a single like on it, but i planned to rb when my blog got a bit bigger. Well.. I was wrong, cause it got picked up by a bigger blog first like and rb right after i posted it? and I went from 0 followers to like 40 or so followers only a couple hours after I posted?

(Click 'Keep reading' for the lore)

In Legends of Night City, its 2065 (at least this was when it was based in night city, things are different in my lore now). City Center clean up hasn't started yet, Arasaka had just been let back into the city, and the first thing they want? Whatever is luring in the bowels of Biotechnica's abandoned HQ. Over the years nature has started to take over, but... somehow... different? These plants are thirsty for more than water.

NIGHT RAID, the newest and biggest Merc group has hit the underground. Whispers about some of the sickest gigs they've pulled off; Fixers are poaching in looking for the group to handle their more delicate cases. Mara's struggling to hide her overwhelmingly large pile of dirty laundry from those closest to her, and soon that closest door is busted open.

At the end of a devastating gig, she's confronted with the consequences of all her lies. Her business partner, best friend, childhood love... laid before her; half-man and half cybernetic, Jack was no longer the man he used to be. No where left hide, shes forced to confess everything.

At first it was trying to make ends meet for the clinic to stay open, and by her 4th gig, she was in too deep. Even if she wanted to stop, she'd always be living on borrowed time; In the basement of some corpo's new pad in north oak was a black box, one that she'd seen her first gig, or at least one like it. Inside that box was a rouge A.I that shut down the entire house into lockdown, and installing a killswitch on to 3 of the members.. herself included. A little assurance, the A.I meant no harm to them, however, he couldn't let them call Netwatch the second he tried to escape.. So as long as he remains alive, so do they. Before anyone could really process what was happening, the A.I blasted through the net frying everything in its wake.

Corps and fixers alike who've learned of their situation only wish to profit from their desperation, dangling a fix that they don't have, easy pons to dispose of if things go south. Her only saving grace? Is that Jayce Adams, Jack's faternal twin, her almost adopted brother helps seek a cure. If he does... She's to agree to join Max-Tac, who'd been keeping a close eye on her for a long while.

Jack's whole life flashed before his eyes.. Everything he wanted, everything he sacrificed and bled for, gone. He'd lost her for good this time. What little humanity was left in him was gone now.

The whole hospital went into lockdown and no amount of pleading could bring Jack back from his psychosis. Not even the words that was at the tip of Mara's tongue, ones both longed to say to each other since they were teens: I love you. Max tac flooded the room surrounding the two, Jack grabbing the knife she'd brought for their dinner, he made his attack.

Covered in her best friend's blood, Mara was detained and held in solitude. A shock collar around her neck prevents her from speaking or crying too loudly until her Psych-E went down, she was in too much of a risk of going cyberpsycho. (Aka... I had to do a double dice roll for her humanity loss and she only had 1 humanity point left. 😬. I would have lost her like... forever if I had lost 32 instead of 31 points) So why am i yappin about this you ask? Well because of that happening, I was like full send on Mara burning down the city and throwing her whole life she just started down the drain. Because it was almost the case for her. She nearly threw away her new marriage (to the man the myth the legend J I H Z Z Y) before the ink of the certificate had a chance to dry, just to keep Jack on this side of sanity. But.. She couldn't say those words, even when she truly felt them. So sad right? Well the black rider photo was kinda me grieving the first death of an OC. it hit extra hard... I love Jack soooo much, he's such a hot mess.

this is them from a different AU and before my NPV Mara got her correct hair. arent they so cute????? their ship is Water on Mars.

I'm not sorry i overshared and overyapped because it's been like a year since I've done it. so. enjoy????

[userparamore]

PARAMORE'S DORK INTERVIEW

i thought i'd gather some of the highlights/important quotes from their newest interview with dork magazine; all from new music, more solo music from hayley, and fine print. i've put it under the cut as it got a little long:

– hayley talking about new music:

Well, the band have already started toying with new music. At home, before the tour began, Paramore created some early demos that "really surprised" Hayley, with the tracks taking inspiration from the Bjork-fronted alt-rock band The Sugarcubes. But they've also spent a few days off from tour in the studio. In Hamburg, they visited Clouds Hill Studio and started messing around with another idea that "felt like it was on the other side of the tracks to what we'd been working on at home," offers Hayley. "But that excites me."

"Lyrics have always been a huge driving force for me as well. I feel a deep sense of discomfor when we go home to the American South in this political climate and a lot of poetry that I've been writing lately feels like adulted versions of the themes I was writing about in 'Brand New Eyes'." The band's third album was an exploration of faith, betrayal, community and pain. "Also you mid-30s are wild. I was told they were supposed to be breezy but it's like another puberty."

After the overwhelming positive reaction to the glistening pop of 'After Laughter' and the scuzzy rage of 'This Is Why', there's a real sense of liberation to whatever comes next. [...] "It does feel like there's more space now to do whatever it is we're inspired to do and not look back," she adds. "It doesn't have to be on thing either."

– hayley talking about more solo music:

"Fine Print is about creating a better ecosystem for our creativity," explains Hayley. And that includes potential solo stuff as well. "Paramore has always been the thing that I want to do the most, and I get really passionate and protective of it," says Hayley, but something shifted after seeing that nothing major changed with the band after releasing solo album 'Petals for Armor' and follow-up record 'Flowers for Vases/Descansos'. "I don't feel done with it at all," she adds. "And that feels so good to say."

"Originally she wanted her solo music to be released under the Petals for Armor name because it felt like a nice cloak. "Even when I was doing press for 'Petals', I was really worried people would think I was done with Paramore because those rumours fly so fast, but now I don't feel that fear at all. I know the three of us will be creative until we die, and that's going to manifest as a million different projects," she explains. Some projects will be Paramore, sure, but others might be Zac shooting music videos on film or Taylor acting as a producer for other people's records, like he did with 'Petals for Armor'. "I think Fine Print is going to be a really great catch-all for those things."

– on "Fine Print" and independence:

Not having a label is the closest Paramore have ever got to the "total freedom" they felt when they first started the band. "I think the creativity is about to get cranked up," offers Hayley.

With Fine Print, Paramore want to find a balance between creating art and living life, especially because "the music industry does not reward taking care of yourself," says Hayley, who is also asking questions about fairer payments for musicians and how to support new artists as well.

Paramore are still laying the foundations for Fine Print but the whole thing is being built on the same ethos of their 2018 Art + Friends festival. "If it's not people I would be happy to have a cookout with, I don't want them involved," says Hayley. "Music is community. It's such a great connector, and that's the energy I want around anything that we do."

– on their inspirations right now:

Right now Hayley is inspired by the fearless, slightly chaotic world of pop that's being ushered in by the likes of Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan. They're not afraid of messy feelings and they don't care if they don't have all the answers either, which is something Paramore have always done really well. "You have all these women ruling the world, and I don't think pop has ever been cooler," says Hayley. "It's so inspiring to see young artists being really bold, expressing themselves freely and making good shit that everyone wants to sing along to, while also speaking about things that perhaps don't always feel good to speak about," she adds, with that new generation of pop stars kickstarting discussions on politics, abortion rights, body image and predatory fan behavior.

"But there's also so much exciting stuff happening with guitar music as well," Hayley adds, name-checking Amyl And The Sniffers and "sick" new band Font. "I'll always love indie sleaze and bands like The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but I'm ready for whatever comes next in the dystopian future that we're all entering. We need punk music, and we need those underground movements," she explains. "Not because I want to hide from pop music, but because there's life there that I want to live."

– hayley said she thinks zac is the most underrated drummer:

"Can I also just say in an interview that I think Zac is the most underrated drummer in whatever fucking genre we're in," says Hayley, still struggling to find a label for the band. "When he was 11, and I was 13, I saw him play for the first time, and I just knew." She can't explain how she knew, because what does anyone really know at that age, but at the end of every Eras show when the rest of the band huddles around him for the furious, cathartic conclusion to 'This Is Why', it's every dream Hayley ever had for the band come true. "I'm so grateful Zac came back for 'After Laughter' because he's the backbone of Paramore. He makes us better."

– hayley on performing:

"I remember when we were touring 'Brand New eyes' and our tour manager kept telling people the only time we didn’t fight was when we were onstage. I didn't want to accept it, but he was right," says Hayley. "We were beat down, uncomfortable, and that was such a rough time, but there's a reason Taylor and I never quit, and it was the shows. Paramore gigs did get a lot of the poison out."

"My smile is sorta too big for my face but make no mistake, I am but a bird-sized woman still filled to the brim with rage. If i didn't get to make music or throw my body around the stage every night, I wouldn't survive."

"I've realised I can't be alone," says Hayley." I can't be by myself in this, so I guess we'll keep touring until we physically can't. Can you imagine seventy-year-old Taylor York doing light choreography on stage?" she laughs. "Honestly, I am so excited for the next incarnation. It feels like there's something in the water."

[On playing The Only Exception] "It's not 'Misery Business' but I didn't want to endorse that message either," she explains. This time it was her vocal coach who had a word. "He said, 'You're in a band with your partner. Just look at him and pretend nothing else ever existed'. You know what is so dumb about me?" asks Hayley. "I felt so stupid doing that at first. I felt stupid having this pure expression of adoration and tapping into the hopefulness I had as a 19-year-old. This tour completely changed my relationship with that song though. Now when I sing it, I feel happy."

[thefuzzzz]

Jasico Week 2024 - Day 1

Words: 3,058 Rating: General Audiences Type: Oneshot

Description: Nico, Camp Half-Bloods demigod with the largest contraband collection, helps Jason have a quiet birthday devoid of all Stoll pranks. Birthday cake and Mario Kart included.

Sidenote: This fic was written for @jasico-challenges Jasico week 2024 event!

Full fic under the cut! However, the formatting is a bit better on AO3 since I’m posting this from mobile lol.

Alone time at camp was hard to get. It was even harder if you happened to go to camp at a time that aligned with when the Stoll brothers went to camp. Unfortunately for Jason, he fell into that bracket of poor souls.

Not only did the Stolls insist on knowing everyone’s birthday, they also insisted on making a personalized prank on that very day. Beyond that sphere of horrible intent, they also told everyone they knew that it was your birthday—they knew everyone at camp.

Jason was still shuddering in remembrance of the last camper who the two of them had gotten their hands on. The prank wasn’t pretty, nor was the aftermath. Said camper still walked a wide circle around those two.

