#something something we recognize our own; and sometimes the circle of our own is cast much wider and runs much deeper than we realize

[travlersjoy444]

Gettin' the Band Back Together (Pt.22)

TOH Hunter/Golden Guard x reader

 Masks and Bets part twenty-two.

Series Masterlist

*******

  Sometimes life is weird.

  My life is a really weird one, personally, but you know how that goes- it’s all in the territory of being a grimwalker with a contrived backstory that the author made up back in middle school. I’m used to it.

  I think it’s funny really, at this point- because after all the shit I’ve dealt with, I wasn’t even there when Collector finally understood the meaning of friendship. I wasn’t there when Raine Whispers got possessed by Belos. I wasn’t there when Luz saved the day, no…I…was in the puppet room.

  Well, the archive house, technically. But…I was there.

  Because Lilith was there.

  I sighed. Lilith wasn’t the only one there- there were so many people, old classmates, old friends, maybe, innocent people…

  “This isn’t fair, Lulu.” I said aloud, sitting cross-legged on the floor. It was one of those rare times when I could wear my own clothes- a simple black tunic and lace up boots- and it made an astronomical difference. So much comfier than the heart covered monstrosity Collecter thought I should don.

  “Titan, all I wanted was to be a normal kid.” I laughed, running a hand through my hair. 

  I was monologuing to the empty people, naturally (You can take the witch outta the theater, but good luck taking the theater outta the witch), which was…a fun new habit.

  “It’s just…so unfair that I was the only one who was freaking willing to steal Belos’s stupid things. Why’d Collector havta like me? I’m horrible! I tried to bite them when we first met in person!” I complained. “But then again…I guess that worked great for Hunter n’ I, huh?” I chuckled. “I probably tried to bite him too back when we first met. I dunno. I was twelve or eleven or something, seems possible.”

  (It was easier to monologue about these silly lighthearted things, y’know?)

  (Meant I wasn’t thinking about the reality I had somehow found myself in, which was always nice.)

  I sighed again, looking up at the ceiling.

  The ceiling was sparklier than usual…

  “Well that’s pretty weird…” I mumbled, expecting Collector to pop out or something. It was all celestial and sparkly like his portals-

  A figure began to emerge from the glimmering ceiling. There they were.

  No…wait.

  That wasn’t The Collector, and they definitely weren't emerging- more like falling. 

  Purple hair, gold-brown eyes, pale skin- that was…

  “Amity?”

  THUD!

 “What the Titan-” I squeaked, jumping back from where Amity Blight had ungracefully landed. 

  She was puppet-ified too, and dressed in some weird costume. Fuck.

  If they were all back…how? Maybe I was dreaming-

  THUD! THUD!

  Soft features and gorgeous hair. Willow. Tan skin and curly hair and- round ears! A human I didn’t recognize. 

  “Uhhm…shit.” I mumbled, staring at the porcelain-like sheen on their skin. I swallowed, and cast a quick spell circle- summoning a pile of pillows. 

  Cool cool. My friends who had disappeared into the human realm were caught by The Titandammed Collector. THUD! THUD! THUD!

  Dark skin and small stature. Gus. Tan skin and dark hair. Another unrecognized human. Fair skin and long blond hair, and a shirt with creatures I didn’t recognize-

  Hunter. 

  I winced and took an unsteady step towards his unconscious, puppet-ified body. 

  “Damn…” His face was streaked with a brand new scar.

  “Well this isn’t quite how I wanted our reunion to go.” I said softly.

  It was okay, it was fine- this was fixable! I’d just- I’d beg Collector to free them all! Yeah, that’d…probably not work great…uh…

  THUD!

  “Luz!” I yelped on instinct- but the final puppet had (S/C) skin and (H/C) hair streaked with grey…

  “You’re not Luz.” I said.

  The puppet did not respond nor give me any exposition.

  “Typical.” I grumbled. These stories can never be easy for me, huh?

  I sighed, sitting on the pillows. 

  As per usual, I was back to waiting. Maybe King would be able to help me…

  Wait. 

  Amity’s hand was…moving.

  Tracing a circle in the dust on the ground…

  What?! 

  Oh- those glyphs! Luz’s glyphs!

  I feverishly tried to remember what the glyphs looked like.

  Sorta like…like a person in a cloak…

  A circle, a line, a triangle, more lines…and…

  “Ha! Light glyph, babeeey!” I grinned weakly, tapping it to life.

  It floated off the ground in a glowing orb of light, and Amity’s followed after it.

  “Oh my gosh. It worked!” Amity grinned.

  Wait what.

  “What?”

  “(Y/N)?” she said, eyes widening. 

  “How the hell did you de-puppet-ify yourself, Amity Blight?” I said , staring at her.

  “(Y/N), you’re okay! ...where are we?”

  “These must be the Archives.” Willow said, rubbing her eyes as she stood up.

  Gus rose, looking around. “Camila! Lane, Leo!” 

  “Wha- huh?” the (H/C) haired human grunted, standing up slowly, but I wasn’t really paying attention to him.

  “Hey Hunter.” I said, watching him blink his eyes open.

  “(Y/N).” he whispered.

  “You’re quite the sight for sore eyes, Goldie.” I grinned, holding out my hand to help him up.

  He ignored the hand, choosing instead to bowl me over in a hug.

  “(Y/N).” he exclaimed, grinning. “I missed you so much.”   I hugged him back, squeezing tightly. “You’re- you’re here. Titan, I can’t believe you’re really here…”

  “I am so sorry.” he said solemnly, voice cracking. 

  “No- no, no- jeez Hunter, I’m the one who’s sorry…I can’t even imagine how worried you guys must’ve been, all alone in the human realm!” I said, pulling away a bit to look at him. “Your hair’s longer now.” I observed.

  “Yeah…and you’re…um…sadder looking?” he said slowly.

  “Damn, okay, rude. I’m only a little bit more traumatized, it’s fine.” I teased, ruffling his hair.

  He flinched, and I quickly drew my hand back. “Sorry.” I said softly.

  He swallowed and touched his hair. “Um…no, you’re good…I just…I wanna haircut, that’s all.” He shrugged almost casually, but I had a feeling there was a story there- one that I didn’t need to know unless he told me.

  And it struck me how he’d been through things in the past few months that I might never know about. 

  Judging by his new scars…he had been through a whole lot.

  “I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last saw you.” I whispered, tracing the scar on his arm.

  He nodded, squeezing my hand. “I can. It felt like you were gone forever (Y/N), I was so- I was so scared.” He looked beach up at me, and I noticed then that his eyes were different.

  “Your eyes are brown.” I said. Maybe this was all just a weird lucid dream.

  …Nah. Dreams were never this vivid. And while I briefly entertained the idea of it being a Collector-induced illusion, I doubted he was that cruel- like it or not, the kid liked me. And much to my chagrin, I didn’t hate him anymore.

  “Yeah.” said Hunter, looking away. “Like- like Flapjack’s.”

  It was then that I noticed the fact that Flapjack was not there.

  “Oh.” I said, squeezing his hand. 

  “Yeah.” he repeated, voice breaking. “I- I’ll tell you later-”

  “Hey guys…where’s Luz?” Amity said, eyebrows knit together as she stepped in front of me.

  “Uhm…I was actually about to ask you that.” I winced.

  “Well this isn’t ideal.” said the (H/C) human.

  The familiar looking (H/C) human.

  “Oh my Titan.” I whispered, squeezing Hunter’s hand, and the human turned to me, eyes widening like mine were. “You’re…you’re-”

  Hunter coughed, stepping between us. “Oh, right. Uhm…(Y/N), this is Leo, once called Nico Bryony. Leo, this is (Y/N), your long lost…child…sibling?”

  “Jesus, that sounds wrong.” Nic- Leo winced.

  “Yeah.” I said, staring at him. “It does. Hunter has a way with words.”

  Hunter nodded proudly before realizing it was sarcasm, shooting me a look of betrayal.

  “So…you’re Lilith’s mysterious ex-boyfriend?” I said dumbly, and Leo shook his head.

  “You also have a way with words.” He snorted.

  “It’s a talent.” I said softly.

  “So this is Hunter’s (Y/N)?” said the woman who looked like Luz, smiling weakly.

  “Oh- hi!”

  “(Y/N), Camila Noceda. Camila, (Y/N) (L/N) Clawthorne.” Amity said quickly, waving back and forth. Now back to Luz-”

  “Wait wait but I wanna meet (Y/N)-” said the final human adult, the tall woman with short black hair, but Amity shook her head hard, shooting her a glare.

  “-Okay then!” the woman squeaked.

  “Wait can we go back to the part where you’re alive, sir?!” I exclaimed.

  “Nah, The Audience already knows- we’ll just explain it offscreen.” Hunter said, patting me on the shoulder.

 “Wait, I thought I was the only one allowed to break the fourth wall-” I started to say, but a loud rumbling sound cut me off. 

  I stared at the source of the sound, eyes widening. The ceiling was breaking into some very anxiety inducing hairline cracks- 

  Nope, scratch that, they were definitely worse than that.

  A chunk of ceiling hit the ground right next to Hunter, and he yelped, teleporting both of us a few feet away. Well that was certainly a development.

  Amity narrowed her eyes, casting a quick protection spell that-

  Uhm…didn’t work.

  “What's wrong with my magic?” Amity panicked, trying and failing to get the abomination goo to rise.

  Camila stepped forwards. “Can't you tell? You're exhausted. You all are! None of you have gotten rest in days.”

  I raised my hand. “I have.”

  Hunter glared at me.

  “Okay maybe I haven’t.” I muttered, lowering my hand.

  Willow frowned. “But what can we do? We can't leave everyone like this.”

  “And what about Luz?” Hunter added worriedly.

  Camila smiled, putting an arm around Amity’s shoulders. “Luz is a Noceda. You know what that means? It means she's way too stubborn to let any of this get her down.” I tried to ignore the flicker of doubt behind her eyes- Luz had to be okay. Hell, Leo was here, and if that could happen, then it follows that it must also be entirely possible for Luz to be okay…hopefully…

  Camila sighed softly, letting go of Amity. “She'll be okay.” 

  And yet despite the fact that there were tears in Camila’s eyes, I fully believed her. Luz was so so tough, she had to be okay.

  The human woman who’s name I still didn’t know patted Camila on the shoulder, and Camila gave a watery smile.

   “In the meantime,” Camila continued, wiping her eyes dry and speaking with an even more palpable confidence, "I think I know how we can help, even without your magic.” She took out a notebook and pencil.

  Ohhhh. Glyphs!

  I grinned. 

  Time to start drawing.

*******

Author's note: Sorry for the short chapter- this just seemed like the most natural cutoff! 

Also the title is a Phineas and Ferb reference for some reason and I am not sorry

Also I wanna invite a cool girl to see Asteroid City and you guys should peer pressure me into doing so

I probably need it

Taglist:

@vievi

@generousdoodleforillustration

@harlanfalcon

@ronipiamka

@draarnaak

@cloud-9ine

@jinxed-jk

@not-nubno

@hunter-therapy

@scaredy-cat-anne

@bleh-stupid

@luleck

[baelin]

hi. hello.

It has been 706 days since I first put myself into quarantine/isolation from the world as we know it. In those 706 days, I have seemingly lost all but two of my friends, mostly due to the current zeitgeist.

I'm not sure about y'all, but I have definitely changed more in the last two-ish years than I ever expected. It has been hard to recognize those changes. However, as the friend circle dwindles, it's either the explosive politics, beliefs in media and media presentation, or that nothing I have tried to talk about has carried any weight, it's back to small talk, and I am left thinking of this verse from the Hávamál:

Men become friends when they can share their minds with one another. Anything is better than being lied to: a real friend will disagree with you openly. — Hávamál 124

If we are no longer able to share our minds with each other, what are we doing? Giving energy to something that no longer serves us.

It's the nature of things though, isn't it? In and out of friends and friend groups is a part of life. Sometimes one or two stick for life, and everyone has their own friend patterns, too.

Back when the internet was young, I wrote volumes and volumes on livejournal. Not being able to have a lot of meaningful discourse lately has prompted me to try my hand at this again.

To cast a new net and find new people to share minds with.

•⪼⦕࿅⦖⪻•

hi. hello. how are you keeping?

[writingwithcolor]

Representing China’s diversity

@hewwo-god-its-me asked:

Hi! I’m Chinese-Canadian, creating a secondary fantasy world completely based off of China and coded as such. (Don’t worry, I know China is a huge country with a vast amount of regional and temporal variation throughout dynasties; I have been doing/will be doing more research so as not to conflate these.) I’m not sure my question has an easy answer, but I think my question sort of extends into the creation of any secondary fantasy world heavily based off of real-world countries (hopefully!). Though media has popularized a particular “type” of Chinese person, in reality, China is a lot more diverse than “pale-skinned, black-haired”, and DOES have migrants from other parts of the world, including other people of color who aren’t Chinese. I want to reflect this diversity, since it seems disingenuous, inaccurate, and downright offensive to say that “X people do not exist at all”, especially since my story will take place in a time period analogous to our “modern” today. However, since my world is coded as Chinese, with the various cultures that exist taking inspiration from (and sometimes, almost wholesale being aspects of) real-life Chinese culture, I’m worried that, in this case, in trying to reflect this diversity, it will come across as assimilation/erasing their own cultural identities. Sorry!! I might just be totally overthinking this, but I’ve been thinking myself in circles about this for a long time now, and being Chinese myself, I thought it would be important to ask how other people of color would feel about this, and am totally open to discussion on the topic!

Han Chinese are the majority group in China forming approximately 90% of the population. They are the majority all over China and originate from northern China. 

I recently found out I was Hmong, so I will talk somewhat about minorities in China. There are 55 recognized minority groups in China, and Hmong is one of them. The Hmong have generally darker skin than the Han Chinese majority and mainly reside in southern China. They are also present more so in southeast Asia, but even there, they are still a minority and heavily persecuted because of American interference and the use of them as spies against communism during the Vietnam War in Laos. Many Hmong immigrated to the United States as a result. Because of Chinese imperialism, a lot of minority groups are suppressed. There’s also the Manchu, who founded the Qing Dynasty.

Perhaps you should focus on a couple of cultural groups in China but have it mentioned several times that there are even more groups different than the ones focused on.

–Mod Sci

So I would also like to note that even within Han people, there can be a range of skin tones. I’m Han myself and while I’m currently pale, I’ve been quite tan before when I was out and about in the sun as a kid, and my brother is also much darker than the rest of our immediate family. When my mom was telling me about growing up in Taiwan, I got the impression that tan skin was the default, as one of her friends stood out for being pale among everyone else. From what I remember, pale among Han Chinese is not necessarily the default; there were definitely darker-skinned kids in my Chinese school, and having pale skin was probably more the exception than the norm. 

–Mod Jess

I think it’d be incredibly difficult to cover every single cultural group of China but at the same time, obviously a singular pan-Chinese identity doesn’t exist as you’ve mentioned. During worldbuilding (while it is important to clearly code your groups), make it clear that these aren’t indicative of every group that exists in real life; The representation that you cover within the span of your story isn’t exhaustive and cultures exist outside of the main cast.

I think the biggest thing you should remember when doing this is that the media in the West usually doesn’t try to go beyond a single, homogenized Chinese identity. Even within Chinese diasporic circles, I haven’t seen too many attempts to go beyond just “Chinese”, which isn’t horrible because our cultures are super mixed! However, like I said, there’s a lack of exploration of China’s diversity.

Speaking from a Chinese-Singaporean/Taiwanese/Vietnamese/Indonesian standpoint, representation of Chinese diaspora from other East Asian and Southeast Asian nations isn’t something I see a lot of, either! Ethnic Chinese people live in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines… and although I don’t like taking space from those who are marginalized by us in these places, we do exist outside of China and our cultures are influenced by other Asians as well.

Sci gave a great list of identities above that I haven’t seen much representation of above. I think that if you’re even taking a small step like this towards showing the diversity of China, you’re doing a lot already! 

–Mod Em

Firstly, I recommend reading about the mummies of Urumqi in Xinjiang, and their importance to Uyghur identity. 

Secondly, I recommend that you study Chinese history in depth, particularly:

The Silk Road

The Yuan dynasty (i.e. Mongols) 

The treasure ship diplomatic trade missions of the Ming dynasty. 

The Silk Road on its own resulted in regular interactions between many ethnic groups bound by trade, including many Central Asian Turkic nomadic and landed populations (of which the Uyghurs are a part). 

The Han are the majority ethnic group now and have arguably always been the supermajority (Depending on who you talk to), but to what degree this has been the case will vary from dynasty to dynasty up until the end of the Qing dynasty with the Manchus in the 20th century. Pay particular attention to when dynasties emerge and fall and which ethnic groups are mentioned when this happens. I think you will be surprised by what you find. Thoroughly studying a country’s history is generally the best way to fully appreciate its diversity. 

- Marika.

[servicetopkaradanvers]

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to say this, but I don't know if there is. And you're a smart person and critical thinker who has talked about this before. If this is totally weird, you can just delete it ofc. I've never properly watched Supergirl but I started reading fanfic around the time my mental health got real bad so it was a comfort thing I didn't bring too much thought to. I really identify with Lena and in the past, part of me has understood her actions-

and I know that they're wrong. The anti-alien rhetoric is obviously an allegory for racism or homophobia. She's violated people's basic human rights. And I'm scared that I'm a bad person because sometimes, I kind of get it. Which is insane because i'm a lesbian enby of color, i mean i get targeted by most of the -ist/ism actions. And I'm also too tired to think about things critically all the time. Supercorp was my comfort fic, content thing-

I knew it was problematic (the whole James thing makes me sick to my stomach, scared and sad) but I didn't know that Lena as a character was written that way. The metaphors never really clicked in my head because I never thought about it, but now I feel absolutely horrible about myself because I like and identify with Lena. I'm not really sure how to move on from here- I'm just tired. I wish there could be just one thing, one piece of media that wasn't prejudiced (granted sg is not the place to go if you want decent rep and the like) and all of those things I said earlier. Its just me somehow trying to justify how I felt and empathized with something I shouldn't have. So yeah, sorry that was really long. I hope you have a lovely day- sorry for the spam

FIRST of all, you’re fine, babe! Both in sending me this and in enjoying The Bad Media. That’s my thesis here: You’re fine. With this in mind, let’s unpack this big ol suitcase:

We’re living in a fandom moment where more than ever before, we’re thinking about the ideas we consume in fiction and how they may or may not affect us. This is a net positive! Fiction is not reality, but it undeniably impacts it, so for this and many other reasons, we should always think critically about what resonates with us and why. Does this mean dissecting every facet of something to find all the ways it might fall in line with oppressive power structures? Absolutely not.

You, as an individual, do not owe anyone an explanation for why you enjoy anything. Period. How you relate to a given character or why you like them is nobody's business but your own.

Supergirl, as a piece of media, is singularly awful in its lackluster lipservice to progressivism while simultaneously refusing to deliver any progressive themes. Socially and politically, it is a useless liberal wet dream. Kara is an immigrant from a dead culture working as the muscle for a secret FBI offshoot with zero accountability for all of the other aliens in diaspora she has rounded up and dumped into a cell without trial. Alex is allegedly a lesbian, but the key points of her endgame relationship are constantly deemed not important enough to get screen time, which is made even more absurd when examined from the angle that this series is marketed directly toward LGBT people. An embarrassing percentage of villains on this show are women of color, which is particularly loud when there are only 2 women in the main cast who aren't white. And "main" is extremely generous, given that Kelly is just there to Give Advice Good and everything M'gann says and does is as dry as toast.

My point here is that the whole show is rotted to its roots, and whatever quietly libertarian or even fascism-enabling bullshit they push onto Lena in a given week is par for the crusty, shitty course. Kara deciding that she's ok with the alien detection device because "there are bad aliens" is a lovely (read: awful) microcosm of why this show sucks so fucking hard. "People are entitled to their opinions" is for debates on whether pineapple goes on pizza, not for whether we should casually out, endanger, and disenfranchise our [insert minority metaphor here] because some of them are mean.

But what I would love for this fandom to wrap its head around, and what I hope you understand, anon, is that just because it happens on the show, doesn't mean we have to give a rat's ass about it. What the hell is The Canon, anyway? Especially in the case for Supergirl, which can't even get its own continuity right. Especially for an IP that has been rebooted dozens of times before and will be rebooted again in the future. We can just decide that Lena realized the horrible injustices she enabled through her position of power. We can even decide that they just didn't happen at all! This is all fake. It's not set in stone. Who came up with it, anyway? A network with a list of buzzwords they want included and a couple of D-tier showrunners cranking down caffeine to meet an absurdly tight deadline. It's not special. I can guarantee that you care about it infinitely more than they do, and you haven't even watched the damn show.

On a more personal level, people who are hurt, depressed, or traumatized have always and will always look for themselves in fiction. Myself included! And despite what lofty platitudes there may be on the matter, suffering does not make us kind. It does not make us better. Sometimes it's just suffering. Often it pulls us further from who we are meant to be. Often it just makes us "worse."

Trauma has made Lena emotionally brittle. A lifetime of manipulation and abuse has taught her to compartmentalize herself and lock her feelings behind a maze of doors. When she does let love in, she accepts it so wild and vulnerable that she can't see the red flags behind the rosy lenses. She latches so hard onto people she deems virtuous that she holds them to a standard none could fulfill. Her pain has to go somewhere, so it oozes out of her, into Non Nocere, into the post-reveal rift. She's a powder keg, and Kara spent 4 years shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile while holding the match between her teeth.

And despite these fatal flaws that make perfect sense through the eyes of Lena's trauma, she is so full of love. Like Kara, her suffering did not make her kind. She is kind in spite of her suffering. These are the characters we are drawn to when we're hurting. Lena’s trauma is an inextricable part of her, but it is not all of her, and neither are her mistakes.

There truly is not and never will be a piece of media that is absolutely innocent of the harmful structures thrust upon us by society, because we ourselves also participate in that society whether we are critical of it or not, whether we strive to change it or not. I'm flawed. You're flawed. Bettering ourselves is not a journey toward an ultimate destination of perfection. It is a garden we nurture in an endless labor of love because the joy that comes from seeing it flourish and change vastly outweighs the work we put into it and the weeds popping up around its unkempt edges. This is a lesson Lena herself could probably stand to internalize. Probably with lots and lots of therapy. Lots. And lots.

So, to circle back to the start of this? You're fine. You recognized the logic in a traumatized character's mistakes because our own gravest errors more often than not stem from the ways we have been harmed in the past. It's what makes Lena (or, at the very least, the many adaptations of Lena that exist in this fandom) a good character. She is, to her core, characterized proof that a crumbling foundation and poisonous soil do not define us. Which is why watching her heal and grow and learn a healthier kind of love is so, so wonderful.

In closing, I think it's worth mentioning that being critical of media does not mean that we stop enjoying the parts of it we like. There is a lot of gold to be pulled from the steaming pile of shit that is CW Supergirl, and that's why we're all here in the first place. So I really hope you can continue to enjoy it in whatever way makes you smile <3

[mansions-maiden]

Can I request promt 1 with isaac, if you still take request if not then you can ignore this

Prompt : You make a great pillow

pairing : reader x Isaac

Word count : 1.2K

Isaac was returning to the mansion from yet another stressful day at University. Teaching was hard and stressful sometimes. But it's the thing he enjoyed the most. Sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm for science with his students was his passion.

You noticed that your boyfriend would often be found locked up in his room for hours at a stretch, after the university. You were worried about him. You knew his unusual bloodlust and its consequences when he doesn't take food and rouge. But he wasn't the type to rest upon a single request.

So you were naturally forced to find an alternative way to make him rest.

The following evening, when he returned to the mansion, he searched for you and found you in the kitchen, baking something. His senses could recognize the sweet aroma of pie crust being baked and also the sweet smell of apples.

He wasn't aware that you were preparing his SECRET favourite dessert, apple pie. He looked around; his path was clear and no other vampire could be found in the vicinity.

He immediately approached you and hugged you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder. You were surprised at first but then laughed softly at his affectionate action.

You turned your head to his side and kissed him on the cheek, stopping for a moment from your cooking and putting your hands on his wrapped ones around your torso.

"What is it Mr Professor? Did you miss me?" You joked as you turned around in his engulfed arms. But your smile morphed into a concerned look when you saw prominent dark circles beneath his eyes. You rested both of your palms on either of his cheeks as you examined his tired face and cherry blossom eyes that lost their lustre to tiredness. "Isaac, I'm sorry to keep you away from your science, but you are to go to le thermae, right. Now. "

He became reluctant on hearing your words. But he saw the pleading look in your eyes and nodded his head. " That's great Isaac. Join me in your room afterwards. " You waved him bye as he marched towards le thermae.

In the meantime, you continued your cooking, making apple pie, some sandwiches and soon you made a beeline to his room taking a bottle of rouge and blanc along with the dishes on a tray.

15 minutes later, you saw him a bit relaxed after taking a bath. "Come here, Isaac. Today, I'm going to make you rest and make sure you are spoiled. " You patted the space beside you on his bed and told him to sit there.

As he sat down, you checked his temperature just to make sure that he didn't tire himself so much to the extent that he would be down with fever. You sighed, feeling relieved. You brought him the tray with dishes and sat down again.

He looked at all the dishes and cast a curious gaze at you. You sighed softly as you explained to him, " You look like a zombie, Isaac! You're working yourself to the bone. Tonight, you're under my watch and I'm forbidding you from working late into the night. Now c'mon! Let’s eat this!"

He smiled a little and you both began eating the apple pie and the sandwiches you had prepared. And eventually, the tray was empty.

After filling his stomach to the brim, he burped and smiled sheepishly at you. " Hehe, thank you for baking these. I really loved them! "

"It's okay silly! I was worried about you. Now, what shall we do next?"

Isaac thought for a while before answering," Hmm… how about we talk about our day? "

"Sure, how was your day? Are you working on anything new?" You asked as you turned to face him.

"Nothing new at the university. And I am working on this thing…" Isaac's face lit up again at the mention of things he was doing and working on. While he continued his passionate speech, you can't help but shake your head at the realisation that nothing really can quench his passion for physics and science, and a small appreciative smile crept onto your lips.

It was past dinner time as you both were lost in your own little world you both built together. You realized how late it was as the clock in his room chimed.

"Hey Isaac, shall we sleep? It's already past midnight. " You said as you rubbed your suddenly drowsy eyes.

His eyes widened at the realization and immediately apologized for keeping you up this late. You brushed it off telling him it's fine and that you enjoyed listening to him talk about something passionately.

He looked at the clock and asked, "Sleep here with me tonight. It’s late anyway." You shrugged nonchalantly, agreeing to his statement. You stood up from your spot, to get ready for sleep.

He suddenly pulled you back by your waist gently and you landed on his lap. You let out a gasp of surprise. He nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent and perfume's fragrance. His voice came out muffled as he whispered, "It's been a while since we've spent time together. I missed having you in my arms, MC."

"I missed being with you too. Shall we go on a date this weekend? But for now, let's sleep. " Isaac agreed to both of your statements.

You both laid on the bedside by side and soon fell asleep, engulfed in each other's warmth and company.

THE NEXT MORNING

You opened your eyes at the usual time and turned towards Isaac, who was still sound asleep. His face was peaceful, ridden of stress due to his profession and daily activities. You brushed his bangs aside with a gentle touch and kissed him on his forehead. You began playing with his hair, running your fingers through the locks of his hair. "You silly, no matter how much you love something, you ought to take a rest sometimes. You never stop making me worry about you." You whispered, with only walls and objects to listen to your words.