Nico had somehow managed to scrape away with never enduring one of their birthday pranks. Wether he paid them off or if they just respected him enough to leave him alone was up for debate. They were his first two real friends at camp, and was known for aiding their pranks when needed, so maybe they just couldn’t do as good of a prank without him that they didn’t bother.

However it happened didn’t matter to Jason. All that he cared about was Nico never got pranked, and he was determined not to either.

Jason slammed his breakfast tray down on the Hades table with enough conviction to conjure several glares from other campers. He didn’t care enough to look back, but he’d certainly gotten Nico’s attention.

Nico pulled off his headphones, hardly taking the time to set down his fork. “Good gods, what?” Nico said, pausing his iPod. It was the closest thing to updated technology that all of camp had, and Nico clung to the thing rather strong.

Jason sat down, ignoring the rules saying he should be at his own table. “I need a favor,” he said.

“Great?” Nico said, picking his fork back up.

Jason groaned. “Come on!”

“I didn’t say no.”

Jason took a breath, hope singing his name on the horizon. Maybe he was being dramatic, but he hadn’t had a birthday to himself in years, and he would’ve killed a titan by himself for one right now.

“My birthday is tomorrow,” Jason said leaning forward like it was a huge secret.

Nico picked at his oatmeal. “I’m aware.”

Of course, Nico was the only person other than Piper and Leo who knew his birthday at camp. He’d told him on the Argo II one night when they were both not tired enough to sleep but too tired to go to their own rooms. Nico had also told him his birthday, and they made a pact to not tell anyone and have secret birthdays.

Jason picked up his one apple. “I need you to keep Connor and Travis at bay.”

Nico raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want camp to know?”

Jason shook his head. “I just…want some alone time.”

Nico nodded, thick black hair falling into his eyes only to be pushed back into place. Jason watched a ringed hand settle back comfortably with his plastic fork a little too closely and happened to notice that he held it like it was the finest silverware in the world. Jason pried his eyes away.

“Ok,” Nico said, taking another bite.

“Really?”

“Yup.”

Jason felt mildly silly for all his forcefulness earlier. He really didn’t expect this to be so easy. However, knowing Nico, he should’ve known he caved easy when it came to asking favors—at least ones from Jason.

Jason nodded. He took a bite of his apple to punctuate the conversation. He stayed in his spot, deciding he’d just eat breakfast with Nico.

“Thanks. By the way,” Jason tacked on.

Nico shrugged, reaching for his iPod. “No problem.”

He put on his headphones again, defending his ears from the chatter of the rest of the camp currently eating breakfast. The two ate in silence, something Jason wasn’t particularly used to but couldn’t say he minded.

The next day, Jason woke up late and decided to just skip breakfast. He stretched, realizing like a kid on Christmas that it was his birthday. His birthday, and he had the whole day to himself.

He stayed in his pajamas, stretched out on his bed with the Nintendo DS Nico had leant him and played Pokemon White for an absurd amount of time.

Just as his beloved Pikachu was about to faint, he felt this sudden naggin in the back of his head. Something ebbed at his mind. He glanced towards the clock and realized that it was well into the afternoon. Secondly, he was bored.

Very bored.

He wasn’t sure when the boredom became so apparent, but it was there now. He chewed his lip, too distracted in his thoughts for pokemon, and willingly lost his currently battle before saving and tucking the DS away in his nightstand.

Jason laid back, listening to campers outside. He had assumed a day alone would be the best day of his life. After spending his whole life around everyone every day all the time, he figured some much needed alone time was in order. However, this was downright miserable.

Jason’s mind wandered to Nico, which it seemed to be doing very often as of late. He wondered how the Ghost King spent his time alone so frequently. Did he get lonely too? Was he ever bored cooped up in that cabin?

Jason glanced at the clock again, hoping some substantial time had passed. It hadn’t.

He groaned and pulled himself from his bed, lazily walking to his door and starting the trek to the Hades cabin. He walked around the back of the cabins, praying that training was keeping everyone distracted enough for them not to be crowding the back path made by sneaky teens looking for some alone time of their own.

He was lucky, as everyone was too distracted by whatever atrocity was happening on the rock climbing wall to notice him slinking around.

He walked around the front of Nico’s door, banging with enough urgency to get the point across. Nico called a “What?” mildly exasperatedly.

Jason tugged open the door before darting to hide behind it and slam it closed.

“Great Hades, Jason,” Nico said, setting down his controller and looking up from Mario Kart.

Jason let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Hello to you too.”

Nico rolled his eyes before raking them over Jason. “Nice pajamas.”

Jason looked down at his purple plaid pants and white shirt with a few too many holes in it to be written off as well loved. “Thanks. And to you as well.”

Nico’s hair was pulled off his neck with a hairband, and he wore a black camp hoodie, shorts, and fuzzy socks. It wasn’t the most practical summer wear, but Nico’s cabin was cold as ice.

“Happy birthday,” Nico said. “I assumed you would stay in your cabin all day and enjoy your day off.”

Jason shrugged. “Thanks. I got bored.”

Nico scooted over in the floor, letting Jason see into the bottom of his closet where all his contraband was hidden. A TV and a Wii U sat, accompanied by several video games.

“Wanna join?” he asked, patting the spot beside him and digging for a second controller. “I’ve been trying to beat Connor’s high score for an hour.”

Jason sat beside him, taking the controller. Nico had taught him how to play the Wii, but it still felt foreign in his hands.

Nico flipped back to the menu screen, letting Jason pick a character. Nico was playing as Rosalina. When no one was around, he was always Rosalina. Otherwise, he was Shy Guy. Jason was slightly embarrassed that he knew this and had committed it to memory, but decided it just meant Nico trusted him. Even with something as small as Mario Kart, Nico trusted him.

Jason picked Yoshi. Unlike Nico, he didn’t have much preference.

They began the game, Nico effortlessly in first place. Jason was dead last, but he couldn’t care less about that. It was probably because he couldn’t get his eyes off Nico’s screen, and to make matters worse, couldn’t get his eyes off Nico in general.

Jason hadn’t quite come to terms with his crush yet, if you couldn’t tell.

Nico knew every secret of every track. He knew how to cheat the game, to go backwards and still somehow win. It was almost as if he had the coding in his mind, mouse hovering and fingers clacking to will the game in his favor.

Some may think this made playing with him boring, seeing as no one but Connor could ever manage to beat him. Jason disagreed. This was something akin to Elysium.

Watching the way Nico’s hands worked against the controller, the way he scrunched his eyebrows just slightly in concentration, and most importantly, the glimmer of youth in his eyes that was so rare now. It was fun to lose. It was fun because Nico got to win.

Nico passed the final lap, throwing his arms up in celebration. “Finally!” he grinned. Jason watched as Nico wrote something down on a notebook beside him, stopping a stopwatch that looked older than both of them. He leaned over to see a list of names, each scratched one and replaced by one beneath it. Most of the names were either Nico, Connor, Travis, or Clovis, but a few other campers had weaseled their way into the leaderboard.

Nico scratched out an all-caps Connor and wrote Nico in his neat handwriting, accompanied by his winning time.

Jason struggled for a moment, but eventually passed the finish line in last place, also grinning.

“You did better this time,” Nico said, smiling at him.

“Still got last.”

“At least you didn’t go backwards the whole time this round.”

Jason watched the excited youth fade off Nico’s face, leaving just a mildly happy boy in its wake. He wanted more than anything to see the pure joy on Nico’s face again.

“Quite the improvement,” Jason said, matching his lopsided smile. “How’d you get so good at video games anyways?”

Nico shrugged. “Lotus Casino,” he replied, as if it cleared up anything. “Wanna go again?”

Jason nodded, letting him queue up another map. Nico eventually passed him controller 1, a sign of great respect.

“You pick.” He said. Nico had a very firm ‘you win, you choose,’ rule because he was very particular about his maps.

Jason threw up his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yeah. Birthday boy picks. Just don’t pick Moo Moo Meadows.”

Jason picked Moo Moo Meadows. Nico groaned, but took controller 1 back and accepted his fate.

About halfway through the game, Nico was in first and Jason was, yet again, dead last.

Nico’s eyes flicked over to Jason’s hands. He sat down his own controller, putting his hands over Jason’s.

“If you just…” he started, guiding Jason’s hands over the controller.

Jason was a bit too flustered to fully take in what Nico was saying, but the slight burning sensation in his hands and face was enough for him to partially remember the hand movements.

This time, Nico finished in eighth, and Jason in fifth. Not Nico’s personal best, but definitely Jason’s.

Nico grinned. “You got top five.” Jason cheered. “Another?” Nico asked, dutifully writing down Jason’s place in the page of the notebook titled “Jason Grace’s Personal Bests”

Jason nodded, and they continued their game until light no longer poured in the windows, and the only thing illuminating them was the TV screen.

They finally tired themselves out on the game. Nico won every round after that, but Jason slowly climbed the leaderboard. Nico wrote down each small victory until one round, where Jason was second and Nico was first.

Wether it was on purpose or not, Nico’s Rosalina slipped on a banana peel at the last second, letting Jason win.

Jason cheered. While it didn’t earn him a spot on the notebooks leaderboard, considering his time still wasn’t all that good, Nico wrote down “Beat reigning champ, Nico Di Angelo” in the notebook with his pretty handwriting, only making the victory sweeter.

They both smiled and laughed together about the whole thing before realizing with sudden horror that they’d both missed dinner, and were starving.

“Guess we lost track of time,” Jason smiled. “I’m sure I have some snacks in my cabin somewhere.”

Nico held up a hand, stopping him. “I’ve got something better.”

Jason raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Better than trail mix?”

“Way better.”

Nico stuck his hand in the back of his contraband pile, digging around video games and other technology before his hands landed on what he was searching for.

He pulled out a box. Not just any box, a box of vanilla cake mix. Soon after, it was accompanied by a bottle of sprinkles and some questionable icing.

“Not even the Stolls know I have this,” Nico smiled, letting Jason gaze upon his treasure.

Jason looked at him quizzically. “How do you intend on cooking it?”

“I’ve got some arrangements with the harpies,” Nico smiled. “Kitchen’s all ours tonight.”

Nico pulled himself to his feet, watching Jason stand beside him.

“Just tonight?” Jason asked.

Nico shuffled his feet. “Yeah, I’ve been planning this for a while,” he said, slightly more bashful than usual. “Why do you think I got vanilla instead of an obviously better flavor?”

It was true, vanilla was Jason’s favorite. While he didn’t appreciate the slight roast from Nico, he did enjoy knowing that not only was he planning for his birthday, but he remembered his favorite flavor.

“Vanilla solos,” Jason corrected.

Nico rolled his eyes, stepping towards the door and slipping on some sandals. Socks and sandals, bold. “You just love being wrong.”

He silently led Jason through winding paths in the dark, secret pathways carved by hungry campers years before them. Why Nico knew of them was anyone’s guess, but Jason could appreciate it.

Once inside the kitchen, Nico flipped on a light, laid out their ingredients, and crossed his arms.

“I’ve never made a box cake before,” Nico said.

“Me neither,” Jason agreed, putting on his glasses to read the back of the box.

The two were oddly connected in that way. They were both so utterly separated from the teenage experience that they got to experience it themselves, together. Jason couldn’t ask for anything better.

Nico hunted down everything they needed and got to work, letting Jason hover over his shoulder.

“This was very nice of you, by the way,” Jason said, attempting very desperately not to blush all too hard as Nico pulled the cake from the oven.

Nico smiled. “It’s the least I could do. You’ve always been a good friend to me.”

Jason was ready to get on his knees and inform Aphrodite that love was, in fact, real. He held off for now, though, and settled on a soft smile.

He watched Nico do his best at icing the cake. He passed the sprinkles to Jason letting him pick his amount of sprinklage as he licked icing from his hands. Jason switched the top to the largest possible opening for the sprinkles, and proceeded to douse the thing.

They cut into it, both deciding it was walking a fine line between the most delicious and most disgusting thing they’d ever had.

Jason couldn’t tell if the cake was just exceptionally good, or if something about the lighting made Nico look quite like his last name wasn’t just a coincidence.

The golden lights above them bathed him far too beautifully. Nico was tanner now, happier than he had been on the Argo. He had vague tan lines that you could see if you squinted at where his bracelets usually laid. His hair curled up into wing shapes, making him look like a harpy himself.

Nico must’ve noticed him staring, as he sat down his plate and looked at Jason quizzically. “What?”

Jason shook his head, shaking himself from his thoughts. Maybe he was tired, maybe the cake was poisoned, but he just couldn’t manage to hold his tongue. “I…I think I’m in love with you?” he said, words falling out of his mouth with the grace of a strangled goose.

Nico sputtered. “I’m sorry?” he said, face getting redder.

Jason only now realized what he had just said, and was utterly mortified. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Act like that didn’t-”

Nico interrupted him swiftly. “No, no. I didn’t mean to say that.” he said, leaning over the table to look at him. “I just mean…are you sure?”

Jason looked more confused than Nico now. He nodded slowly, watching Nico for signs of discomfort.

“Oh,” Nico said quietly. “Oh.”

Jason clicked his tongue. “It’s fine if you don’t feel the same, I totally get it-”

Nico slapped a hand over Jason’s mouth. “I have been flirting with you for the past month. I feel the same. You just surprised me.”

Jason’s face flushed red yet again. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Nico said, shuffling his feet.

Just then, a harpy slammed open the door. “Times up, Di Angelo. We need the kitchen. Go back to your cabins before I tell Chiron.”

Nico groaned, but grabbed Jason quickly and pulled him out, shoving the cake into his arms gently but hard enough to get the point across.

“We’ll talk tomorrow. Happy birthday, Jason,” he said quickly. Even quicker, he pressed a kiss to Jason’s cheek, and promptly shadow traveled away before Jason could say anything.

The harpies practically dog piled Jason, who narrowly escaped punishment from Chiron by offering some cake. Turns out, harpies weren’t too hard to bribe.

That night, as he walked back to his cabin, grinning to himself, he passed the Hades cabin. Inside, he heard the roaring laughter of two Connor and Travis Stoll.

“You kissed Jason Grace?” the voice of Travis hounded.

“You let Jason Grace beat you in Mario Kart?” Connor demanded, followed by angry yelling from Nico.

Jason grinned to himself, and found his way back to his cabin. Maybe he didn’t get a lot of privacy at camp, and maybe he was ok with that. So long as it was Nico, his newly decided boyfriend as of the next day, it was fine by him.

[casino-lights]

The Empress, the Hanged Man, and the World for both Lidia and Cazi!

Thank you so much for the ask! I got in my feelings with the last question :')

The Empress: What does family mean for Rook?

For both of them, the Crows are their family. It does differ slightly for each, though.

Lidia didn't really consider herself part of any family - and she certainly had no real allegience to her House - until she met Lucanis and Illario and was brought into the Dellamorte-Cantori-de Riva alliance. Lucanis became a brother to her, Teia became a sister, and Viago is the brother in law who keeps pissing her off because he keeps fumbling her sister and yet her sister is still crazy about him for some reason. She also took a shine to Jacobus, but she projects a few of her own unresolved childhood issues onto him and thus just wants to protect him and make sure he knows he's loved. Family, to her, is untouchable. They are infallible, and if the relationship sours, it must have been because of her somehow. In her eyes, they cannot possibly be at fault. She trusts those she considers family to a worrying degree, and would sacrifice anything and everything for them. She tries to keep this number small, but she is hungry for love and belonging, so she latches on quickly to anyone who shows her enough genuine care and calls them family regardless of how long they've known each other.

Cazi has memories of her parents, unlike Lidia. Though some are good, most are bad, and so it was difficult for her to see anyone as family for a long time. In many ways, her view on family is opposite to Lidia's, and it requires a great deal of time and many repeated displays of trust and care for Cazi to see someone in a more familial light. Family puts in effort to love and care for her, even when it's hard, and loyalty is an absolute necessity. However, she does have trouble realizing that familial love is not a transaction, and that she is allowed to receive acts of service and devotion without immediately needing to reciprocate them. Cazi often said she wanted to be just like Teia, who she looked up to for years, and considered her the closest thing to a sister she ever had. Once she was an adult and Houses de Riva and Cantori were allied, Viago assigned Cazi to train his own younger sister and then promptly regretted that decision once Cazi began dating her, and he is now unfortunately stuck with her as his sister-in-law. She pesters him at every given opportunity, and though they would never admit it openly, they love each other dearly - so long as Cazi keeps his sister happy. Additionally, Emmrich's two children become Cazi and her girlfriend's stepchildren - though they're almost the same age - and Manfred soon becomes a son to them as well.

The Hanged Man: What does Rook do when their hard work doesn't pay off? How do they cope with failure?

Lidia is a perfectionist when it comes to her contracts. If something doesn't go right, she makes it go right, no matter the cost. She has an unblemished record of never losing a target and she intends to maintain that, regardless of collateral damage or the time it might take. Failure is simply not an option for her, professionally. Personally, however, her definition of failure is strange and nebulous, as she rarely lets anyone close enough to consider their loss a failure. Illario's betrayal is the closest thing she considers to a personal failing, and even then, she and Lucanis stubbornly forced him down the path of redemption. She simply never gives up.

Cazi, on the other hand, considers failures a new and interesting kind of success. She doesn't worry about specifics, and she trusts her skills and her charisma to smooth over any issues that may arise from things not going to plan. Usually, she works out a way to achieve her goals regardless of the hurdles in her way or number of previous attempts. The only true failures she would ever count are interpersonal ones, things she couldn't take back or salvage: breakups and deaths. And those, well... she hasn't encountered any of those yet. Some nights, when she can't sleep, the idea of it terrifies her so much she has to take a walk to clear her head.

The World: What does happily-ever-after look like for Rook? Is it attainable, or just wishful thinking?

Lidia's perfect life looks to her like success and respect among the Crows. Once upon a time, she would have said it involved reigning at Illario's side while he held the seat of First Talon, perhaps even sharing it with Lucanis, but she knows that'll never happen now. Still, she dreams of being seen as a voice of authority and experience for the Crows, perhaps a Talon herself someday. She aspires to be legendary, a name said with awe as young Crows recount her perfect history of completed jobs and a large contribution to the freedom and independence of Antiva. Occasionally, when she's feeling especially sappy and self-indulgent, she also wonders what a family with Illario would be like. She has daydreamed about two or three little dark-haired Dellamortes with slightly pointed ears running around in the gardens, happy and content with the knowledge that their childhoods are fully their own and their parents are gentle and unconditionally loving.

Cazi, unlike Lidia, is unashamed of the fact that she hopes to have a family someday. (Most likely because she doesn't feel the need to apologize for her partner half the time.) In fact, her ideal retirement looks like advising the Crows in her free time and raising half-dwarf babies with her girlfriend and Emmrich as her new full-time job. She keeps a realistic view of it, as she knows dwarves aren't the most fertile species, but she does get a fond, faraway smile each time she hears children laughing. She has no dreams of her antics making it into legend or song, and would prefer to simply lead a full, fun life, indulging her whims whenever possible and fulfilling her partners' dreams as much as she can so they have as few regrets as she does.

[twinkrundgren]

thoughts on who i am

Who am I?

I'm Cy, and I'm a human I suppose. But I never thought my body, my outward facing image, represented me, or encompassed all of me.

I tend to split myself up into different moods and personas if I need to represent myself. They act out my desires in a way that's me, but separate from myself.

I find it hard to say any one of these representations represents all of me. Cy comes closest as my mascot, but, I never felt like they represented my more human desires. They are a fantasy of being a funky creature and all that comes with it. However, they're my most outward facing representation of myself, so I use them when needed.

Others come in less often. Thistle, my newest fursona, is someone whos still working out the kinks and getting comfortable. He's a self indulgent version of myself I designated for more adult topics I didn't feel comfortable putting myself into. In fact, I find it hard to say he's really myself, but I know that I like to live vicariously through him sometimes.

Edwin is a strange one. He's my OC, but I think about him a lot and frequently play as him in video games. I'm accustomed to thinking like him and sometimes projecting my feelings onto him and, in a way, representing myself through him. Especially through him, I get to play with feminine presentations I don't feel comfortable doing with anyone else. It's hard to let him play though, because Edwin is a very rude and arrogant person and I don't want people to feel hurt when I puppet him. Even in RP situations, I feel like Edwin is on a very short leash of what he's allowed to do because I don't want to upset other people. But, since Edwin is me, I know he doesn't care.

I feel like I'm putting on masks to play different people instead of just being myself. But I am being myself, it's just that I prefer to represent myself in different alter-egos instead of one coherent "self". The Cy that lives in real life is not the Cy I am online and is not the Cy that's silly and goofy and is not the Cy that is Edwin, or Thistle. I don't think about what mask I'm wearing often, I can change on a whim if needed, but when I think about "who I am" I just can't take all of these moods and shove them in one coherent idea of myself.