You saw movements from Isaac and he hugged you tightly, leaving you surprised with the unusual strength he possessed even during the half-asleep state. "Mmm… Thank you for forcing me to rest yesterday… I am feeling so much better. And your body is so soft and warm, I can't help but fall into a deep sleep. And your fragrance is so soothing. You make a great pillow, MC"

"Let's stay like this for a little longer then" you hugged him back and rested your head on his shoulder, and he dozed off again. But he was unaware of the effect his words had on you. Your pulse went up as you remembered his words of an instant ago.

But you were asleep after some time. You woke up to the sense of ticklishness spreading along your torso and face. This time, he was giving you tender kisses along your jaw, on your face and arms. "I-Isaac! Stop..haha..stop it p-please!" You were fully conscious by now. He stopped and looked at you with a teasing grin. "Today I'm taking a day off. So we can stay in bed as long as we want." You smiled at him but were laughing again until your stomach ached as he continued to tickle you with his hands and tender kisses.

[dreamkidddream]

Requests are open again hihi as a member of Kunikida and Oda deserve all the love club, I MUST request the scenario 6 with Kunikida, LIKE, LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING HE WOULD DO and never admit it

Thanks for this club haha, love your works and I am so happy we can ask for it again 🥺

The “Kunikida and Oda deserve all the love and affection because they do” club is steady growing and we love to see it 😌🙏🏾 and YES Kunikida will 100% do this no hesitation even if he’s complaining the whole time lol and thanks for reading my works and for all the love 🥺💚💙 reader is gender neutral!

TW: mentions of undressing (Okay it’s not spicy/suggestive, he’s just being a good boyfriend so that you can get in the shower 🥺 no body parts/nothing graphic is mentioned but I still wanted to put a TW!)

Prompt Scenario: “Person A having a broken leg and Person B has to carry them up and down the stairs to their bedroom every night/morning.” with Kunikida!

This sucks.

You didn’t think that your injury would be this bad, but here you are. One that left you completely immobile.

Okay you’re exaggerating, but you could only do so much being stuck in this bed!

The white cast surrounding your broken leg (although filled with doodles by Naomi, Dazai, Ranpo, and the others), baring as a constant reminder of your mistake. It just took one misstep and a nasty fall down the stairs that left your leg bending in an angle that it definitely wasn’t suppose to be. While Yosano happily offered her services to heal, you weren’t necessarily ready to go through with that process yet. Besides, now you can somewhat laze around and not get shot at for once!

That was your first thought initially.

You got bored and lonely fast.

With Kunikida having to go to work, and you still being monitored in the hospital, you could only do so much for your entertainment. The food wasn’t the greatest, you flipped through all the channels at least three times in the last hour, and you missed sharing the bed with your lover.

You really miss him, and you’re starting to take up Yosano’s offer...

But, you couldn’t contain your fidgeting in the bed today after hearing the good news.

You’re finally getting released from this prison today! You can finally get to breathe in some fresh air, and not the stale one that’s been circling in your room for past couple of days. With the addition of seeing your boyfriend, who you know for a fact misses you just as much as you do, (and maybe even more).

—-

So coming home came with some setbacks.

Mainly the stairs that started all of this mess to begin with.

Kunikida was already cooking dinner, which you offered to help, but he just demanded asked that you sit down and let your leg rest. In your absence, he’s written down almost all of the medical advice on broken legs known to man and is determined to be the best caretaker for you. You couldn’t just sit around forever, and you’re ready to be in your pajamas, to get underneath your own covers, and to cuddle with your partner whose warmth you have been missing for the past couple of days.

You got crutches to use, and you’re 100% sure that you can hobble your way up the stairs and make it to the bedroom in one piece this time. You just have to have patience and take your time, just take one step at a time, and you should be okay! If you could just control your shaking grip on your crutches, and get your good leg to become steady enough to stand on the first step, then you can-

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Your foot barely hovered over the step before you felt his presence behind you. You could practically feel the anger radiating off of him, no doubt the look on his face being a mix of anger and disappointment.

When you turned around, you were proven correct. Kunikida’s brows were furrowing deeper and deeper the longer you stayed in this compromising position, and you would have laughed seeing him wearing your shared apron if you didn’t see his hold on the spatula tightening each second. “Um, well, I was going to-”

“Go up the very stairs that left you like this, unsupervised.”

Surprisingly, he’s still intimidating, even in the “This cook accepts cleaned plates AND kisses as payment” apron.

“Well, I’m-I’m being extra careful! I can’t not go into our bedroom. I sleep there too you know.” You laughed, but the situation became even more awkward when he wasn’t laughing with you.

“You just got back home and already about to put yourself in harm’s way again, and we haven’t even ate yet!”

You started to panic more when he untied the apron and took off his glasses.

You just accepted your fate whenever he approached you again, slowly easing yourself down and preparing yourself to be chewed out and in for a lengthy lecture that’ll probably leave you falling asleep on the steps soon enough-

Until he kneeled down in front of you, back turned.

Okay you’re confused.

You’re just staring at his back, wondering what exactly he’s doing. Is this suppose to be symbolic message or something? Is this his way of saying that he’s giving you the silent treatment-

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“The schedule is already off, and since you’re just so ready to jump ahead, we might as well get it over with. If it’ll make you listen and not be so irrational, then fine.”

It still isn’t clicking for you-

“Hurry up and get on already! We don’t have all night!”

Ohhhh, he wants you to get on...his back? However, judging by the red spreading to the tips of his ears, that’s what he wants. You would tease him, but your heart is too busy melting at the fact that he would do this for you. “Doppo, you don’t have to do this-”

“I do. If you think that you’re going near any of these steps without me, then you’re sorely mistaken. Not to mention how hard it will be for you to maneuver around, so I do need to do this. So, go ahead, before we get more behind schedule.”

You’re still on the brink of refusing him, but he does have a point; it’s going to be a little difficult trying to move around with this. You also recognized that this is one of his ways of showing that he cares, and wants to help you through this. Kunikida has always been someone that will truly help when you need it, even if you don’t ask for it. He may complain about it being “extra work”, but you know that he doesn’t mean it, and will do it again in a heartbeat if needed be.

It’s just one of the many reasons why you love him so much.

Plus, this is probably one of the only times you’ll be able to get a piggyback ride without begging, so why not?

It wasn’t difficult to get on his back, especially since he’s handling you like you’re so fragile (which you guess you are right now). It was funny, you both know what you’re capable of but yet he’s always so gentle with you, but it’s never to the point that he’s degrading or belittling.

“(Y/N)?”

“Hm?”

“Do you remember what I told you when we first started dating?”

“Of course, I can never forget it!”

“The day that I confessed to you, I told you that I will always take care of you. That I would do my best to keep you safe, to protect you, and I already failed you.” His tone became somber. You couldn’t imagine what was going through his head the nights you were gone.

Going through his daily routine and sleeping in an empty bed without you filled him with guilt, especially knowing that this happened over something that could have been easily prevented. He blamed himself every day, it didn’t matter that you weren’t gone for long. It was still his fault.

“Doppo, don’t blame yourself-”

“I do. I was already careless enough to let you get hurt, and I can’t let that happen again, I won’t.” You would be more concerned, but his tone shifted. It was no longer full of pity for himself, full of guilt. Instead, it was full of unwavering determination, that this scenario can’t- will never happen again.

You could tell that he was making a promise, to both you and himself. And he is a man of his word, after all.

You already made it to your shared bedroom, Kunikida carrying you to the restroom and sitting you on the edge of the bed. He already began to grab your PJs from the dresser, and made his way back to you. “Is it okay if- if I-”

“Yes, Doppo, I don’t mind you helping me undress.” You laughed. You two live together and he’s seen you hundreds of times, yet he still asks every time if he could come in if you’re changing. Just another reason why you fell for him.

Once you were done, he carried you again to the bathroom, the water already running and him checking to make sure it’s right for you. He already rolled his sleeves up and kneeled down in front of you, and you could hear him mumbling to himself about the different methods he can use to keep your cast dry as he lifted it.

You swear he’s too sweet for his own good, no matter how many times he tries to deny it.

—-

Even after your cast was off and your leg was good as new, Kunikida still caught himself trying to carrying you up the stairs every morning and night. He felt embarrassed every time you laughed and reminded him that he didn’t have to do it anymore. He still stood close by though, with the excuse that you’re still clumsy enough that it’s bound to happen again (which you just rolled your eyes and kissed his cheek). He did get the chance to carry you however whenever you were too tired or fell asleep downstairs, no exceptions.

(You may or may not have fake sleep sometimes so that he can carry you.)

Yes, he may reprimand and complain about how irresponsible and reckless you can be, he may act like the chaos you create throws off his dear schedule so much, and he wonders how you managed to make him fall in love with you so deeply when you don’t even qualify for all of his ideals, but he doesn’t care believe it or not. He wouldn’t give you up for the world.

Besides, anything to have you in his arms is worth the headache.

[thisisarcanereverie]

Should’ve Known Chapter 14

A/N:  FINAL TIME SKIP. Also we are reaching the point now where there are only maybe 3 chapters left in this series but res assured I will be doing asks and will be writing small side shots to this series. Because I did leave a bunch of detail to the imagination. Also PLEASE INTERACT IT GIVES ME LIFE. Like seriously hearing active feedback on chapters really helps motivate writers like me to write. 

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Wanda or Steve they are owned by Marvel, I don’t own the gif either.

WARNINGS:Angst, Swearing, loss, dark themes, 18 + from here on out. 

WORDS : 3,113

SUMMARY: Months turn into years and now the twins are six years old. Unexpected visitors arrive and things take an unexpected turn. 

In case you missed last chapter

series masterlist

ULTIMATE MASTERLIST

Sunlight danced through the crack in the sheer curtains in your shared bedroom and glinted off of the ring on your finger. 

Wanda couldn’t help but stare at you, appreciating every detail of your face, the way your nose twitches occasionally, the sound of soft breathing coming from you, and the rise and fall of your chest as you simply existed in this moment. She thanked every star she could that you existed. You changed her life for the better and she dreads to think of what life would have been like without you and the two beautiful children you gave birth to six years ago. 

You kept her grounded, you and the kids made her feel loved like she hadn’t felt since Pietro was taken from her. 

Wanda would be damned if she let anything take her family away from her again. 

Wanda still had her nightmares, the scars left behind from Vision and from Pietro, her parents, and Agatha were still there. But thanks to you those scars became simply that, scars. Scars that were faded but would forever remain there. 

However, as her old fears started to fade, new fears came to light. 

Some nights she dreams that Agatha had been right, that Wanda only brought chaos and death. She dreams that you and the kids died horrifically like everyone else she had ever loved. 

Other nights she dreams that she is the one who killed you. On those nights you spend hours combing your fingers through her hair and rubbing those familiar comforting circles on her back. Bringing her back to where she was now, that you and the kids were still alive. 

Then there were those special nights when her dreams were sweet and full of love. Sometimes she’s reliving a happy memory with her family before the bombing, sometimes she dreams of Vision and sometimes it’s with two boys that she doesn’t recognize but she knows she loves. However, if she’s really lucky, she dreams of you. Wanda dreams of sitting on the porch with you, sipping steaming tea with honey, grey and white in your hair, but your eyes are as youthful and as full of love as ever. Wanda dreams that her hair is peppered in grey and white as well, wrinkles of time written on her face, and that in the end she had never been what Agatha claimed she was. the Scarlet Witch, the Harbinger of Chaos, the Destroyer of the World. She dreams that all of that was just myth and that in the end all Wanda was, was Wanda Maximoff. 

Your wife. 

Wanda feels the corners of her lips curl upward as she remembers proposing to you. She did it at home, she hid it in the popcorn and you nearly choked on the damn thing. After spitting the ring out Wanda had the worst case of butterflies she ever felt. Wanda knew that marriage was an off subject for you and you weren’t quite sure how you felt about it and Wanda respected that greatly. However, she wanted to let you know that if you ever change your mind, Wanda would gladly marry you whenever you wanted, be it fifty years or an hour. So long as she got to be with you in the end. 

Wanda’s patience with you and the respect that she held for you and vice versa. You didn’t know you could fall even more in love with her. 

You and Wanda had been happily married for three years now and it was safe to say this was the happiest either of you had ever been. 

“Staring’s rude babe.” You muttered under your breath as your lashes fluttered before you fully opened your eyes. Taking in a brand new day in the same old world. 

“Stop being so beautiful in the morning then I’ll stop.” 

“Am I not beautiful any other time in the day?” You teased her. 

“No,” Wanda said before starting to litter your face in soft kisses. 

“You’re gorgeous in the afternoon,” Wanda whispered as she kissed your neck, nipping it slightly causing you to giggle. “You’re exquisite in the evening,” Wanda’s lips trails up your throat, her talented hands wandering as she did, “and you’re downright divine at midnight when the moonlight peaks through our curtains and bathes you in this silvery light.” Wanda’s lips are at the corner of your mouth now, your breathing now becoming hitched as Wanda’s lips are so far yet so close to your lips, “It’s at that time of day that I stare at you the longest.” Finally Wanda’s lips place a gentle but loving kiss on your lips. Her lips on yours never failed to make your heart flutter like it was the first time, fireworks and electricity running through you like wildfire. 

Just as you were about to deepen the kiss you heard the door to your shared room slam open, tearing your lips from Wanda’s to see two small figures rush and jump on your and Wanda’s bed. 

“Good Morning Mama and Mommy!” You heard the excited voices of your twins say. You and Wanda scooted aside to make room for the two already rambunctious twins in between you. 

Steve immediately went to cuddle by your side while Scarlet went to Wanda. Even when the twins were infants they had a preferred parent that they naturally drifted to. For Scarlet it had been Wanda and for Steve it was you. 

You looked at Wanda who looked at Scarlet like she was the world, in fairness she looked like that at Steve and you as well. And instead of scaring you, it felt nice. It warmed your heart to know that Wanda felt the same way, that the people in that room right there were your entire world.