I feel like some amorphous blob of feelings and thoughts and I pick and choose puppets to enact my force in the world. Unfortunately, the only real puppet I have control over is my own body, and it has baggage and roles that cannot begin to encompass and represent all the things I am. If I could take control of Cytric Acid, or Thistle, or Edwin, whenever I want, I feel like I could truly live as myself.

I'm not sure what this all means. I'm not sure if its healthy to try and find why I feel this way. I don't often feel distressed over these feelings, except when I try and force one mask on when doing another. But, that's not something I force often, since no one notices, including me, most of the time. The most I've ever noticed is… I feel like I need to pick different personas to represent me. There are territories some personalities don't feel right existing and others exist just for certain feelings. I'm not sure if it's because I'm ashamed or dysphoric or I'm just trapped in a world that doesn't let me be free.

Mostly, I just want to know if anyone else feels this way.

[fanfic-obsessed]

Growing up Clones

We know that Dooku wanted to get Obi Wan on his side. What about an AU where he started earlier, like only about 2 years after Qui Gon died earlier. Dooku co opts a mission that Obi Wan and Anakin are on, convincing them that there are new orders from the Council. Orders for a long term assignment in which they would not be able to contact anyone. A mission to a barely known world past the Rishi maze. On the other side of things he faked their deaths, so no one would come looking. 

He convinces the grieving, slightly distrustful Jedi knight and his former slave padawan that their new orders are to assist with the training of the ‘Jedi’s Order’ of a clone army. Tyrannus convinces Jango this would be the best way to expose the cracks in the Jedi Order, using the fact that Obi Wan had and would leave the Order to help children (Melida/ Daan) and his age (he was a child at the time of Galidraan).  The intent would be for Obi Wan and Anakin to become slowly disillusioned by the Order who had, in their perspective, ordered them to help trian a child slave army. They would then help lead said army, all the while spreading dissent through the ranks of the Jedi order. 

Dooku underestimated Obi Wan’s kindness, Anakin’s protectiveness, and both their cunning. They bought the ‘New Orders’ hook line and sinker, and are even convinced that the High Council put in the order for the Clone. They agree not to contact anyone, though Obi Wan did leave a message in the drop box that his crechemates set up for when Vos or Siri Tachi was going undercover, with a message that he would be unable to communicate indefinitely. They are told that the clones are barely sentient and it takes all of five minutes for them both to realize that is very wrong.  At this point the Alpha’s are about Anakin’s age, physically, with the first CC batches being close behind. So Anakin joins in on their training in between his own lessons.  He grows up with the Clones and they grow up with him.

And they are isolated, Obi Wan particularly. It takes several months before the other trainers stop feeling like hatred in the Force around him, some never do. And Obi Wan has been told in his ‘orders’ that he is functioning as the sole oversight by the Jedi on this project.  It takes six months for him to end decommissioning, and those six months are among the closest in his life that he comes to falling, but he successfully argues that each life, each child, each clone, had value to the war effort.  He always hates himself, just a little, that he has to use the Kaminoans words of value and apply them to these little lives.  

In his heart they are all his children. 

Anakin corrals many of the more mechanically inclined clones to build devices for any of their little brothers that needed them. It didn’t matter the supposed ‘defect’ he always had something that he or one of the others was working on that could help. The Kaminoans even praised their foresight when one of the infants who would have been decommissioned grew and saved Nala Se’s life through some quick thinking.  

And from the side Jango watches this man who should be his enemy interact with the product wearing his face, and he wonders. He had never thought of the clones (other than Boba) as anything but products, as anything real. A vehicle for his revenge. But…but the face that one of the CC units made when he found out that there would be no other decommissioning wouldn’t leave his head, the way he saluted the Jedi just a little crisper.  The whispers he caught from around corners of ‘our brothers are safer’ and ‘he saved our brothers’. 

Obi Wan does everything he can to make things better for the clones, laboring under the belief that every horrible thing ‘in contract’ regarding the treatment of the clones is the will of the Jedi Council (there were a number of dehumanizing stipulations in the contract that the Kaminoans were following, they actually did not care one way or the other). Anakin, the little ball of possessiveness that he is, quickly comes to see all of the clones as his brothers. The Clones, for their part, learn of slavery fom Anakin. They learn of being a person and all that entails from the little boy who was won by the Jedi in a bet. 

Then, three years after Obi Wan had arrived, he finds out about Dred Priest’s little fight club. This is the last straw. Before this point nearly everyone on Kamino, including the clones, believed Obi Wan to be a bit of a cinnamon roll. Certainly well spoken and not weak but ultimately in need of protection.  That view changed a bit when he stormed into the room Priest had been using to force cadets to fight and proceeded to break a total of 16 of Priest’s bones without the Force and through his armor. Then he tracked Jango and very publicly tore a verbal strip from him in both Mando’a and Basic, told him he was a disappointment to his ancestors and his armor, and informed him that they (Jango and Obi Wan) would be marrying immediately as Mandalorian law would then allow Obi Wan to take custody of the clones. 

Between being the ‘sole representative’ of the Jedi  for the clones and now the Spouse of their Genetic progenitor, Obi Wan was able to successfully argue that he was now in control of the clones. The Kaminoans, who were paid in advance, didn’t fight him too hard as their leaving now would actually maximize their profits once Obi Wan agreed that any unspent budget for the clones training would remain with the Kaminoans. The order had apparently included the transportation, any not yet decanted clones, the broadcasting unit for the inhibitor chips, and Jango Fett's genetic material as belonging to whomever took control of the Clones. 

It may have taken Cody, Fox, Alpha-17(who outright refused a name), and Fordo throwing a pile of toddlers on Obi Wan to peel him off the ceiling after the words ‘inhibitor chip’ were spoken. It may have taken the Kaminoans agreeing to reverse the accelerated aging, for free, to keep the murders (and not just by Obi Wan) to a minimum when it became known that was a slave/control chip and not an inhibitor. Any loyalty Obi Wan, or Anakin for that matter, had to the Jedi Order died a swift death when Kaminoans could provide paperwork from the ‘Jedi’ that included the chips in their order. 

So now Obi Wan had a husband (who had been told under no uncertain terms that he would have to earn his honor, his armor, and his children back), four hundred thousand children ranging from chronologically two months to 15 years old (Anakin) and physically four months to young adult (The Alphas), another 5000 cloning tubes in varying stages of readiness to decant, the material and cloning tubes for another 5000, and 35 of the original trainers for the clones (including Kal Skirata who had adopted his own small group of clones who were full adults) who had declared him their Alor and were trying to convince him to put his hand in for Mandalore. He could not trust the Jedi Order or the Republic they served. If Tyrannus’s plan had come to full fruition this would be the point where he would sweep in, gain Obi Wan’s loyalty by giving the Clones citizenship on Serrano and slowly draw Obi Wan into the dark until they eventually killed Sidious and betrayed each other. 

This is not what happened. Obi Wan may have been isolated on Kamino but he had many friends throughout the galaxy. In fact he was remembered fondly on almost every planet he and his master had visited, even the ones where the mission went poorly. Friends that include Satine Kyrze, duchess of Mandalore. 

In this world it is not an army that she hears about first and condemns out of hand. She is still a Pacifist and has taken a hard line about Mandalore’s 'barbarian past’. But when Obi Wan calls she answers, and he tells her a tale of children, forced to fight, forced to grow too quickly (in a horrifying literal sense). He tells her about his people betraying everything he holds dear, the marriage he took to protect his children, and he asks for her help. 

She is quiet for a long moment, sorting her affection from her duty.  Concord Dawn, she says at last, is the only planet in our system that still allows armor.  It is where both the Death Watch and the remnants of the True Mandalorians are. I cannot accept an army wearing the face of my enemies into Mandalore, not even for you. But I can gift a world of exiles to the man who saved my life in so many ways.  If you can hold it, it is yours.

Obi Wan takes it, what else can he do? 

And the Galaxy changes.

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Doing a pov game is hard/ Double-speak Fic Writer's Tag.

Got tagged by both @paraparadigm and @mareenavee in this little game that gives interesting food for thought when it comes to POV characters in fics. I have zero training in this sort of thing so I'll just word vomit for Sydari and Teldryn (coz those will be the two POVs that appear in Serious Mistakes). Anyways have fun. It's long again so I've put it under the cut.

Sydari

What do they say they want? (i.e., what are the desires they put out into the world and have no trouble admitting)

Sydari will say she wants to amass as much wealth and influence as possible, she likes to put forward a harsh, greedy exterior whilst simultaneously using a pseudonym to accomplish such feats. She doesn’t know what she wants outside of a frantic attempt to make a space for herself to comfortably exist in the world. She says she wants an easier life, yet she self-sabotages any aspect of that desire that shows its head. She wants to be respected but only if that means someone fears an idea of her. She wants to project a persona of someone to never cross because she’s so used to being messed with that she wears her dissociation as armour. She demands respect, but only as far as the persona she puts out there will allow.

    What do they think they want? (i.e., what are the desires they keep hidden and only admit to their closest loved ones)

She wants to be accepted for who she is but is too afraid of what that might involve. She wants the stability of a permanent home and a family, though the thought of that also terrifies her. She’s afraid of losing loved ones simply because she thinks that if they find out who she really is deep down they’d be disgusted and want nothing to do with her. She’s never been given a reason to not think that, so she presents everyone with a version of herself that she thinks they’ll like. A thief with no morals, a helpful friend who cares, a woman who’s interested in your day, an amorphous force constantly monitoring the underbelly of society and eventually a legendary dragon slayer (her least favourite). Maybe she’s all these things or none of them at all. She wants a concrete version of herself, she wants stability, she wants to feel loved. But she doesn’t know who she is enough to take charge of this desire, so she’ll sabotage everything that even resembles it.

She wants to have a redo of her disastrous first marriage, she thinks she’s found the one who clicks in every single way but she’s afraid he’ll abandon her as soon as he sees the real her. He won’t (he's too far in his own head for that) but it doesn’t stop her from worrying that he’ll leave as soon as he learns anything about her that isn’t surface-level. Yet he sticks around, he’s a mess who also likes to hide behind a mask, perhaps more so than she does. Really he sees her as a relief.

    What do they actually want? (i.e., what is something they subconsciously need, but either do not realize or cannot admit it)

Sydari needs to learn self-acceptance and forgiveness first and foremost (this goes for Teldryn too, they’re meant to work out their problems together). Yes, she also needs/craves that acceptance from others, but it needs to come from her first. She needs to realise that whilst everything that led up to her current circumstances is not necessarily her fault, she can take charge of her circumstances now. It’s so much easier for her to just flee, her natural reaction is to cut and run the moment anything goes wrong, but it always catches up to her eventually.