Once the twins settled in between you, you and Wanda kissed the tops of their heads to which Steve giggled as you kissed raspberries on his cheeks.

“What’s on the agenda today little ones?” Wanda asked, Wanda often missed out on most of the day due to training with Strange. She’s gotten very proficient over the years at controlling her powers, Wanda’s learned more about herself and what she could do over the past six years and the more she learned the more frightened and amazed she was. 

“We’re going to go pick raspberries to make jam and pies!” Scarlet said excitedly. 

“Don’t forget,” You chimed in, booping your daughter's nose lightly with your index finger, causing her to giggle her bell like laughter, “that’s only after we finished our classwork today.” 

Steve let out a groan while Scarlet seemed to buzz with excitement. Scarlet loved learning, and Steve did too although not as much as his sister.

You had been homeschooling them, for fear of the worst. You knew that they were young and the likeliness of their powers showing themselves when they were really young were slim. However, you knew that their existence alone would cause a tsunami of reporters and agents ready to probe them. You knew there was a chance that their powers may never come, however until you were certain you and Wanda thought it best to homeschool them. 

It wasn’t bad, you took them to the park for them to play with kids their own age. After all, Nat did teach you the best way of hiding was in plain sight and acting naturally. 

---

You and the kids had just got done with school work for the day when you grabbed three baskets and headed to the raspberry bushes in the garden. Wanda had cast a spell on the bushes to make them grow raspberries anytime in the year. 

You laughed and watched lovingly as the kids ran around the yard playing tag. You counted your blessings that they got along with each other, maybe all the Sokovian whispers to your belly had done something after all. 

You gathered the three baskets of raspberries and brought them back inside. You washed the raspberries at the sink and occasionally checked outside the kitchen window to make sure that they were alright. 

After cleaning the raspberries you fixed them with a snack of apple slices and celery. You went on the porch to call them in when a vision of red, white and blue caught your eye. 

the Shield. 

It brings you back to Steve, his baby blues and his smiles and Tony’s funeral. 

You had heard what happened in New York with the Flagsmashers all those years ago and you would have gotten involved had you not been heavily pregnant at the time. 

You're brought back to the present when the Star Spangled Man with a Plan (now upgraded with wings) asks your twins where their mom was. 

“Sam...” You say, the tall man turned to you and it was then you see that he wasn’t alone. You don’t know how you could have missed the roaring of the motorcycle in the yard and the other tall man. “Bucky....”

The men walked toward you while the twins ran. 

“Mommy! Mommy! There are people here to see you.” They say at the same time, it wasn’t very often that you had company, much less unexpected company. 

“I see that,” You said evenly, keeping your face straight as the two men in front of you widened their eyes in realization. You tear your eyes away from them and to the two children in front of you and you knelt down to their height. “Why don’t you two go inside and play while Mommy talks to these gentlemen for a second.”

“Do you know who they are?” Lettie asked curiously, her eyes scanning the men. 

“Do we get to meet them?” Steve asked excitedly, looking amazed at Bucky’s metal arm. 

“I’ll let you know that in a second, but for right now go inside and play.” You said firmly, the twins waved goodbye to the men before heading inside. You waited until you heard the door close behind them to walk toward the men in front of you. 

“Boys,” You greeted motioning the porch chairs on the other side, “take a seat.”

Sam and Bucky listened and sat down. 

“Do you want a drink?” You asked, arms crossed. 

“Got anything strong?” Bucky asked. His eyes are not meeting yours. 

“It’s Scotland and I am a mom to twins,” You pointed out, “of course I do.” 

“I’ll take that then.” Bucky said, you looked at Sam who simply shook his head. You went in and grabbed the only bottle of Whiskey and a glass. 

By the time you gave Bucky the whiskey they seemed to have processed what they just saw. Sam looked at you with pity and concern, meanwhile Bucky looked off in the distance, anger radiated off of him in waves. 

“Are they Steve’s?” Sam asked. You simply nodded. 

“I only found out a month or so after the funeral,” You revealed, “I didn’t even know I was going to go through with the pregnancy until the events of Westview happened.” 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” 

“The less people that know the safer they are,” You explained, “I wanted to tell you.”

“But you didn’t” Bucky chimed in, his voice was shaky and his grip on the glass tightened. 

“They’re the children of the former Captain America and Sargent Steel,” You said, “I have to keep the people who know about them tight and few.”

“Who all knows?” Sam asked. 

“Director Fury, Director Rambaue, Pepper, Strange, Wong-”

“Does your husband know?” Bucky interrupted. Sam looked confused before he noticed the subtle wedding ring on your left hand. 

“Holy shit you got married.” Sam said, astonished. 

“Yes I am,” You confirmed feeling slightly awkward since it only took you this long to realize that you never officially came out to them. 

“My wife knows.” You said vaguely, you see both of the men's eyes widen in shock. Sam recovered faster than Bucky who took another drink from his whiskey. 

“Who’s the lucky girl?” Sam asked.

“That would be me.” 

You all turn your heads to your wife, still clad in her Scarlet Witch form. If it wasn’t for the fact that you had company you know your lips would be all over her by now. 

She winks your way and you flush. Wanda didn’t need to read your mind to know exactly what you were thinking. 

“Hold up,” Sam said, “You married her?!” 

“Yup.” You confirmed as her form sat down next to you and grasped your hand. 

“How long has this been a thing?” Bucky spoke for the first time in a while. 

“Why do you need to know?” Wanda asked, her hand firmly holding yours. Bucky held his hands up in surrender before taking one last swig from his glass. 

“The bottom line is, only Wanda and the rest know, and I guess now you two do as well.” You said. There was a long pause of silence, before Sam spoke. 

“I won’t say anything.” Sam said finally, before nudging Bucky out of his staring spell. 

“Boys,” You call out as you see that they’re about to leave. 

“I truly am sorry you had to find out this way, but I was only doing what I thought would keep them safe, and now that you know you’re free to visit them anytime.... It would be good for them to finally meet their fathers old friends.” You said. You see Sam and Bucky nod, you reach out for a handshake only to be pulled into a firm hug by Sam. 

“I understand Sarg, you only did what you thought was best.” Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes as you returned the hug. Bucky still couldn’t look at you. 

You knew that you had broken his trust and you would work on getting it back. You just hoped that whatever grudges he had against you wouldn’t stop him from forming a bond with the kids. 

After Sam lets you go Bucky surprises you with a hug as well, his beefy arms encasing you firmly. 

“We’ll be visiting again soon.” Bucky promises as he lets you go and shakes goes to shake Wanda’s hand. 

“Wait,” You say as Bucky already is making his way to his motorcycle and Sam prepares for flight. 

“Yeah?” Sam replies. 

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” you said, “what brought you guys here?”

Sam paused for a second before replying. 

“I was just flying overhead, Bucky and I got word that there might’ve been an abandoned HYDRA base here but, turned out to be a faulty tip.” Sam said before saying his final goodbyes as he lifts off into the air and Bucky peels out of the driveway. 

“He was lying.” Wanda says, her eyes giving off a faint red glow. 

“I know.” You say, Sam’s pulse jumped when he spoke about the abandoned HYDRA base. You softly grab her hand and bring it to your lips, planting a small peck to the back of it. 

Wordlessly you walked hand in hand with Wanda through the front doors and continued with the regular evening schedule. 

You and Wanda made dinner as the kids helped set the table and talked about the day. The kids asked questions about who the men were and you and Wanda answered as best as you could without giving them the full truth. Which was surprisingly more difficult. Eventually dinner ended and while Wanda got the kids ready for bed it was your turn for dishes. After dishes were washed and rinsed you let them air dry in the rack and went to tuck in the twins with Wanda. 

Wanda and you kissed their heads goodnight and then proceeded to the couch.

Just as you made your way to the couch you noticed Wanda standing still. 

“Wands, what's wrong?” You asked, reaching out to her. 

“Nothing it’s just,” Wanda started as she played with her hands, “I have a bad feeling, like something is about to happen.”

“Come sit on the couch and talk me through it.” You say as you lead her to the well loved couch. You and Wanda sit and immediately fall into the position you always do, her leaning into you and your arm swung around her shoulders. Wanda had long since transformed out of her Scarlet Witch form but she still looked magical to you. Her fiery locks cascading down her dainty shoulders and just a hint of sparkle on her cheeks remained. You felt Wanda give a deep sigh before speaking. 

“I don’t know what it is, it’s not anything deadly but it fills me with dread just the same.” Wanda said with her green hues giving off a faraway look, “something is about to happen and I don’t know what it is.” 

“Whatever happens,” you say, maneuvering her so that way she faces you, “we’ll face it like we’ve done most things. Together.” You press your forehead to hers and let your eyelids flutter shut and Wanda follows suit. 

“Together.” Wanda whispers back as she finally closes the gap between you in a promise like kiss. 

---

---

---

“Buck don’t do this,” Sam tried to stop the centurion. Over the course of six years the two men had grown close and eventually Sam had earned the privilege of calling the taller man Buck. 

“He has the right to know.” Bucky responded, icy eyes focused solely on the communicator that their mutual friend gave them for ‘universe level threat emergencies only’ 

“We promised her we wouldn’t tell anyone Buck.” 

“No,” the Brooklyn man gruffed, “you promised her you wouldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t promise shit. So don’t worry your pretty little head about breaking your promises.” 

“First off thank you for finally admitting that I’m pretty,” Sam said before attempting to snatch the communicator and failing. “Second off, we should’ve told her the truth from the start. Instead of leaving puzzle pieces to put together.” 

“She had plenty of puzzle pieces. It's not our fault she didn’t put them together.” Bucky said not looking the man in the eye, “He left her a message on the phone and a message in the personal notebook. It’s not ou-” 

“If you’re going to say not our fault again I’m going to slap you.” Sam interrupted. “You know damn well that (Y/n) was as strong as steel, but Nat and Tony’s deaths wore her down, but HE was the breaking point. HE fucked up man, HE has to live with that and THAT’S NOT our job to help him make up for that.” 

Just when Bucky starts to reconsider, the communicator beeped. 

MESSAGE SENT - - - MESSAGE RECEIVED  - - - MESSAGE INBOX (1) 

- ON MY WAY_CSGR

[curiousconch]

Chase You / Chase Me (Pt. 2)

Part 2: Before I dive right into you

Catch up here: Series Masterlist

Chapter Summary: In the aftermath of their pretend wedding in Las Vegas, Gabe begins to unravel his growing feelings for Alex. But as he attempts to bring his past to light, someone from Alex's previous life casts a shadow on the future.

Book/Pairing: Choices - Laws of Attraction / Gabe Ricci x MC (Alex Keating)

Words: 2.4k+ (sorry 🙈)

Rating/Warnings: Mature (16+) / alcohol consumption, some swears

Disclaimer: Most of the characters as well as some dialogue belong to Pixelberry. I am merely borrowing them.

A little after 1 AM, Las Vegas

Gabe can't help but smirk at the look of mischief in Alex's eyes as they stood by a quiet spot in the middle of Las Vegas. With her in that glittery dress, he somehow can't bring himself to part from her yet.

He knew it wasn't only him who felt that tingling in his fingertips when he brushed her cheeks, her breath smelling strongly of martini. He was very aware that Alex felt the same when she stared back at him, standing at that cramped cheap chapel while an Elvis impersonator stood nearby. The moment she stepped away when he said that it's just all pretend made Gabe's heart ache with regret.

So here they were, standing awkwardly after he shot down her advances again.

But he was sure he didn't want the night to end here.

After calling for a car, he shoved his phone inside the pocket of his slacks and turned to Alex.

"I was serious when I said I wanted a celebratory drink," he glanced apologetically to his side where she stood. "Our hotel bar offers my favorite scotch."

Alex raised her head, smiling. "Knew you had it in you, Gabe."

A car ride and a couple of glasses of Lagavulin later, there they were, lounging on stools at their opulent hotel bar, warm lights and jazz music providing a backdrop on the casual atmosphere.

"And I could not believe the rat thing worked! Who would've known they kept a rat in there as a pet? Like really?" Alex raised her glass to her lips, as Gabe sat on the barstool beside her, cradling his own drink.

"Beginner's luck, I would believe," he chuckled in reply, leaning forward, tie loosened and his coat hanging at the back of his chair.

"I am so offended," Alex gasped as she shoved her hands flat on her chest in mock disbelief. "I'm not only the boring nerd when I was in high school, Gabe. I was that nerd who sang and dance at the drama club!"

Gabe shook his head, his lips pursing. "That makes so much damn sense, Alex." He took another swig of his third shot, fighting for dear life from laughing his heart out. Not wanting to give her that satisfaction, he threw a sarcastic dig at her remark. "That's so believable, seeing you could snatch an Oscar from Meryl Streep herself and the no one wouldn't even bat an eye."

"Ah, law was plan A, sir." she saluted, placing her empty glass on the bar counter. "Acting was a fallback in case it didn't pan out." she giggled.

Gabe grinned as he rolled up his sleeves, beckoning the bartender for another round. "You should have made it your plan A, seeing how you turned out," he teased, bringing up the fun bit they did to retrieve a copy of Lydia Rothswell's marriage certificate. The very same act that almost made Gabe kiss Alex in the middle of The Strip.

"Aww, Gabe, finally found a better lawyer than you? Feeling threatened yet?" Alex leaned in, snickering as their glasses were refilled. "Don't worry, I' ll settle for being a Junior Partner for now," she said as she reclined, before throwing in a playful wink.

"Well someone's head just became bigger," he gave her a smug look.

"Just trying to keep up with all the cockiness in the room," she smiled coyly, watching Gabe's stupefied expression. It was clear then that she scored a slam dunk at the championship of comebacks, laughing at his astonishment.

Gabe finally gave up, joining Alex in her laughter. As their joy receded, he let himself take in the sight of Alex without any inhibitions. What he was beginning to see was the extent of her wit, her ability to keep her cool, and the sharp humor that matched only his.