She needs to learn how to finish things definitively, so much interpersonal destruction and a million loose ends weigh heavily on her mind. She can’t create a solid sense of self when everyone has a different idea of who she is. She craves something tangible where there is none, so she fills the hole with things and shallow relationships that go nowhere. She needs something real, she needs to feel real.

Teldryn

    What do they say they want? (i.e., what are the desires they put out into the world and have no trouble admitting)

“To be left alone and forgotten” is how he’d explain it on bad days. Teldryn just wants to be left alone, he wants to be free from any and all expectations that have ever been placed upon him, and there’s always been a lot. He wants to be seen as just some strange mercenary that is easy to hire and fire at will. There’s a massive part of him that still craves excitement and attention, which is probably why he hasn’t just completely isolated himself from society yet. He has wealth, he doesn’t care much for or against it but it doesn’t bother him if he amasses more of it. He wants to impress others with his sword arm but not enough to gain any sort of following (he’s no teacher). He wants to be anonymous, so he wears a mask until that’s all he’s known for. He wants to be no one again.

    What do they think they want? (i.e., what are the desires they keep hidden and only admit to their closest loved ones)

Really what he wants is to forget the last 200 years of constant disaster. He does this mostly by drinking his memories into a slough of undefinable chatter and images, and when they reform into something tangible, he’ll go back and do it all over again. He wants to go back to his old life in Cheydinhal, before he answered his mother’s summons, before his crew betrayed him, before his arrest. He wants to go back to his idealised little house that he never actually owned, and he wants to pretend it was all a bad dream. He wants that tiny life as a small-time ebony smuggler (he likes excitement, he couldn’t stomach the merchant’s life that was set out for him and damned if he was going to try mining). He wants to brag to some pretty person in a tavern about how exciting his life is before taking them to bed and never calling on them again. He wants to enjoy feeling anything at all. He already tried to get rid of all of his Nerevarine artifacts, everything that reminded him of the worst time of his life, a time he barely remembers because he was not truly present for that. He gets rid of everything except that damned ring. He can’t make it budge, he wants rid of Nerevar’s voice constantly swimming around in his head. He wants to forget everything that has ever happened. He wants peace.

    What do they actually want? (i.e., what is something they subconsciously need, but either do not realize or cannot admit it)

Another case of self-forgiveness. Teldryn frets most about his failures, his failure to conform to his family’s expectations (nothing he could do would ever make them happy, so he rebelled instead), his failure to remake himself in Cyrodiil- twice. He frets most over his Nerevarine persona (one he hates and has tried so hard to remove himself from that he doesn’t really see himself as the same person, because technically it wasn’t even him in control, that’s the platinum revenge demon, that’s not him). To be honest, he doesn’t know, he remembers parts but it’s like someone is giving him a list of events and saying “Look here, that’s you, you did this!” and he just doesn’t recognise it at all.

He needs to forgive himself for not getting back to Vvadenfell in time to stop Baar Dau from falling. He was physically prevented from doing anything about it (Azura’s ultimate end game) and was on the other side of Tamriel when he first got the vision about it from Azura. He couldn’t do anything about it, not really but that doesn’t stop him from blaming himself for everything, he thinks he personally destroyed their entire civilisation. It doesn’t help that a large chunk of the population of Morrowind actually do blame him for it. Their Hortator abandoned them during the Oblivion Crisis (he did, he was playing swordsman in Bravil and stealing priceless metaphysical artifacts, he hid his face specifically so that no one could ask him to help). Then the Hortator abandoned them again when Red Mountain erupted, (he actually was helping evacuate refugees from a cave, it was a disaster, but he was there for the aftermath). He tried to fix things in his capacity as the Nerevarine but he just kept being met with disdain. So he hid and drank and wallowed in self-pity. He needs to forgive himself for those mistakes and move forward. He never considered finding his reflection in someone else, but he needed that too in a way.  

[eldritchamy]

The 2025 Project is an open, publicly admitted plan to turn the country into a militarized christofascist police stat run by a full on dictator. The people responsible for that plan laid out their intentions very explicitly more than a year ago, and it's laid out carefully enough that it's basically fully constitutionally legal, which means the practicality of fighting it from a minority position is going to be extremely difficult.

And if KOSA passes, that authoritarian 'purge-the-filth-destroying-America' regime will have a list of names and addresses. Every single person I care about will be on it.

I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing 'most important election in our lifetime' about every single election, but the right has gotten so extreme that yes, the stakes really are higher every single time. The 2025 Project isn't built on new ideas. But the entire conservative apparatus being bold enough to admit it publicly? That's new. And it's TERRIFYING that they're comfortable enough to not hide it.

The Supreme Court already has a very difficult conservative majority set in place by Trump's first term. Roe v. Wade was overturned as a direct result of this, by justices who lied under oath when they swore during their confirmation hearings that it was settled law.

If he's allowed the chance to appoint 1-2 more?

There's not a single progressive piece of legislation in the entire 20th century that's off the table for them. They've already marked some of their targets.

It's literally the difference between a world where we're arguing over a Green New Deal, and one where we're at risk of losing every consumer protection set in place by the FIRST New Deal.

The system we have absolutely sucks.

BUT YOU DON'T GET THE SYSTEM YOU WANT BY REFUSING TO PARTICIPATE IN THE BAD ONE YOU HAVE NOW.

OUR ELECTORAL PROCESS DOES NOT OPERATE ON A 'NONE OF THE ABOVE' SYSTEM.

THERE WILL NEVER BE AN ELECTION HELD IN THE US THAT ENDS IN 'NOBODY WINS, TRY AGAIN WITH BETTER CANDIDATES'.

One of two people will be the winner of the 2024 election. It will either be the incumbent Joe Biden, who has bad PR and bad foreign policy but has made a number of very important boring domestic policy procedural changes behind the scenes that have materially improved the quality of life of many people.

Or it will be the leading candidate from the Republican party. A party that is running on a publicly admitted plan to establish full christofascist domination over all aspects of life in America.

There is no third option.

Elections are the only GUARANTEED WAY for you to have a say in any aspect of public life in which the government is forced to listen to your opinion. Why would you EVER give that up?

Idealism is for organizing. It's for networking who your allies are and working on cooperative, practical, real-world actions you can take to materially improve the lives of people. And you can express SOME of that idealism during Primary season, when you have some influence over the formation of your party's political agenda and platform it runs and operates on for the next 2-4 years.

The general election is for HARM REDUCTION. You take the least bad option you possibly can, and then you spend the time AFTER that election applying public pressure to get the best possible outcomes you can, and shape the direction things move so you can get a more favorable choice next time. IN ORDER TO DO THIS, you need someone who is RECEPTIVE TO YOUR FEEDBACK. You need the person closest to your political goals to be the one listening.

Voting ISN'T enough. But it is the mandatory minimum. Nothing good comes of moving aside while the greater of two evils takes over.

There's no 'revolution' coming to save us. It would be very, VERY bad for us if one actually did happen. The Republican party has a gameplan for their next attempted coup.

Do you have a plan to survive it?

Are you confident that all of your allies will? Or are we all just collateral damage for your moral high ground?

If you can't get off your ass and do the easiest possible civic action, any moral high ground you claim from your purity politics is worthless. To me, and to every other vulnerable, marginalized person whose life is on the line.

Yes, it sucks that Biden is the best choice we have.

But if you won't choose the option where we live to fight another day, what good are your politics at all?

What good is the activism and leftism you claim to stand for when all it's standing on is the bodies of the people you didn't protect?

How's the air up there on your high horse? Can you breathe through the smoke of all this scorched earth?

You must not STOP at voting. But you must START with it.

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/743255237060689920/the-thing-that-confuses-me-about-the-dont-vote

The “don’t vote” left’s point is basically that, if Biden gets a second term, it’ll basically signal that “They’ll vote for us as long as we’re not Republicans, why don’t we do some REAL fucked up shit, if we can get away with it?” It takes the power out of the people’s hands and places it firmly in the party’s.

I can’t completely disagree with that, my caveat is that there’s no real alternative system or party in place, because top-down change is ineffective; a third party president has to contend with a two party congress.

Except no. This whole "Biden just wants to do as much fucked up shit as possible while not being a Republican, and if you give him a second term he'll do more fucked up shit deliberately to spite you" mindset is only possible as an interpretation if you a) deliberately and comprehensively ignore everything he has done to date, and b) you approach the situation with the maximum bad faith possible. Not to mention, the ultimate outcome of this Big Important Teaching Biden A Lesson is that Trump gets back into power and makes everything orders of magnitude worse, because he does in fact want to deliberately do evil shit to everyone and says so at every opportunity. There is not some magical happy alternative that springs into existence by not voting. If you choose this as a year to Teach Biden A Lesson, you are enabling Trump. Trump will be much, much worse. If you don't care about that, I still do not care what your Great Ideology is. You are not helping anyone and you are directly and irreversibly hurting everyone.

I made a post a few days ago wherein I mentioned that I want to assess Biden fairly, taking into account both strengths and weaknesses, but the rampant bad-faith, lying, misreading, misrepresentation, and open sabotage of him (especially by the online left; the GOP sometimes only wishes they were as good at turning Biden's voter pool against him) makes it really difficult to do that. My frustration with those people makes me just want to go "BIDEN IS GREAT THE END." I know he is a flawed old man (though by literally every account of a career spent in public service, he really does care about making the world a better place and any remotely good faith reading of his accomplishments thus far can see that). It is also very likely that he goes MORE left in a second term because he won't have to face the electorate again, he has always gone more left when pushed before, and he's not actually the scheming genocidal mastermind that leftist social media paints him as. Shocking, I know.

I know there are things in the world we don't like and don't want and want to stop, and therefore we blame our own president for not making it stop. But I have zero, no, none, absolutely none whatsoever sympathy for this pseudo-populist "WE NEED TO TEACH BIDEN A LESSON BY ELECTING TRUMP AGAIN, I AM VERY MORAL MUCH ACTIVIST" mindset. There's this funny thing about America wherein it is still (for now) a democracy. If Biden wins a second term, he can't run again. I would take literally anything these people said more seriously if they focused on developing their dream progressive successor for 2028 (and also figured out how to get that person elected and in a place to make real change) rather than cynically sabotaging Biden in the most consequential election year, again, of our lifetimes. If you don't like him now, find a way to make his successor a better option. Throwing a toddler tantrum and handing the country back to a senile, deranged, fascist, revenge-riddled, theocratic Trump HELPS. NOBODY. I still don't know how many times I'm going to have to say that, but yeah.

[astroboots]

Last Night

A Frankie Morales x F!Reader one-shot

Summary: Last night before Frankie flies out to Colombia.

Warnings: Angst angst and more angst, explicit sex.

Word Count: 4,6k words

Note: It's the one year anniversary of that time I wrote Telltale Hearts tomorrow. A story that means so much to me for so many reasons. I thought that as an anniversary gift I'd post a prequel written a year ago but I never ended up posting. Et voila! I hope you guys enjoy. (Please note this can be read as standalone if you want to as well).

There are moments in Frankie’s life that he wishes he could have a do-over. Very high up on that endless list is the moment when Ironhead mentioned that Pope was back in town and Frankie still decided to leave the house that day. For a man with 20/20 vision, hindsight has never been Frankie’s forte. He has a tendency to dwell in the past until it eats him alive. Like, how in retrospect, he knows now that he should have answered Pope's text with a simple ‘no,’ then skipped Benny's fight all together.

Because that way, as they were walking down the damp hallway of the old arena towards the fight, when Benny said yes—the first of the domino bricks to fall—Frankie wouldn’t have been there and felt his own resolve fail him.

That way, when Pope and Redfly sat at the rickety spectator benches, and the former Captain started asking about details on the entry plan, Frankie wouldn’t have felt his stomach drop to his knees.

Frankie wouldn’t have had the images of his teammates’ torsos pelted with bullets–a scene from the nightmares he doesn’t speak about –following him into broad daylight while he desperately tried to focus on the fight.

He tried (but proceeded to fail) to not to look at Pope as the man kept talking about bullshit passports, immigration and facial recognition cameras. Immediately forced himself to look away and concentrate on what was happening in the ring, his eyes barely registering the sight of Benny taking a punch to the jaw. The impact loud enough that Frankie wondered if the cracking sound he heard was the younger Miller’s bones breaking.

And when Pope called him Fish—and god, Frankie hates that nickname coming out of Santiago’s mouth. It only ever comes out when Santiago needs a favor from him or trying to rope him into something near suicidal. Because that’s what this is. Santiago can say whatever he wants, about how it’s only a recce, that this is a lottery ticket without any prospect of losing, but Frankie knows the man well enough to see it for what it is. Even without knowing any real details, Frankie knows.

This was a suicide mission borne out of Santiago’s white knight complex to make a difference in the world. Just another one of Santiago’s cockamamie projects in a futile attempt to quiet down the endless noise and chatter in his ever-busy brain. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or if there is, there will be a hefty price tag attached. There always is.

Frankie doesn’t know who the real moron here is. The man who came up with the dumb plan. Or the man who will always say yes. Because here’s the thing: he and Santiago both know that Frankie’s answer was always going to be yes. There was no scenario where Frankie would be okay staying home–staying safe–when he knows that his team is doing a death march halfway across the world without him.

He wouldn’t be able to live with himself, knowing that the closest people he has ever had to a family (before you ever entered into the picture) died because he wasn’t there. It’s not arrogance or misdirected martyrdom, just the truth. Frankie knows with mathematical certainty that without him his team is fucked.

It’s how he finds himself sitting behind the steering wheel of his truck, parked in the driveway, trying to figure out how to tell you what he had just agreed to. He doesn’t know how he’s going to tell you that he’s leaving the country for a week. Because fuck, it hasn’t even been two weeks since he had to come clean to you about the drug suspension review.

In the stale air of his truck, parked outside of the house you bought together, too scared to go inside. He sits there, fingers clutching tight to the creaking leather. Unable to move from the spot, as he’s playing and replaying the scenario, line by line of how he has already convinced himself that this conversation is going to go between the two of you.

He’s going to walk into the home you two share. You’ll be there on the well-worn couch, rocking your barely two month old baby in your arms. Carmentea’s been fussy the last couple of nights, and she’ll only stop her crying when tucked close to your chest as you lull and coax her with soft hums that are almost a melody. He can picture it perfectly, your head tilted back, resting against the back of the couch, with a tired smile on your face under the soft glow of your reading lamp like a fucking vision as you look up at him and welcome him home no matter how exhausted you are. Then Frankie’s going to ruin everything by opening his mouth—and you are going to ask him if he’s lost his fucking mind.

Any bystander’s unanimous answer (including his own) would be yes, Francisco Morales has completely lost his grip on reality.

In his imagination, in every replay, you are screaming at him, your voice unrecognizable in a fit of anger, eyes blazing with fury and bitten off curses. It’s probably unfair that he imagines you this way because you’re not unkind. You’re not a caricature of a shrieking harpy of a wife from a sitcom, and neither of you are the sort to have screaming arguments.

But his mind conjures a scenario where you yell because that's the least of what he deserves from you. Part of him kind of hopes that you’ll let it all out. Lash out in anger like something out of a movie. He’d deserve it if you threw something at him. A plate. A glass that breaks and cracks shards across the wall. Maybe even a frying pan aimed at his head. Maybe he wouldn’t even duck, because fuck, he’d deserve that too.

You don’t do any of that.

When he finally gathers up the courage to go inside, rips off the septic bandaid and tells you that he’s leaving with Pope and the boys on Thursday for a private job, there’s only a vacant blank stare in your eyes. For a second he doubts you heard him at all. Never has silence taken up so much space in your home together before this moment as it eats up the whole space, leaving only anxiety in its wake.

When you finally speak, it’s a single word, so quiet he can barely hear you at all. “Why?”

Your lips quiver, the thin ring surrounding your iris blown wide. There’s fear there, concern for him, and somehow that’s so much worse than anything he could have imagined.

“Pope asked. I have to look out for him. And I owe it to Redly. To the team. I can’t leave them on their own, they won’t make it without me.” As he speaks, he hears it himself, how stupid his own logic sounds.

You don’t say anything in response. After a long moment, one of the longest he’s felt in his life, you simply shake your head and walk out of the room.

That whole week is a special kind of hell for Frankie. You don’t talk to him. You don’t even so much as look at him. You avoid him at every turn and corner of your home together. When he comes home you’re just on your way out. You are two ships passing in the night, connecting just long enough to hand off baby duties, and then you're gone again.

On Monday, you manage to avoid being in the same room as him for the whole of the day. It is a neat magic trick considering that your house is not a big one.

By Tuesday, he’s moved from the bed to the couch. You haven’t asked. But he can’t bear the way you’re losing sleep just because you’re waiting for him to fall asleep first. Can't stand waking up to find you on the opposite side of the bed, practically clinging to the edge of the mattress in your effort to stay as far away from him as you can get.

Wednesday is his day to pick up the baby from daycare. It's also his final night at home before he flies out. He spends the whole drive worrying about what you might say to him, but when he gets home, he realizes you're not even there.

The only thing to greet him as he throws down his keys on the kitchen counter is a post-it note.

‘Out with Molly and the girls at O’Neils. Don’t wait up for me.’

If there ever was a message that could spell out: ‘I don’t forgive you’ without actually spelling out the words more efficiently than this, he hopes he doesn’t live to see the day.

Frankie knows you hate that pub. You can’t stand the sticky floors or the rowdy gang of bikers that always hang around there. So he knows that the sole reason you’re going is for the excuse to avoid being near him.

The first instinct is to pull out his phone and text you. Instead, he stuffs his phone in the utensil drawer. Frankie’s not that husband. The controlling, possessive one that texts their wife a hundred times over an evening asking where they are.

You want your space, so he’ll give it to you.

It doesn’t mean he isn’t worried sick when evening turns to night. He cares for the baby by rote, feeding and changing and rocking her on autopilot while his mind remains stubbornly focused on you. Once she's asleep, there's nothing left in the house to distract him, and he ends up pacing the floor like a lion in a too-small cage.

It’s near midnight when he can’t steel himself to stay away from the phone any longer. Sick and tired of licking his own wounds. He takes out the phone from the utensil drawer. Then he pulls up your name, first in his contacts, and texts you. Thumbs too big and fumbling all over that tiny touch screen that makes him mistype his message three times before he gets it right.

‘Do you need me to pick you up?’

Two blue ticks appear next to his message seconds after he sent it. According to Benny, that means the recipient's seen the message, but it's a long time before you reply. The notification comes in half an hour later on the dot, and he wonders if you set a timer.

The delay is frustrating, but what is he supposed to do? Call you out on it? He’s not exactly on the moral high ground here.

‘No.

I’m staying at Molly’s tonight.

Back in the morning.’

You're not coming home tonight. Fuck. He can drop the baby at daycare in the morning, but he won't get to see you. He's leaving the country for one of Pope's trademarked disasters, and he's not even going to get to see you one last time before he goes.

Frankie stares at your message for a long moment before shuffling into the living room. He sets his phone down on the end table with deliberate care, then sits heavily on the sofa and drops his head into his hands. He digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as though he can erase the pressure building behind them if he just presses hard enough. It does nothing, of course, except making his head ache, and after a moment he drops his hands with a sigh. He ought to try to sleep–tomorrow morning’s going to come early–but the heavy weight in the pit of his stomach says that’s not happening. Searching out the remote for the TV, he switches it on and starts to flip mindlessly through the channels, desperate for a distraction.

It’s the middle of the night when he hears the latch to the front door open. He knows it’s late because it’s 02:32am when his eyes flick to his wristwatch.

There’s a crash and tumbling clatter like you just knocked the shoe stand over. Tossing the blanket off, he’s halfway to his feet before his mind catches up, and he freezes there, fingers twisting and gripping into the soft wool of the blanket, paralyzed between the need to check on you and the memory of the way you’ve been avoiding him. He’s pretty sure you don’t want to see him. Certain that if he meets you in the hallway, you’ll recoil from him. His mind supplies an image of you clinging to the wall furthest away from him as if his very presence disgusted you, and he’s pretty sure his heart can’t take that.

Instead he sinks back onto the couch, trying to ignore the little voice in his head that’s calling him a coward. And maybe he is one, but he’s a coward who’s going to let you have the space you so obviously want. He stares blankly at the TV, resolved to leave you alone unless it sounds like you’re likely to hurt yourself.

Focused on the sounds of your progress through the house as he is, it still comes as a complete surprise when you crawl into the sofa next to Frankie, as you move to lie down on top of him and dig your nose into his shirt. Your face is warm if not slightly clammy, but it’s so pleasant all the same. The skin of your cheeks is so soft it makes his chest ache. It’s the first time you’ve voluntarily touched him all week, and that would be enough to tell him you're wasted even if he couldn’t also smell it on your breath.

This isn’t right.