Under the warm light of the lounge, she brilliantly shone. He couldn't focus at what she was now saying as he danced at the appeal of them becoming more than colleagues. Perhaps he resisted his own feelings long enough that he was past the point of denial. Or simply because he was starting to get drunk.

Though before he can even begin to consider that, he was still sober enough to know that he first needed to tell her the truth.

The truth that sometime long ago, their paths have already crossed. And that he did something very horrible.

Call him cynical, but he wasn't kidding when he admitted he was an all-or-nothing kind of guy. And that meant laying down all his cards on the table. Because for him, Alex was more than the occasional one-night stand. And he can't be certain of how long he could keep himself from his budding feelings, all stakes be damned.

What better time to be honest when there was enough alcohol in his system to prevent all rational thinking? It's now or never, he figured.

"Alex, I -"

"Alessandra? Alessandra Keating?" a deep voice came from behind him, interrupting Gabe. He cocked his head to get a clearer view, as a man with slicked back blonde hair approached from a private booth nearby.

Without hesitation, the tall stranger in the dark suit stepped forward, his striking features Gabe would have easily recognized anywhere. That face was almost in every blockbuster movie in the last five years.

"Julian? What are you doing here?" Alex asked, as abashed as he was. Gabe saw how she clammed up the very second she recognized the man.

"Oh my, it really is you!" the man stopped beside Alex's bar stool, welcoming himself to their company. The way he was looking up and down at her made Gabe's jaw clench so hard, his teeth gritted. But the man's next movement stunned him all the more. In front of him, the man embraced Alex, making Gabe suddenly want to combust. His tumbler could've shattered if he tightened his grip on it a little more.

"Uhm, Julian, hi," Gabe surveyed Alex as she writhed within the man's arms, waiting for any signal from her so he could do something, anything, to make this man go away. But she assured him with one look, shifting a little, making the man who wedged himself between them release her.

"It's been so long! When was the last time I saw you, like, 12, 13 years ago?" the man exclaimed, his annoying smile making Gabe want to slam his fist somewhere. And it wasn't on the bar counter.

Gabe heard Alex scoff, fighting hard to regain her composure. "Yeah, high school," Her icy demeanor took over, one that Gabe only saw in the courtroom. She brushed her dress as she tilted her head to Gabe's direction.

The man turned to Gabe, the surprise evident as he acknowledged Gabe's presence behind him. The two men sized each other up sending an undercurrent of tension between them. Before Gabe could even consider acting out of impulse, Alex cleared her throat to diffuse his temper.

"Julian, this is Gabe. Gabe, this is Julian, my -"

"Ex," Julian interjected, before turning his attention to the lawyer. Apparently, this guy had a habit, Gabe observed. "We were together senior year. Alessandra, my angel, we had the best time together, didn't we? We looked good together, at least after Alex thought to improve her image here. Sadly, we had to break up. Teenage romances, you know?"

The picture couldn't be any clearer; this was the person Alex was speaking about during their dinner back in New York. And hearing the way he talked, no wonder Julian got under her skin. He was a damned manipulative pretentious liar. Gabe could hear the dishonesty between the words, not an ounce of authenticity in sight while the blonde hotshot rambled on.

Alex wasn't showing any sympathy either, her brown eyes staring daggers at him, as he went on about his monologue, emphasizing on how she was his back then. She was clearly infuriated by his attempt to own her, as well as his lack of shame. As Gabe quietly considered her reaction, he deliberated on a strategy to put her out her misery. The moment an idea came to mind, he gave Alex a subtle look asking her to back his play.

Alex nodded, sitting a little straighter. Finding the instant shift in her, Gabe made his move.

"Sweetheart," he slowly raised his voice as he said the endearment, enjoying the contempt from the other guy when he was interrupted. "You never told me Julian Wintour was your ex."

Alex smiled smugly, appearing pleased with the nickname Gabe chose, a clear pun on the whole high school sweetheart trope. "Never crossed my mind, babe. It's such an unimportant detail in my past," she waved her hand dismissively.

"Ah, nonsense," he finished his drink and gestured for the bartender to clean up. "Mr. Wintour's history would have made a good conversation starter." Gabe straightened his vest and stood, collecting his coat. He sauntered towards Alex, circling around the now speechless Julian. He draped his jacket over her shoulders, clearly making a statement before he reached for her hand, wrapping it in his.

"Why? Isn't the shiny nameplate of Senior Partner not good enough?" Alex expertly rode along, locking eyes with her former flame before gazing back at Gabe enticingly. "Forgive him, Julian. My lovely boyfriend here has a bad hobby of underselling himself," she smiled warmly, the irony of her statement eluding her ex. Gabe was about to smirk with her ingenuity, stopping when he felt her arm slowly wrapping around his waist. He barely stifled a groan at the intimacy of her touch.

The other man went beet red at the gesture. For embarrassment or infuriation or both, Gabe didn't fucking care. All he cared about was for Alex to slap this douche's face, metaphorically speaking.

"Anyway, Julian, it's been a pleasure. It's been a long night, and we're about ready to retire at our penthouse suite," steadily, she got up from her seat. The command in her was undeniable, forcing anyone to feel nothing but regret the day they decided Alessandra Keating wasn't good enough for them. Then with a flourish, she turned around as she let Gabe take her away from her past lover's scrutinizing gaze.

Inside the elevator, Gabe caught Alex's exhale of relief, probably thankful that Julian was out of her sight. Gabe still held onto her hand, though Alex didn't seem to notice. As they began their ascent, he waited for her to break the silence, deciding that the questions running in his mind can wait.

"I would have traded my rankings for the look of disbelief in Julian's face," Alex said turning to him, to which Gabe arched his brow.

He smirked devilishly, knowing Alex could take the hint. "I believe I could offer a sight better than that."

She grinned at the innuendo, further lightening up the mood between them. "One day, Gabe, I'll take you up on that," she said, crossing her legs as she leaned on the polished wall behind her. "Though I'm sure you're dying to know... How did I end up dating the Julian Wintour?"

Gabe pondered before answering. "Hmm, actually not the first one that comes to mind, no." He tapped against his temple. "I doubted you would ever bat an eyelash to his direction."

Her eyebrows rose. "Ah, you think so highly of me." She chuckled, shaking her head at his reply. "But yes, he was my ex. And yes, he was the red on my ledger. He was my first love," she admitted. "That ideal, once in a lifetime, true love everyone's talking about? Julian was it, or at least I thought he was." she sighed, glancing at her reflection on the polished metal panel beside her. "But when things started to go downhill for me, he was the first one to walk out," she paused, taking a deep breath. "By cheating on me."

Gabe's body went rigid, clenching his fists so hard until his nails dug unto his palms. What the fucking hell? I know I should have punched that guy's perfect teeth! He decided against airing his vengeful thoughts, staying quiet as he glimpsed at her image on the walls.

"Joey reminded me how Julian made me doubt myself. If I'm really over what he's done to me, if he's still in my head," she continued, rubbing at her nape. Gabe felt her gaze fall on him, which he reciprocated. "But after walking out from him tonight, I am much more certain that I made it out, after all."

Gabe felt her squeeze his hand as she said those words, and his heart somersaulted inside his chest. "So thanks. I needed that little nudge," she said in finality.

He turned to beam at her as he relished the triumph in her words, hoping that it was enough to convey that he was proud of her. And to be part of that discovery about herself, about who she always was in his eyes - someone who was his equal.

When they arrived at her floor, she gently freed her hand from his grasp invoking a sharp exhale from him. She stepped out of the elevator, her gait as undeterred as ever. But then she turned, her soft expression dimmed by the lack of light. "And while we're on the subject of appreciation," she uttered, before dropping one last revelation.

"Thanks for that save you also gave me ten years ago," Alex glanced up at him with half-lidded eyes, her words laced with meaning.

It took him a few moments before he could even comprehend what she was trying to convey. He searched her eyes for some explanation but found none. "What do you mean, Alex?" he said, managing to find his voice.

"I know exactly who you are, Gabriel Ricci."

With that, the doors slowly closed in front of him, her sly smile fading from his sight until he can only see his own reflection. He examined her last sentence, repeating the words over and over in his head. There was only one plausible explanation: she only knew half of the truth. His body sagged against the wall as he shut his eyes, angry at himself.

No Alex, I think you really don't.

Author's Notes: Thank you for your continued reading! As some of you may have already noticed, this part was written purely in Gabe's POV because I wanted to expose his conflicted feelings for Alex. It's probably my own version of revenge, with PB stretching that slow burn as much as they could 🤭 Share your thoughts in the comments, I'd really appreciate it! 💖

Taglist: @adiehardfan @pixelnutrookie @starryjieun @fucking-random1 @sarcastic01lily @spookycolorpeanut @ophrookie @suitfer

@choicesficwriterscreations

It's my first time tagging a couple of folks, so please inform me if I missed including you. Also, want to be added or removed from the tag list? No problem - just let me know 😊.

[morihaus]

Domina

cw for a vampire talking about mortals like cattle and mentions of molag bal (just his name)

---

Atop a balcony of the Imperial Palace, the young emperor casts her gaze westward, over the canopy of the great forest, off to the dark horizon laid over the Colovian highlands. Past the borders of Cyrodiil, there lays the outlying province of the Empire, Craglorn, home to the distant Nedes never chained. Cities of stone and high towers, traditions older than the Empire of Man, faith older than Saint Alessia herself; Hestra was born to these lands, to the Cyrodiils who came from Colovia to lend aid to their kin, to enlighten them, to fasten and secure their ties to the Empire, and to keep wary watch of the expanding dominion of Verkarth, whose king had spent a century splitting the land in two, harrowing the Nedic allies of the Empire, unopposed in the distant and foreign borderland.

It was this that brought her to power. She became warrior to the faith as many in her family had been before her, as was the Colovian style of the priesthood, and she worked to stymie the tide of this burgeoning power henceforth unknown- as well as the dark creatures who cavorted within its borders, fanning out to the neighboring realms to terrorize the populace. Vampires, werebeasts, monsters of all sorts became the scourge of Craglorn in those days, and the Empire of Cyrodiil did nothing, for what was their concern for the fate of provincials? Nedes who knew nothing of Paravant, or Pelinal, or the One, whose degenerate practices ostracized them from polite Imperial society.

Hestra was one of many in Craglorn and Cyrodiil who saw need for action, but alas, small militias could do nothing but root out loose ends, small cells of the fiends who dogged the western reaches. A coven here, a pack there, but this was to treat the symptoms rather than the sickness, and without organized action against Styriche and his Gray Host itself, nothing would be done.

And for all the dire circumstances, this is why she stands here, amulet of dragon-fire around her neck, looking west with purpose. She has been emperor for but two years, and the Empire is more united than it has been in some time. She is what Cyrodiil needs, a decisive emperor, to cut through the internal bickering of the Order; a conquering emperor, to show no quarter to the enemies of mankind; a common emperor, who understands the plight of her subjects and refuses to rest until justice is done.

With the Empire whole, it prepares for a full-scale invasion of Verkarth, to sunder and destroy the foul abominations commanded by its king.

Something approaches silently from behind her. She is without guard, but not alone, for tonight she is entertaining a particular guest.

"Second thoughts, Emperor?" The pale woman clad in deep red silks asks her with a playful tone. Playful as a cat toys with a mouse, but decidedly playful nonetheless.

Hestra turns to face her, Exarch of the Gray Council, undying vampire, a mistress of the dark forces she plans to destroy. She faces her and sees her ever-so-smug grin, her round face, pale like the moon with dark shadows and painted colors framing her scarlet-orange eyes. She sees her jewelry reflect the light of the night sky, a shimmer along the chain of her belt as her eyes trace her waist, a shine around the swirling ringlets of her arm, up to the clasp of her dress on her shoulder, even a sparkle from the jewel earrings when her long black hair fell just so to make way for the light. "I consider my actions more often than you think. This is why I'm here, Vem."

Vem moves forward to press up against the other woman, lifting a manicured hand to trace her jawline. She is without reverence for the Emperor, but not without admiration, and often she shows her appreciation with touch. "This is why I see such potential in you, fair Hestra." The mortal woman doesn't flinch- but might shiver- at the vampire's chilling touch, and allows it to happen. This close she can see the subtle scaly texture speckling Vem's skin, around her eyes and her bare neck and arms, her eyes fix to this instead of Vem's hypnotic gaze- she wouldn't dare attempt to bewitch the warrior emperor, but she does much without noticing it. "We have more in common than you do with your councilors. They fill their heads with petty concerns, worthless mortal vanity- you and I, we focus on what's truly important: power."

Hestra, for as steely as her countenance is, lets her head droop to one side, warm cheek pressed against Vem's cold hand. She raises one of her own to Vem's waist, closing her eyes. "I have power, Vem. I'm the Emperor, blessed by Akatosh, anointed before the One." She doesn't need sight to picture the frown grow on Vem's face as she speaks.

She hears a sigh, and the cold hand moves down from cradling her head, sliding across her bare neck and stopping at her shoulder. Hestra opens her eyes again to see the predictable sight. She'd call the expression on Vem's face perplexed, as she is always baffled by her refusal. "Have I not explained to you the difference in magnitude hundreds of time?" She scoffs. "You are a Queen, a mortal Queen, you command great armies and rule over all of your citizenry. But I could make you more. As vampire, you would never age, never die, you would be indomitable."

"Indomitable," Hestra repeats. "But dominated by the foul machinations of your master."

Vem furrows her brow, twitching her nose. "Lord Bal is our master in name alone. He holds no true sway over us- we only need make one pact, but one ritual, and we may reap the rewards of his gift as we serve ourselves. You cannot tell me you would not desire such a power."

"Power at a price." Hestra lets her hand fall back, and now furrows her own brow as she looks back at Vem, somewhat yearning for the years she hadn't known of her true nature, or for a time where they could spend time ignoring the doom that surrounds them, before this decision had to be reached. "I do not want to join your Gray Host."