“Baby, you shouldn’t fall asleep here. I’ll help you to the bathroom so you can wash off your makeup,” he tries, but instead of easing off, you latch onto him tighter, arms curled around the back of his neck.

Frankie knows you're still mad, not your normal self, but you show no signs of moving, and he's going to be gone for a week. And as wrong as it is, he lets himself enjoy the closeness of his wife holding onto him even if it's only alcohol induced.

There’s a rustling sound as he keeps his gaze fixed to the ceiling. Then you lean over. It’s a minute movement, the soft bump of your nose trailing over the edge of his jaw, drawing a line upwards until he feels it trailing the corner of his lips before it’s replaced by your much softer lips. It takes everything Frankie has within him not to kiss you back, starved as he is for physical touch after being deprived from it, deprived of you, this entire week.

Turns out, his everything is not enough. Because, even though he should know better, he is still leaning forward. And even though he can’t recall doing it, his calloused hands are already cradling your soft cheeks. Even as his mind is shouting, don’t, it’s too late, because his lips are pressed against your softer ones. And as he kisses your mouth open, a fissure infects his chest. Sharp and painful, like his insides had been doused in gasoline and someone lit a match. He meets your tongue and hears himself moaning. A broken noise that sounds strangled to his own ears.

You sigh, a small, dreamy sound, and when he opens his eyes, there’s a smile on your lips. You look so content that it makes him choke on his breath. A warm rush floods his veins. It replaces the sharp burn and he deepens the kiss. There’s an ease to this that he had missed. The feeling of coming home, familiar and content. A sensation of being filled stirs in his chest. It folds and unfolds like a thousand blank pages being flipped through. You taste of mint and cinnamon, and it reminds him of pine cones and juniper trees, like Christmas flavored vodka.

Alcohol, because you’ve clearly been drinking your body weight in gin. Fuck. This isn’t right. Frankie breaks the kiss, and you try to follow after him, chasing after his lips. It makes him want to dive right back in, to lace his fingers with yours, to cup his hand over the back of your neck until you call him baby in your honey-laced voice. He wants to kiss you and press you close to him until you moan and whimper into his mouth with need. Taste you and swallow you whole, until there’s nothing left.

But you’re drunk, and so he doesn’t. Instead, he braces your shoulders to hold you back. He takes your hands and folds them on his knee, safer territory. You stay like that, his forehead pressed against yours.

“Querida, we need to stop,” he says.

“Why?” You sound breathless in a way that makes him lightheaded.

“Because you’re drunk, baby.”

You snort out a derisive laughter. “So?”

“So you don’t want this.”

You lean in again, nose brushed against his cheeks, close enough he can feel your lashes on his cheeks. That small gentle touch is enough to break any remnant of his resolve.

Your lips press against the closed line of his mouth, as you tell him in that breathy tone that he’s wrong. “I want this, Frankie.”

Your palm braces on his thighs as you drag yourself closer up into his lap.

“I want you,” softly murmured against his lips and he can feel the words against his tongue. “Always want you. I’ve missed you” you tell him as your hands tangle into his hair and pull him closer to you. You’re calling him Francisco with that hushed tone that goes straight to his cock.

It’s fucking torture. To hear you say you want him in the way you always have, while fully knowing this changes nothing. A punishment and a balm all at once, the most fucked up 2-in-1 treatment that exists.

You grind yourself against him and the palm of your hands come to rest on his chest. There’s no weight or force behind it but it's like all the muscle strength is zapped out of him and he obediently lies down for you. Your hands impatiently reach for him, tugging the waistband of his underwear, with an inelegant snap of the elastic until it’s down mid-thigh. When you wrap your fingers around his cock, he can't help but arch upwards, and fuck, you haven’t even moved your hand yet and it feels so good. Your skin against his flesh, your warmth and touch that he's been craving for days since you stopped talking to him, and it's like his head is spinning as he rocks into your hand.

He's sure that he tells you that the two of you should probably stop this. Certain that he does the right thing and reminds you that you're drunk and offers to get you a glass of water. But you lean over his chest and say the same thing again.

"I want you, Francisco. I missed you. I need you. Please."

And Frankie's never been good at denying you, his wife, anything. There’s nothing you’d ask that he wouldn’t do. So when you shift your thighs until you're lined above his cock, notching the sensitive tip at your entrance, all he can do is grasp onto your hip to steady you. The only thought that his mind is capable of executing, is to pull himself up so that you're in his arms. To kiss you as his cock slides into you. To plant his feet into the seat cushion of the sofa, and drive all the way into you, groaning into the soft warmth of your neck. Because fuck it feels so good. It feels so fucking perfect.

It's a completely different pace from usual. There's an urgency to it when you ride him. Hard, deep strokes that force the very air out of his very lungs. A forcefulness to the way your fingers nestle into his hair and tighten until it’s tinged with pain. But he can't bring himself to care when he's inside you like this. All he can think about is how good it feels, how he doesn't want it to stop, because he doesn’t know when he’ll get to have you like this again. But he knows there's no way he's going to last. The bright sharp pleasure jolts through his stomach and spreads everywhere and just about the only thing he can do to grasp onto his sanity is to grip his palms harder onto your waist, because you're the only thing that keeps him grounded. Always are.

He can hear you moaning out his name in between kisses, telling him that you're close, and he's just begging some kind of deity out there to let him hold on long enough so that he can make you come. His fingers trail down between your thighs to where you're joined, until he can feel the slick wetness of you that's practically dripping and coating his lower stomach.

Pressing the pad of his thumb gently against your clit makes your back arch, and you're practically screaming at the touch. He has to pull you closer to kiss you because dear god he can't have the baby waking up. Because he is so far gone now, he doesn't think he'd stop even if she did. He kisses you deep, tasting you, and on the tip of his tongue, he can still make out the remnant of juniper and alcohol, the distinct sharp taste of gin. It is a bitter reminder that the only reason you want him right now is because you're drunk. A reminder that when morning comes, you're going to hate him for this even more than you already did before.

Fuck, he hates himself. His brain is screaming at him because this is about the stupidest thing he could allow to happen before he leaves tomorrow. (Fuck he can't leave you. What is he doing?)

Your hands come to cup the sides of his cheeks, and you're looking straight at him, eyes gorgeously half-lidded. There’s no space between you now. You’re close enough that your eyelashes tickle across the apple of his cheeks. You don't look mad. You’re looking at him in a way you haven't for weeks, and something painful and pleasant all at once squeezes around his throat

"Frankie," you plead, and fuck if you say it in that tone again, he's definitely going to come right on the spot.

"Yeah, baby?"

Your mouth is parted, and the motion of your tongue swiping over your kiss-swollen bottom lip is mesmerizing. It silences the internal pandemonium inside his head.

"Please make me come."

The already thin rubber band of logic and sensibility snaps within him. Along with any scrapping remnants of preservation. There's a loud growl that only afterwards he realizes comes from himself, as he snaps his hips up and deep into you and you're clutching at his shoulders, nails digging into his forearms so hard he's sure it must be breaking skin and leaving red crimson marks by tomorrow (god, he hopes it does).

He can feel your legs trembling. Feel the way you're squeezing around his cock so fucking snug around him. Fucking christ, it feels so fucking good. He's so damned close. From the way your eyes are squeezed tightly shut, the erratic way your hips are trying to keep up with his, he knows you are too.

"Baby, come for me. I want to feel you come all over my cock. You feel so fucking perfect."

You moan at his words, squeezing even tighter around his cock, throwing your arms around his neck as you hold on firm, and drag him closer to you. Then he feels it, feels the way you come on his cock, the way your cunt clutches him tight, twitching over him. It's enough to send him over the edge. That tightly wound knot of pleasure in his stomach finally finds release and unwinds, as he comes inside of you.

His arms wrap around your torso tightly, pressing himself inside of you as far as you could possibly take him, and because he is such a fucking bastard, he still wants more. It's selfish and needy, but you feel so good, and fuck you're all he ever wants. He’s not entirely sure but he thinks he’s murmuring that last part out loud against your sweat-slicked skin as he presses his lips to your neck. Tells you, he loves you, as he feels you coming down from your orgasm. "I love you so much. Te amo. Querida. Te amo."

You're still shaking even as you collapse into his arms. Whining quietly, as he slides both of you back down onto the sofa. You on top of his chest, him still deeply embedded within your body, even as he starts to soften. The comfort and peace of mind he finds in being inside you is something he’s not willing to give up yet. It takes a moment, one that lasts long enough for his adrenaline-fuelled heartbeats to slow. Long enough for the fugue of post-orgasmic bliss to dissipate. In its wake, his head feels crystal clear like an unclouded cerulean sky across a blue ocean.

Fuck, what has he done?

"Frankie?" Your voice is quiet. If he didn't know any better he'd say timid, which is so unlike you. That scares him. Fucking terrifies him.

"Please don't go."

Frankie closes his eyes. Squeezes them tight to shut out the jarring grinding that he can already hear churning in his head.

"Please don't leave me. Tell Santiago you can't go. I can't do this without you. Just... please."

He wants to look at you. Wants to see your eyes, but when he tries to cup your chin to tilt you up to him, you only burrow deeper into his chest. He lets you. The cowardly part of him tells him it’s easier to not look you in the eye. Because he knows what he's about to do next is unforgivable.

"Querida. I'm so sorry."

He can feel it. The way those four words break something permanently and irreparably between the two of you, and all he can offer you is to hold you tighter. All he can concentrate on is trying to ignore the swell and burn in his throat as your fingers clasps tighter at his worn t-shirt mingled with the strained injured sound caused by him muffled into his chest.

He doesn't know how long he holds you before the shaking finally subsides, as does the crying, and you start to still in his arms. He can hear the deep inhale of breaths you take to calm yourself, then he feels your hand slide to his chest as a wedge between the two of you. You push yourself away from him, and when he feels himself slip out of you, his teeth clamp down so hard that he nearly bites off the tip of his tongue just to keep himself from making a sound in protest.

He doesn't say anything as you push yourself up to sit at the edge of the sofa. Doesn’t reach out with his hand to help you as you straighten your dress over your thighs. Doesn't ask you to come back as you turn the handle to your bedroom and close the door behind you.

He has no right to ask anything from you. Not anymore.

Author's note: so firstly for anyone who wants to slap me for that ending. You can get the "true ending" in the sequel Telltale Hearts.