"You would not have to." Vem retracts her hand as well, folding her arms over her chest. "As immortal Emperor of Cyrodiil, you would be of much greater use as an ally to the Gray Host, to relinquish your power over this land would be foolish."

"Imagine I disagree with what your Host does, terrorizing innocent people, drinking of their blood and eating of their flesh."

Vem tisks, she almost seems to roll her luminous eyes at that. "This is because you are clinging to mortal notions of morality. You do not weep for the butchered cow, do you? For us, it is no different than hunting simple animals."

"And if I care for these animals?" Hestra asks.

She receives a raised brow. "Do you really care for these people, Emperor? These people who are not yours, who you do not know- how much would you sacrifice for their lives?" After a pointed silence, she adds: "If you could trade your life for theirs, right now, would you?"

Hestra answers honestly. "No."

"If," Vem begins. "The inverse were true, and you could sacrifice the lives of many to achieve greater power, greater dominion, wouldn't you?"

Hestra considers. "...I might." She gazes off to the side, looking behind Vem into the palace's quarters. "But what you speak of, this is the truth of politics, of warfare, of the life of an Emperor. These ugly decisions are mine to make, and I must."

"This is what holds you back," Vem turns and begins to pace, steps silent as she does. "You deny what you truly want: power. You claim it out of responsibility, you make these excuses for yourself..." She looks over her shoulder, Hestra meets her piercing eyes. "Why do you let yourself be ruled by such foolish thoughts?" She approaches again, so gently as though gliding through the air. A fanged smile plays on her lips. "You are Emperor. I am offering you power, it is in your very nature to accept it. Do not deny your true calling."

Hestra looks to her vacantly. She wonders how often she has been tempted, how close she's come before now. "You talk of offering me power- power of my own- and yet you speak as though to dominate me yourself."

At this, Vem laughs. It breaks the tension somewhat, and she takes Hestra's hand in her own, rubbing circles on the back with her cold thumb. She looks at her with half-lidded eyes. "You would not like to belong to me, dear Hestra?"

And at this, Hestra is pulled two ways, and such a grave conversation becomes very silly, and for the first time tonight, the Emperor smiles. "You speak in circles, love, like a turning wheel." She leans in and very easily presses her lips against Vem's; a shallow kiss, undercoated with some feeling of fleeting passion and intimacy, something that feels like a last chance, a final moment in which they can both pretend they share the same future. Vem puts her arms around Hestra's head, the mortal reciprocates with a hold on her waist. Hestra pulls back to breathe and laugh. "Sometimes, I still can't tell- do you want me a vampire, or a thrall-" Vem interrupts her by kissing her cheek, laughing along.

They embrace and they laugh for awhile, standing on the balcony, nipped at by the chilly night air. Eventually they stop laughing and just hold each other. Vem tucks her head into the crook of Hestra's neck, and Hestra lets her, and runs a hand through her silky dark hair.

"...You know," Vem softly breaks the silence. "That of course I want you to join me as I am- a vampire, the rightful rulers of the unliving. Because you are a ruler, Hestra, and this drew me to you, for I recognized how great you could be if you could only see what lies beyond your mortality..." One of her pale hands turns to run across the close-cut hair on Hestra's head, and Vem turns to look her in the eye, one side of her head still pressed against her shoulder. Her expression is warm, and not regal. "I do not doubt how far you will go as a mortal. You will be remembered for centuries, for a hundred centuries, your death will be something glorious, remembered in song, you will be indelible... but you will die. And it breaks my heart-" A laugh- or maybe a sob- spills out between words. "I know you could never understand, you are mortal, impermanence is everywhere in your life, to be everlasting is... difficult, to communicate. It's something you need to feel for yourself. I ask... that you allow me to grant you this, Hestra. Please."

She'd never seen Vem posture in such a way. They have been intimate with one another, they've spoken of sadness before, but never has she been so melancholy, so sorrowful as to look up to her with those eyes, dry but full of sadness. "...My love, you know I can't-"

"Why?" Vem asks immediately.

"Because- Because I am Emperor first, divine regent of the One, descendant of the Ascended Saint Alessia, defender of Cyrodiil and the Faith. I am dutybound to destroy the Gray Host... and I cannot accept your power, it would render me an abomination in the eyes of the Order, and all I've worked for would be for naught."

Vem pulls back, Hestra lets open her arms to give her space. She looks at Hestra, fear in her face, steeled by frustration. "They would not have to know. There are ways- many of us disguise our true nature, some get away with it for a century or more. You yourself had no idea before I revealed to you my nature."

"You're right. I didn't," Hestra admits. "But this is because I was young and stupid. The pelates of the Order are older, wiser, many of them savvy to the affronts to the divine. And in any case, I would still need to invade Verkarth."

"No, no you don't. We could- if you'd postpone, delay, we could destroy this Alessian Order-"

"Destroy the Order?" Hestra's brows fly up at this, almost more shocked than insulted.

Vem clenches her fists at her sides. "They are just mortals, Hestra. Mortals can be manipulated, they can be herded and culled by their true masters. If all of the threats to your power were turned, were on our side, would you still deny this?"

"You're speaking in fantasies." The Emperor says, colder than she meant to. She is just as frustrated, not only by Vem's assertions, but by how her mind meanders and considers them.

"Answer me, Hestra!"

"I could not- I could not disgrace my line, my ancestors-"

"Your ancestors were nothing more than cattle!" Vem shouts.

"Your family is nothing but a pack of monsters!" Hestra replies.

Vem, incensed, points a sharp finger at Hestra as she bares her fangs. "We are NOT monsters!" She growls, throwing a hand up. "'Monsters', 'daimons', 'abominations', these are all the labels feeble-minded sheep apply to us, the true masters of Tamriel! And here you are- so different from them, so close to us, and you refuse your rightful place on our Council, your rightful taste of our blood, all because of these vapid mortal commitments to the lives and deeds of mortals, the ways of people who lived and died as nothing more than stupid animals- you let them limit you, hold you back, drag you down to their level!" Snarling, there is a quivering to her frame and face that belies her nerves. "You do not deserve to be another pile of bones in a pasture! You deserve to be Domina, High Emperor of All Tamriel, Immortal Ruler of the weak and impermanent!!"

Hestra stands stock still, shadows cast on her creased face. "I cannot do this. I will not take knee before your king."

"You would not have to! Do you know how few of us respect King Styriche? How fewer revere Lord Bal? To depose him, to usurp him, it would not be difficult, you would only have to delay your invasion!" Vem's composure is all but faded as she pleads for what she wants, the safety of her family, an immortal paramour, and all that she wills be made real, as in true domination of the world. The fact that she screams this hoarsely and with such desperation- the desperation of someone not in control- is not lost on her.

The Emperor hangs her head, heavy with troubles. She grits her teeth as she speaks with attempted finality. "I cannot, Vem, and I'm sorry that I cannot." Her own eyes, still living, well up as she speaks. "It does not mean I don't love you- I do, I give you my word and I mean it: I do, and if I were anyone different... you need to know how much I want to be forever beside you, I truly want this, but..."

Vem suddenly darts forward, pressing herself against her, looking up at her with pleading eyes. "If you want it, you can have it. Let me turn you, forget the Empire, let it fall under someone else's rule- we could make of it that you died in battle, that you were- you were betrayed somehow, sow dissent in the Empire, let it rot and fall. Leave my family alone, let us go together into a new life." Her plan is flimsy, her voice is quickened and shaking, but she bears her soul to Hestra like never before. "Take what you want, Hestra."

She bows her head. Hestra leans down to press her forehead against hers. She wants to take her into her arms, as they used to, like lovers would, but she doesn't.

[peach-the-owl]

Exu crew and an artificer kid? The crew enters the kids home town and they don't seem that happy about it but doesn't say anything, everyone goes different ways to shop/explore/etc and while everyone goes their own ways the kids old bullies pull them into an alleyway and just bully them breaking anything kid made/name calling/pulling hair just being unbelievable mean. The bullies all freeze, then kid looks over their shoulders and sees the whole group behind them looking intimidating, the bullies run away while the other ask what's going on and try to comfort their child.

Wow this was longer then I expected SORRY!! I hope you have a wonderful day ❤️

There’s no need to be sorry for an idea 😁 I hope this turned out good

(Second piece to deal with a bullying theme, dang)

Fine Craftsmanship

ExU Crew & Child!Artificer!Reader

The trip to Byroden was a longer one then you first thought, having to make a few pit stops to rest and restock on food, but it did have its perks, giving you time to work on some projects while on the road. They weren’t anything huge, you wanted to surprise everyone in the group with a personally crafted item, everything was fine at first until you recognized the town you were currently approaching.

"Are you alright (y/n)? You seem a bit jumpy." Dorian comments, having noticed your fidgeting hands. You take a quick second to calm yourself before replying.

"I’m fine, this is actually my hometown. I haven’t seen it in awhile, you know." He gives you a small nod and gets himself a better look out the window.

"If you’re from here that means you know where all the good stops are right?" Dariax asks excitedly.

"I’m still a kid, I wouldn’t know what’s 'good' in your opinion." You stare blankly, it was a bit strange sometimes to be one of the smartest people in the group.

"Right, right. No drinking for you." Dariax says, as if he already knew all this. You playfully roll your eyes at him and smile a little, maybe this wouldn’t so bad after all, so long as you stayed close to everyone. You enter the town and find a good place to park the Glitter-Shitter (I can’t even write the word with a straight face) before making your way into the marketplace and instantly Opal is off browsing the different shops and stalls of the market, dragging Fearne along with her and Fy'ra Rai trailing behind them, telling everyone to meetup in an hour. Dorian heads over to the tavern hoping to sweet talk the folk there for some food for the road, Dariax tagging along most likely to grab some drinks and test his luck with some gambling. Orym had disappeared from your sight entirely, heading off to do his own thing if you had to take a guess. You sigh unsure of where to go, now just hoping things go by quickly and without trouble as you sit by the wagon pull out some tools and continue to tinker away at a small gift you were making for Fearne for a while, placing your mind into a false sense of security.

"Well, well, well. Look who decided to come home." You hear a chillingly familiar voice spite at you and look over at the three people you were hoping not to see. There was Marty, Hamna, and their self proclaimed leader Fion (I just made up some names here, idk), they used to terrorize you relentlessly until you’d finally had enough and snuck on that cart to Emon, which lead to the adventure you were on now, a story come full circle in the worst way to you. You get up quickly hoping to dash over to where Opal and Fearne where looking at some sparkling necklaces for protection, you don’t move quick enough as you’re yanked back by your hair by either Marty or Hamna as Fion covers your mouth to avoid you shouting for help. Once pulled into a nearby alleyway, away from public view, Marty and Hamna each restrain one of your arms. You thrash and struggle to try and free yourself, managing to loosen their grip slightly only to get socked in the jaw by Fion giving the other two the chance to readjust their grip into a more secure position, trapping you.

"Let go! Leave me alone!" You shout as you continue to squirm to try and free yourself.

"Awww, and what are you going to do if we don’t?" Marty teases. You wanted to cast something to no avail with their tight grip preventing you of freeing yourself and grabbing your tools.

"Look at them," Hamna laughs, "they’re too weak to even break free." You glare at them. Fion walks over to you and starts rummaging around your bag, mindlessly throwing around the various items you’ve worked on for a long time to make.

"What’s this supposed to be?" They ask, holding up a hair clip you had intended to give to Opal.

"That’s for my friend! Put it back!" You shout a little too loud for their liking and the two holding your arms use their free hands to cover your mouth, muffling your words or cry’s for help. The one holding the hair clip looks it over in their hand before looking you in the eyes and snapping the item in half.

"Oops, sorry. My hand slipped." Their voice dripped with sarcasm. They continue to rummage through your bag, or look through the small pile of items they threw out of it, pulling out items you wanted to give to everyone as gifts. Every time they’d inspect one item, they'd just as quickly break it, smashing it on the ground or snapping it in their hands. You struggled and tugged against the two still holding you back and muffling out your voice, but it was no use, you were restrained, unable to call for help and left to helplessly watch as they destroyed your hard work. As if things couldn’t get worse, they pull out your tools, the literal lifeblood for your magic, look you straight in your eyes and while struggling a bit manage to break them too.

"Awww, they’re crying like a baby." Hamna laughs.

"That’s because they are a baby." Marty continues.

"If you really want to cry like a baby, we’ll give a reason to cry." Fion eggs on, getting the other two to harshly shove you to the ground. You curl into a ball preparing for the worst, you wait a moment and when nothing happens you peek up to see the three of them frozen in place with fear in their eyes. You adjust yourself to have a look over your shoulder and see everyone standing with intimidating looks on their faces.

Dorian stared daggers at the bullies, while also subtly fiddling with his handaxe. Opal twirled her knives in her hands, magic sparking at her fingertips, and if you looked closely enough you could see a faint glow emit from her necklace. Fearne stood tall, her snake staff coming to life and hissing at the three, Mister well perched on her shoulder screeches, purposely showing the fiery interior of his mouth. Orym takes a step in front of you, acting as a shield for you while placing his hand on the hilt of his sword, you knew well enough he wouldn’t actually draw his sword on the other kids, but they didn’t know that. Dariax on the other hand looked very ready to strike at the three, holding a tight grip on his spear.

"Are you hurt bad?" Orym asks quietly, looking over to you. You shake your head giving an equally quiet "no".

"I’m not a fan of people hurting my little friend here." You hear Dariax say, now fulling pointing his spear at the others, the three each take step back. You finch at the feeling of being suddenly lifted off the ground, finding yourself in Dorian's arms, he gives you a concerned but reassuring smile.

"Let’s get out of here!" Fion commands and the three turn to leave but are stopped when Fy'ra Rai blocks their exit, her eyes burning into them with fury.

"You’re unjust actions should not be left unpunished. You dare to put down this child as if they are weak, when it is you three that are the weaklings. Knowing you would never stand a chance alone you group together and single out the ones you see as vulnerable. It is sad and pathetic, now leave while we still show you mercy." Her voice held such a powerful tone to it, it almost felt like the ground itself shook at her words. Fion, Marty and Hamna scramble over each other before running off, one of them crying for their mommy.

"Who where those children? Do you know?" Dorian asks. You let out a long sigh and explain to everyone a bit about your life when you still lived in the town.

"What’s all this stuff here?" Opal speaks up, staring at the broken pile of items.

"I wanted to surprise you all with some gifts I made, but now their all broken." You sigh sadly.

"You made theses for us?"

"I tried to, I know they aren’t that good but you’ve all been so nice and carding to me, I wanted to retune the favour."

"That’s really sweet of you." Fearne smiles, giving you a pat on the head, you smile a little at this.

"Why don’t you just fix them? I’ve seen ya do stuff like that before." Dariax butts in.

"I would, but they broke my tools too." You pout.

"Well that’s easy, we'll just buy you some new tools." Dorian states, shuffling you in his grip a bit to have a better hold on you. You look up at him with big hopeful eyes.

"Really? I don’t want to bother you."

"It’s no bother at all, your our little genius, the last thing we’d want are some small town jerks preventing you from ever thinking that." He proudly proclaims, getting affirmation from the others. Fy'ra Rai walks over and gently lifts your chin up to look at her.

"Listen to me little one, you are much stronger then you'd ever believe, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise." You give her a small nod, not entirely sure what she means but finding her words encouraging nonetheless.

"You know what? I do remember seeing these really awesome looking tools, while searching for a cloths shop. Here I’ll show you." Opal brightens up a bit, grabbing and dragging Dorian and by extension you off into the market again.

"Opal!" Dorian calls in surprise, holding tighter to you so you wouldn’t fall. You just giggle at the two, looking over your shoulder to see the others hurrying to catch up.

[mimiplaysgames]

save it for the morning after (3/3)

Pairing: Terra/Aqua Rating: E (Explicit) for Smut Word Count: 7,850

Summary: Aqua learns the value of being vulnerable.Terra learns to trust his body to another. Everyone gets a happy ending. ;)

Read on AO3

A/N: AAAAHHHH Happy Terraqua Day!!!! I can’t believe I finally finished this one, it always felt like it would never happen. I’m actually quite nervous - I don’t take the same kind of path of other smut and being so deviant honestly freaks me out so much. I really do pull this story into extreme directions for smut, that I wonder if I can call it smut at all. But let’s see. Hope you like. <3

~*~*~*~*~

“Aqua.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you…”

“Go ahead.”

“....”

“Are you okay?”

“The... um, your scars...”

“They’re not yours.”

“Aqua—”

“They aren’t.”

“Please.”

“...They’re not yours.”

~*~*~*~*~

Well, damn.

Ven hones in on Terra—a ballsy move considering it’s a super-bad idea to get this close to a large opponent—but Ven skids, spinning on his knees and tripping Terra like a pet running through its owner’s legs. Ven serves an uppercut with his short Keyblade. It almost jabs Terra on the ribs if not for his lurch backward, and he lands squarely on his ass against the desk behind him. 

A pot of ink rattles and tips, spilling all over his pants and spreading up the spine of his shirt. 

Ven snorts. “You look like you shit yourself.”

Terra wipes his backside, picking up excess ink in layers. It’s slick, skating through his fingers with the weight of iron and dripping onto the floor. More of it runs between his legs, finding a way in between cracks and folds of skin, moistening up his boxers. Damn it. He slathers his hand through Ven’s hair with so much force (Hey!) that Ven waddles to stay in balance. 

“And you look like you’ve been picking through trash.”

Ink clumps chunks of blond hair together, drooling down Ven’s ears and staining his collar. It makes him look oily for lack of a better term, like someone who hasn’t taken a shower in weeks. When he touches his scalp out of reflex he flinches, wiping his coated fingers on his own shirt… before realizing what he’s doing. He groans. 

“It suits you,” Terra says. 

“I dunno.” Ven wipes the rest of it on Terra’s shirt. “Looks better on you.” Might as well. The shirt is honestly ruined. 

One corner of the offending desk is covered in globs of shiny black. Terra corrects the ink bottle and surveys the damage. The tile floor will be easy to clean, but the wood is inhaling the color. 

“Aqua’s going to kill us,” Ven mutters. “She spent a lot of time in this room.”

Weeks of time choosing which books to display on the shelves. Days researching the right chalkboard to purchase. Journeys spent gathering minerals for students to practice with: ash from a far away volcano, water from the forest river nearby, unearthed dirt from the garden, and feathers from nests settled at the peak of the tallest mountain. Aqua has a vision of this room playing the dual role of serving lectures and encouraging hands-on experimentation in a safe environment. She wants it to be respectable and impressive before the semester starts. They’re not allowed to traverse the room with shoes on, and Terra and Ven were respectable about that before one of them (Ven) started to get cocky about his fighting abilities. 

Yeah, they fucked up. “Think of it this way. We proved it’s not practical for physical training,” Terra says. 

“You’re the one who’s going to tell her that.” Ven scoffs, splaying a wet towel on the floor.

Terra pulls his suspenders over his head and lets them hang from his waistband. Pinching his stained muscle shirt off and bundling it up, he uses it as a rag to absorb the puddle on the table. What’s sinking into his socks is now warm. He ignores it.

“Do you think I could pull this off?” Ven asks as a by-the-way, twiddling a shy hand at the back of his greasy head.

“Black hair?”

“No, you’re right. It’s creepy.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Pfft, you also ‘didn’t’”—Ven bookends the word with finger quotations—“spar fairly.”

Terra considers throwing his damp shirt at Ven’s face. “I’m not at my prime yet.”

“That’s not it.” Ven flips the towel and swipes the remaining streaks with the cleaner side. “You’re holding back. You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

“I’m not holding back.” He is. Just the image of raising his Keyblade against either of his friends is enough to make him nauseous, but he swallows it to be a good sport. 

Giving it his all is something else entirely, a deeper, invasive illness. 

“I know you can hit harder than that.” Ven dunks the towel in a pail of water, clouding it. 

“I just have a lot in my mind and it’s hard to... relax, I guess.”

There’s a moment of pregnant quiet before Ven says pointedly, “I thought Aqua was helping you out with that.”

A moist squish slaps Ven on the nose.

“Now you’re being sensitive,” Ven says, pulling Terra’s shirt off his shoulder.

“You missed a spot,” says Terra, using his thumb to smear the stain across Ven’s cheek. For shits and giggles he continues upward, rubbing raccoon circles on Ven’s eyelids. “You really pull this off.”

“Do you annoy her this much?”

“She enjoys it.”

“Ugggh.” Ven throws Terra’s hands off of him, his chin tucked in so much that two layers of neck skin fold over. “Gross.”

Terra pauses. Gross wasn’t what he expected out of Ven’s mouth. 

In fact, Terra hasn’t been sure of how Ven took the news the first time. 

Oh, Ven had said when they told him Aqua was moving into Terra’s room. Okay. Cool. He shrugged as if he could have heard more exciting news, and left to take a short walk in the woods with Chirithy. The three of them never spoke about it again. Ven wouldn’t mention a word when he saw them dragging her dresser and vanity table, and seldom joined them if he heard them laughing together with the door closed. 

Things are changing in minute strokes, in seconds that cluster for as long as Terra can recognize them, until they dissipate and become something not quite foreign but never quite familiar anymore, as though where he comes from is far from home and who he thinks he knows are almost-strangers.

“Have we ever made you uncomfortable?” Terra asks. 

“What, no!” Ven waves his hand, feigning shock, staring at his shoes and everywhere else but Terra. “I mean, Aqua’s been Aqua since we got back, and you’re just weird sometimes, but—”

“Then why do you...” Terra sighs, choosing his words. “Avoid us when we’re together?”

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

An almost-lie. “I hope you don’t think we don’t want you around.”

“Noooo. Neither of you make me feel that way.”

“But you do.”

Ven lifts his shoulders higher than his ears and drops them with the same weight as throwing books on the floor. “It’s just… nothing’s the same.”

Nothing is, what with the quiet mornings since the Master is no longer here to prepare breakfast before the sun rises, or huff at anyone when they disturb his meditation. Now they’re preparing the castle for the largest student body of Keyblade wielders it’s seen in years, something Terra thought would be a good distraction for everyone. 

But Ven’s right. Home doesn’t feel like home when the floors are re-tiled, and specific rooms are repainted, and the Master’s favorite lounge chair sits empty in the same spot in the library by the fireplace. Maybe for Ven, home is the turn right to knock on Terra’s door and the turn left to knock on Aqua’s. 

“It’s weird.” Ven grimaces. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m used to talking to you about things you promised to keep from Aqua—”

“I still wouldn’t tell her anything!”

“—and I’m used to it being the three of us.”

Terra pauses. “We’re still the three of us. We’re still best friends.”

“That’s not how it works, and you know it,” Ven says, smiling warmly. “You are one half of two. You share a language I can’t butt into.” 

Terra kneels onto one knee, brushing oily hair out of Ven’s face. Aqua would have liked this look on him: less spiky. “Ven, you’re always going to be a part of our lives.”

“Stop worrying. What you have is not a bad thing. I think it’s kind of awesome. I wish you’d give it your all in a fight. I wanna see what you and her are capable of together, because it’d be huge.”

“I’m only trying to say that we don’t want you to feel like a third wheel. You’re more than welcome to knock on our door anytime—”

“Ah. No. No thanks.” He shoos Terra away. 

“Why?”

“I don’t wanna see anything.” Ven squints.

Terra snorts. “You’re not going to see—”

“I don’t wanna hear about it either.”

“But—”

“Nope.” Ven covers his ears with his palms. “Nothing. No inside jokes. No pet names. Yuck. Keep that to yourself.”

Terra presses his lips together to zip up the snickering. “Okay, I won’t say anything.”

“Good. I don’t want any images in my head.” He wipes his hands like he’s done a good job explaining himself. “I should’ve expected it anyhow.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” Ven says slowly. “I mean, the Master kinda knew.”

“He said something to you?” Terra asks with a shaky voice. He’s flipping through memories, when he and Aqua were very careful and very private, when they didn't touch each other in case there were witnesses near. He was so certain he’d suffer punishment if Eraqus ever found out. Lists of long essays about the dangers of being reckless with emotions every time Aqua made him laugh too much. Grueling physical regiments to knock discipline into his body every time he made bad decisions based on a tug between his legs. 

“I didn’t understand it at the time,” Ven says, leaning back on his hands and tapping his heels on the floor. “We were all hanging out, and you and Aqua left, and then he got sad.

“When I asked him what was wrong, he told me you guys created a very bright Light together. A Light bonded is a Light stronger, he said.” Ven mimics the Master’s lilts in speech, using his finger to emphasize points. “But be aware, Ven. Such a blinding Light casts an equally blinding, deep Shadow. What a dangerous force that is.”

It’s a good imitation. The ache in Terra’s chest twists into his guts and warms him at the same time, like a loving hug that squeezes too hard.

“Honestly it made me think you and Aqua were doing something you weren’t supposed to.”

“Maybe we were.” Terra’s throat constricts, his voice gravelly and his shame nostalgic. “We thought the same sometimes.”

“Which isn’t fair. Why can normal people experience that but it’s such a big deal if Keybearers do it?”

Because when you elevate the person you admire to a standard you can’t match, it makes you do stupid things. Aqua had followed him world after world, expecting it would eventually lead to a fight. Too many Keyblades in a friendship does no one good. 

To-may-to, to-mah-to. They did end up fighting, it just wasn’t his own Keyblade that inevitably hurt her. What a dangerous force that is.

“So the Master did not approve?” Terra asks.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Ven rubs his cheek in thought, forgetting all about the ink. “He said your combined Light looked beautiful and warm. And that you’d have many nights where it would be enough when it gets hard... Honestly, he only wished that you keep your head on your shoulders.”

Wishes asked for are wishes granted, the Master used to say, so long as you work for them. The years Terra had wished for this exact approval had only left him with space to forge false hope. Nothing major, nothing long-winded. Just a simple, impossible wish as they placed the flower wreath on his memorial and bid their goodbyes. 

Finally, that wish is fulfilled. As Ven grants it to him, it’s hard to believe or accept, sitting on the floor of what used to be a ballroom, covered in drying ink. 

“Thanks, Ven.” Tears cascade down his cheeks, pretending to be inconspicuous. He wipes them with his clean forearm but he can’t keep up. There’s one for every moment in the last twelve years when he wanted to apologize to the Master, leaving his eyes burning. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop soon.”

“S’okay.” Ven tucks his ankles under, giving Terra time to process. Ven knows when a topic is too sensitive. But he can also tell when enough time has passed for the raw cuts to seal, when everyone’s ready to laugh. It’s his special gift. Only after Terra slows down does Ven lean forward. “Did you know you make this ugly face when you cry? You’re a train wreck.”

Terra yanks Ven’s head under his arm (Oomph, grunts Ven), locking his elbow around the neck.

Ven beats on Terra’s biceps. “Let go of me.”

Terra summons his pauldron, elbow pad, and gauntlet—for good measure. He licks salt from his lips and smirks, clutching Ven more, sinking him into the pecs. 

Ven coughs. “You smell horrible.”

“Nasty-horrible or heroic-horrible?”

“Do you make Aqua sniff your armpit? Let go of me.”

A poor mistake. Ven tumbles back when he’s let go, but he grabs Terra’s shirt before his head hits the floor. He punches it into Terra’s stomach so quickly that Terra isn’t allowed time to react or block, leaving a sprawled, black bruise over his abs. 

“Put a shirt on,” Ven says when Terra can’t rub it off. “Freak.”

~*~*~*~

Their bedroom door is ajar. Terra hears the shuffling of feet. He quiets his arrival, crumpling his messed-up shirt in a fist, and leans on the door frame to watch her. Aqua pulls a book out of a stack deftly with one hand, the other carrying a cheese pastry. She swallows a final bite, licking her fingers (something she’d never do in front of anybody else but him), and meditates on the chew before sitting at her desk. 