Dedications:

To @thirstworldproblemss as always. My fondest memory of Telltale Hearts looking back was sharing my stupid-dumbassery-ideas with you from beginning to end. You betaing it, you being amazing with your clown tolerance. Whenever I look back at tumblr and this fandom, my biggest prize was your friendship. Whether I leave tomorrow or a year from now, I will still be in your DMs on every social platform known to man harassing you with our endless dumb secret-emoji-language. I love you. Thank you so much for this past year.

To @yespolkadotkitty and @songsformonkeys for always checking in on me the past few months, and being such pillars of support. I joke away serious things a lot, but having you two to joke with has been a lifesaver to get my mind off the fact that I may or may not have died if I actually did take that nap if Hanna hadn't yelled at me on whatsapp. I love you both so much, even though one of you have very questionable tastes in your choice of potatoes.

To @jazzelsaur for holding my hand and seeing me through the past few months of recovery. I am eternally grateful for you sticking with me when I've been a gloomy cunt and ranting about not wanting to go see another fucking doctor or the inside of an OR ever again in my fucking life. Thank you for listening— to everything, and for betaing this and for just being you, I love you.

[artzee-bee]

Not going anywhere | Lucifer Morningstar x reader

Fandom: Lucifer

Request:” Hi i have request for you ,Lucifer and the reader have a big fight they are married, and this fight it's lucifer fault The reader leaves home and Lucifer decides to give her space After a few days, he goes to the reader and realizes that she has been missing for a few days,When the person behind all this claims that the reader is dead and gives them a her body . Everyone thinks that the reader is dead and Lucifer He gets depressed and thinks it's all his fault , and after a few days, the thieves release the singer and the reader goes to Lucifer.Lucifer first thinks it is an imagination and then apologizes to the reader Thank you so much”

Genre: Angst with happy ending

Warnings: kidnapping, death

~~~

Your intention had never been to start a fight. All you wanted an explanation (preferably one that also made sense) and an apology, but apparently that was too much to ask, because as soon as you voiced your opinion, Lucifer went up in flames

“Don’t start this again!”

“I dislike it just as much as you do but what I hate more is being cancelled on, AGAIN, through a text message no less!”

“It was an emergency!”

“It’s always an emergency Lucifer! It’s starting to sound a lot like work means more to you than I do!” “The detective needs me, damn it!” your husband yelled

“And she has you! Every day of every week! All I ask for is one date night and for the past month you’ve done nothing but avoid committing to one or backing out at the last second! I’m tired of being your second choice Lucifer! I’m your wife and you are my husband, I love you to the ends of the world, I just wish you'd say no to Decker from time to time...”

“I’m saving people’s lives Y/N. So if you’re not on your deathbed, other people are and they need me now!” as he said this, Lucifer walked right past you and into your bedroom, seemingly ignorant to the painful words he’d just said. You looked around the living room, vision blurry with tears, your chest heavy with anger and disgust. You rushed towards the elevator.

“When you find time in your busy schedule and feel like being my spouse again, let me know!” the elevator door closed before Lucifer could say anything

~~~

When Lucifer woke up the next morning to a cold and empty bed, he didn’t think much of it.Truthfully, he was still kind of pissed at the attitude you had given him a day before, so he got dressed as usual and went to the precinct, assuming you’ll be home by nightfall.

Except when he got home that night, he stopped by Lux first, which ended up like it always does: with him sucked into an endless cycle of booze and dancing, that lasted until well into the night. When he did enter the penthouse eventually, he found it empty. Exactly the way he had left it in the morning. Even the tie he had left on the floor, after deciding last minute that it didn’t go with his suit, was untouched. Now this was curious, but still, Lucifer felt like you must be playing hard to get. He sent you one text message, before going to bed

“Call me when you can!”

The day after that, he figured his part was done! By reaching out first, he had already made a big compromise, so now it was your turn! To reach out, come home! But that didn’t happen that day, or the day after that.

Three days after the text message,Lucifer was getting worried. He was looking at his phone every other minute. Always making sure he hadn’t accidently put it on silent or missed any texts. He sent more messages, telling you he was sorry and that he wanted you to come home. That he would listen and spend more time with you, promising luxurious dates and weekend trips, if only you forgave him. You didn’t even open the messages.

“Lucifer are you listening?” Decker was insanely annoyed at her partner’s lack of concentration

“Sorry detective. I’ve...I’ve got a lot on my mind”

“Well, better get it out of the way now, so that we can move on to our case!” she said, cleaning out her desk quickly, before resting back into her chair “Talk to me!”

“It’s Y/N. I’m worried about her!”

“Why?” “We...had a fight a couple days ago and she left. She hasn’t come back since”

“Have you heard from her at all?”

“No…” Lucifer said, embarrassed at his own lack of care for you. He should have called you earlier, reached out more! He should have tried harder!

“How long had she been missing for?”

“4...maybe 5 days…”

“Lucifer, are you sane? And you’re only telling me now?!” Chloe jumped from her seat, turning on her computer

“I thought she needed space! I thought she was avoiding me intentionally cause she was angry! I didn’t know…” Lucifer choked back a sob, not wanting to break down in tears in the middle of the precinct

“Lucifer!” Chloe caught hold of his hand “I’m gonna find her! I promise you!” A few days later, she did. Well, more like Y/n came to her, in the shape of a pretty little gift box left on Decker's doorstep.

“A lil too late on your case detective” read the note attached to it. 

Inside were Y/N’s clothes, all of them stained with dark, dried blood. Y/N was declared dead that day and the case was closed. At her funeral, only her closests friends were present. Lucifer wanted it to be as intimate as possible.

That day was also the first time anyone had seen Lucifer, since the news. His eyes were bloodshot and the dark circles under his eyes almost matched the black suit he was wearing. Throughout the ceremony he kept twisting his wedding band, a habit he’d picked up on since you went missing. He chose not to do a speech, but once the crowd disappeared, and he was left face to face with your grave, he pulled out a little piece of paper from his pocket and sat down on the grass.

“In hell, everyone feared me. There, I was nothing but another server of the universe, ruling over an empire I never really wanted, because I never had a choice. So eventually I left, thinking anywhere will be better than what I had, and I came to earth.

I ran into you about 2 weeks later, before I really even knew how to behave myself. Before I knew anything about who I really was besides ‘the devil’. I longed to know, grow and discovers different sides of me, where I could be something new, and you gave it to me. You made me who I never thought I could possibly be. You made me a lover. I never thought of myself as capable to love anyone, in any degree, but your light shone everywhere you went and your kindness touched me and everyone around you. It became impossible to not get infatuated with your person. I allowed you to see and feel around every dark corner of my soul and being and every time I thought it was the end. Everytime I would take in your touch as if it was the last, I would prepare myself for abandonment, but it never came. Through everything you stood by my side and when I felt my darkest, you gave me a fistful of your light and that was enough to keep me going. You married a broken man and called him perfect, despite everyone telling you how much of a foul you were. Even then, you shooed them away. Even then you chose me. I wasn’t worthy of your love or your trust and our last night together proved it.

You’re not here anymore to hear my apologies and I’ll never forgive myself for it. You’ve gone now somewhere I can not follow, but I know you are well taken care of there. I hope, someway, somehow, you’ll hear these words: I am sorry. I loved you with my entire soul. Not listening to you was the biggest mistake of my life and I’ll never forgive myself. I choose however, to remember you as you were, because I know that’s what you’d want. I’ll remember you and your laugh.I’ll remember our date nights and shopping sprees. Nights in Lux or on the penthouse balcony. I’ll remember all the meals you prepared for me and the flirtatious remarks you used to make, because you thought they were so silly. I’ll remember the little frown on your face whenever you worked on an important project for work and I’ll remember every evening walk around the block you’d make me accompany you on. I know I always complained about them, but they were always fun. Everything I ever did with you was always fun.

I loved you. I still do. You are my everything Y/N. Thank you for devoting yourself to me in all the ways that you did. I’ll forever live on in my heart.“

~~~

It had been months since your disappearance. After all this time, you finally managed to escape your kidnappers and report them to the New York police station, since that’s where you had been held hostage for so long. As soon as the paperwork was done and you were sure that the people who ruined you were getting the punishment they deserved, you jumped on a train and headed straight back home. Straight to Lucifer.

Lux looked exactly the same as you had left it. You were washed over by a wave of comfort that almost brought you to tears. Home. You never thought you’d get to step in here again. Overwhelmed, you took a seat on one of the couches, allowing your head to rest back on it, as you took in every detail of your surroundings: the feel of the leather on your fingertips, the cool breeze of the air conditioning, the warm lights. Everything was still here.

“Y/N?” you jumped at the sound

“Hi love…” your voice broke as you said those words. Words you never thought you would be able to mutter again. The sight of your husband, messy as he was, made you weak in the knees. He was standing at the top of the staircase, dressed in nothing but his robe, tied carelessly around his waist. He had probably just woken up. You wanted to say something again, but before you could, he laughed

“Nope” he said simply, before making his way down the stairs and to the bar “I’m not doing this. Not today, not ever!” Lucifer filled his glass to the top with bourbon, before turning around and trying to leave back to where he came from

“Lucifer, it's me!”

“Sure you are, except you’re not real! Nice of dad, taking my ability to stay endlessly sober, getting me drunk, forcing visions of my dead wife onto me to teach me another lesson about managing my emotions. Real clever, except this is too much! So I’m going to enter that elevator and I expect to never have to see you again, hum? Right, well, au revoir now!” he continued on his way, but before he could get far, you were clutching on the silk tie of his robe. Lucifer felt the tug around his waist and turned around slowly to look at you, this time a little more unsure. As if he was trying to figure you out

“Lucifer, I’m Y/N. I escaped”

“Escaped? But that’s impossible, she died! I saw it-”

“What you saw was a bloody shirt!” he looked up to meet your gaze, tears already forming “They lied to you Lucifer”

Finally, it seemed like he had connected all of the pieces of the puzzle. The glass of alcohol fell to the ground and your husband wrapped you in a big hug for the first time in months. He nuzzled his head in your hair and took in your scent, your figure, your warmth. Hell, you were even more perfect that he remembered! Silent tears fell down both of your cheeks as you collapsed to the ground, still holding onto each other for dear life

“I’m so sorry” Lucifer sobbed in your hair “I’m so so sorry”

“It wasn’t your fault Luci”

“If I hadn’t been a jerk you wouldn’t have left! If I would have simply listened to you, they wouldn’t have gotten to you! You would’ve stayed here, where you belong! You would have stayed with me but instead I was too busy with my stupid job and the stupid cases and I’m sorry! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” he continued crying on your shoulder as you rubbed small circles on his back

“I’m here now my love” you whispered, kissing his cheek “And I’m not going anywhere”