He likes her best like this: half-dressed, without her usual corset and sashes, down to nothing else except her shirt and shorts, simple and free. 

Her longest scar creeps out of her backless shirt. A snake, a reminder of the damage Keyblades are capable of: they never heal and barely fade. This is why wielders shouldn’t raise them against people. 

Gluing her attention to an open book, Aqua reaches over for more cheese pastry, but her hand meets a plate of crumbs. When she realizes, she snaps up, alert as if she’s been robbed, glancing over her shoulder for signs of movement. This is also something she would not appreciate anyone else seeing, how she’s afraid of being alone, how she’s paranoid that she’s actually not.

Terra steps in and taps her shoulder before she could ask him what happened to the pastry. “That looked delicious.” 

She blinks, slowly absorbing his words; she doesn’t feel well today, nothing to be ashamed of. Terra says nothing else. This way, he doesn’t bring more attention to the fact. He won’t touch her so she doesn’t feel coddled (despite how much he wants to). He won’t crack a dumb joke when there’s better moments for them. This way, she keeps her dignity. 

When Aqua sees the smears and handprints on him, her eyes finally find reality. “What happened to you?” She stands up and swipes the stain on his chest. It’s dry but not enough, leaving a mark of gray on her fingers. 

“An accident.” Terra clears his throat, trying to seem unbothered. Just another day in the castle. Everyone gets covered in ink, what’s the big deal?

If she hears the hesitation in his voice (and she should, she knows him too well), she doesn’t care, marching to their bathroom. The sink turns on. 

“What kind of an accident?” she calls. The water flow is disturbed. She’s washing her own hands first. 

“Eh, we spilled some ink,” Terra says, praying to the stars she won’t interrogate further. He tosses his ruined shirt into a wastebasket and opens the first dresser drawer for another. Gone are the days when Terra used to stuff his clothes into a heap; Aqua likes to fold every single article, his on one side and hers on the other. 

“What does that mean?”

“It’s fixable, I promise.” At least he hopes there’s some magic spell in some book somewhere that could lift ink out of cracks of wood.

He goes down one drawer for pants and it’s the same story. 

Down to the middle for socks and underwear, each tightly rolled. Tucked into the back of this one are two newly purchased books, their hardcovers wrapped in plain paper so that anyone peeking in couldn’t read the titles. Edited with illustrations of anatomy, they are lectures of techniques on what to try with your partner. Where to place your hands, how to play with your fingers and tongues, how to listen, when to take it slow and when to take it fast...

“Here,” Aqua says from behind him. She has a wet rag. It’s warm as she gently rubs it into his skin, across the spread of his chest. Her other hand is splayed on his hip. 

Just the thought of those books now, of slipping her out of that shirt, the stains on his stomach be damned—

“Am I going to get mad at you?”

Be damned. Terra smirks in a way to invite her to join along with him. “At both of us. But... You never stay too angry for too long so… Why worry about it?”

She pauses. “What are you rambling about?”

“Nothing.” He glances away. “It happened in the new classroom.”

She digs the rag into the groove above the diaphragm as if contemplating his vivisection. A stream of water drips over his belly button, into the hem of his pants, down the dips of his pelvis, between his inner thighs. Let her get mad. Be damned. 

“How bad is it?” Her voice is hard.

He caresses the small of her back, which is right now tense and stretched as she makes herself seem taller, like she’s about to take him on. “You’re smart. You’ll figure something out.” She opens her mouth to say something and he kisses the bottom lip. “I’ll do the dishes for three months. That’s enough atonement, right?”

Aqua clenches her teeth into a false smile, nails now leaving divots on his skin. “And the cooking.”

“Sounds fair.”

“And the gardening.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

She continues to clean him, this time rubbing harder. It leaves his skin lightly raw. “You’re not in any position to bargain.”

“Do you expect me to beg?” 

“Then beg.”

Terra would be lying if he says he doesn’t find this side of her hot. She’s a splash of freshwater that would bring him back from the brink. The woman standing in front of him chooses to clean him despite the shower being paces away. She’s the same girl who would plant an extra candle on his birthday cakes, for the year to come. To her, maybe it meant little or nothing. Stars, she’s beautiful, and he doesn’t say it enough. 

“You’re doing better,” she says, leveling her voice, nodding to herself as if checking her information. That’s Aqua. Putting aside her annoyance for the sake of making sure he’s taken care of. “You’re not flinching as much.”

Maybe. Her touch is absolutely making the hairs on his neck stand. It is absolutely driving his dick insane. “You know, Ven’s okay with us.”

She stops. “He said something?”

“Kind of. He doesn’t want to know or see or hear anything.”

Her eyes go wide. “Excuse me?”

“He never said he actually heard anything.” He kisses her temple and lets it linger there, taking the opportunity to inhale her smell. Even when she sweats and spars for hours, there’s still a sweetness. Terra laughs into her hair. “He doesn’t want to know nicknames, either.”

Aqua flashes him a look.

“Now we have to,” says Terra. “We don’t have a choice.”

“What should we use?” Aqua moves to his abs, fighting an amused smile that’s twisting its way to her lips. 

“Terr-able.”

“That one is awful. I think Terr-bear fits you better.”

“So you admit I’m big, strong, and scary?”

“I admit you’re adorable sometimes.”

Terra purses his lips. “What about you?”

She shrugs. “Maybe Aquamarine.”

“How about Aquafina?”

“That’s worse.”

“Babe?”

“Absolutely not.”

“We could call him Ven-tilation.”

“Stop.”

He follows his instinct to lower his head so when she laughs with him, their lips meet. They kiss everyday, but the first taste of the hour is always the one to discharge his breath, like he’s been underwater and she’s giving him the chance to surface. 

“You’re going to get me dirty,” she says, giggling into his mouth.

He moves to her neck. “A little mess doesn’t hurt anybody.”

It’s when he brushes his fingers across her back, skating over the scar, coiled like rose thorns, that he hitches. Across from them is her vanity mirror. The scar is still red despite its age of twelve years. He’s so stupid. 

“This again?” she whispers. She’s not upset but disappointed, though in him or in herself, he can’t tell. Moments like these are weird, when he can’t read what she’s thinking. Working on the straps on his left arm, she pulls off his gauntlet, finger by finger. 

“I wish you would tell me,” he whispers back, as if having the conversation at a normal volume would shake them up. 

She turns his bracer to make its removal easier. “I already did.”

“I wish you would be honest with me.” He leans his chin on her head, feeling her fingers slide down his arm. 

“I am.” She flicks a knob and slips off the couter from his elbow. “You want me to tell you it was you who did this to me,” she continues, unbuckling the pauldron on his shoulder. “But it wasn’t.”

“I know better.”

“I know better.”

“It was done with my hands.”

To that she says nothing, rubbing the rag down his exposed left bicep. Ink had run under the armor. Darkness seeps in even with protection. 

She sighs. “Promise me you won’t obsess over it.”

He really shouldn’t but… he nods.

Aqua hesitates anyway. Taking him by the wrist, she presses his right hand on the rib under her left breast. “This one was his.” She warns with her eyes. “Not yours.”

Terra can’t feel anything through her shirt. He slips it under, running the pads of his fingers across the bumps and ridges. This one was his, this one with the gnarly tear right through the middle of the scar tissue, a ravine rupturing open. This one would have been done by that nameless silver Keyblade, with its sharp, ornate frills and that giant hook at the tip of it. It would have caught her skin as it tried to disconnect her body from her heart. And Terra? He’s had so much to lose and nothing to give back.

Terra holds his Aqua close as he continues to read the scar, how deep the hook sunk in, how she must have dodged back and broke that connection. 

“Did it hurt?” he asks. 

She sighs like she finds something amusing. Or trying to. She shudders, closing what little is left of the gaps between their bodies. “The Realm of Darkness numbs everything. I don’t think I felt it much.”

The view from their window looks over blossoming fields under mist, what’s left of snow capping just the mountaintops, everything else green. She’s lucky. So is he, ridiculously enough. 

“I should have done more to stop it,” he says.

“You can’t continue to say things like that.” She swallows and stares at the wall. “What about the person I’ve become? I wouldn’t be here, standing in this room, now. It changed me. The Realm of Darkness did things to me that I’ll never be able to claim back. I will never be able to remedy it. I never wanted it, but I don’t know if I deserved it.”

“You didn’t.”

“I couldn’t make mistakes, in case I got hurt. I couldn’t be vulnerable. I had to be brave.”

“You already are.” 

“And now I’m like stone.”

Terra presses his forehead to hers. “No, you’re not like stone at all.”

Aqua buries her face into his shoulder, anchoring herself to his waist. It’s so unlike her, to be unable to look him directly in the eyes. Whatever she has to say scares her. “You’re here, and I’m here. I give you my scars and you give me yours and… I don’t know if I would trade that for something else. For something that looks better on the outside. Every moment we shared since you woke up, how could I want to erase them? I need you, Terra. I have to chip away somehow. I’m braver now, to hold you like this.”

She says it like she has her chest cavity open, heart beating to open air. 

She’s brave for not crying. 

She’s brave for telling him what she can’t say right now. I’m braver now, to hold you like this. (I love you.)

He lifts her chin to kiss her. (I loved you first.) 

She drops the rag to hold his face. 

Before, their kisses were desperate, thirsty and famished, hoping to be found. Now, they’re deliberate, wandering but not lost. She tastes like sugar and flesh, her tongue inside with his, slow and careful. Their needs have more definition this time: please, and more, and yes, again. 

Terra indulges in the impulse to press her onto him. She should feel how greedy he is, her chest arched against his. She’s soft and he’s in love. 

“Where is Ven?” she says, breathless. 

“Probably showering,” he mumbles.

She waves her hand and the door slams shut. 

“I said probably,” Terra murmurs, but his mind turns off when she kisses him again. Who cares what Ven hears?

Aqua treads slower. She tempts Terra’s tongue to seek her out, puckering her lips around it and giving it a small tug. 

“Touch me, please,” he begs.

The sound of his pants unbuttoning makes his heart hammer, his entire groin anticipating for what’s next. When, when, when. Terra closes his eyes. Her hand glides down, palm first, his breath snagging when she wraps her fingers around his erection. His pants are at his ankles, Aqua is on her knees, and she presses a kiss right under the tip, where it’s most sensitive, before licking the entire length. Terra buckles. He catches the dresser behind him to keep standing. 

“Shhh,” she breathes onto him. It shoots a spark from his stomach to his scalp. 

Terra braces his teeth with his finger to shut himself up. He watches her work. She takes him in bite-size pieces, snail-tracking with her tongue before her lips close in on him. Fuck. She sucks while she pulls. Fuck. To see her like this, Master Aqua with poise, with grace, with affection and care—with him in her mouth. The hand wrapped around him squeezes tighter, and the other comes up to meet him at the testicles. 

He stifles another moan, staring at the ripples of the drywall, listening to the feathered tap of spring rain on the window and the noise she’s making. His erection twitches against the roof of her mouth, and he has to restrain himself from thrusting into her. Maybe he can let go and let be, finally throw himself off the cliff, ride the thrill all the way. Give it his all.

But he can’t. The moment gooseflesh spreads across his inner thighs, the moment he feels full, is the start. The floor will rip out from under him, the lights will go off, he will fall, he will lose all his fingers, he won’t remember anything, he’ll be the monster who makes her cry.

“I can’t,” he hisses, pushing her off. “I can’t.” He lurches over his knees, his insides twisting at the sudden cutoff, aching as it throbs and shrivels. He was so close. They were just laughing a few minutes ago. Stupid body, stupid mind. “Damn it,” he groans, pounding the dresser.

“Hey, you’re okay,” she says softly, holding him by the elbow. “You’re safe at home.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.” He digs his eyes into his palm, his body faraway like it’s a glass vial with his soul dumped inside. “Help me.”

Without letting him go, Aqua braces him with something cold—the rag, now on his lower back. It slaps him back to the bedroom, his beige carpet, the mist outside clearing out to a view of a forest that separates the castle from the mountains. 

She greets him with a smile. “You really did something to yourself,” she says, cleaning him like it’s a lazy weekend day and there’s a list of chores. 

Terra straightens up, shivers riding all the way up to his shoulders. “It’s so frustrating.”

“Don’t worry, Terra,” she says, softer and lower. “There’s no need to rush. I’ll wait.”

“But I’m tired of feeling caged up and stuck. I just want some semblance of control.” 

Aqua kisses him on the shoulder to shoo away the haunting for a few seconds. “I’m here, anytime you need me. Would you like me to run you a bath?”

“No.” The rag is likely caked with ink, but its iciness is unlike the chill of clammy sweat a few seconds old. Every frigid touch is a reminder that he’s alive. “This is nice.”

Aqua runs the rag up his spine. “You know what I think? If we’re going to call each other pet names in front of Ven, we should have guests over.”

Terra snorts. “That’s evil.”

“He won’t be able to bark at us in front of other people.”

“I think I’m a bad influence on you.”

“I think you’re right.”

Terra sighs at her touch, cold at his neck, at his hairline. Like a light at the front porch in the dead of night, like hot tea on a sick day, she is what it feels like to come home.

She tells him, “Lean your head back a little,” and he obliges, letting her reach behind his ears. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips swollen, her hair frizzy, eyes blue and focused as she takes care of him. 

“I can still kiss you, right?” 

“You don’t have to ask.”

Tilting his chin down, he does. He braids his fingers into hers; from the rag they’re like icicles, and he brings them to his heart. 

They’re barely millimeters apart, but he’s still in that cage. If only he could be touched the way he needs. If only the lock trapping him inside the cage is brittle and easy to crumble. What if he tries to test it? What if he finds there is nothing at all? Stupid mind. What if there are several, each of them needing unique keys when he has none, no hope of ever knowing what real freedom is? Stupid body. 

Should he pretend? Should he try over and over, to slam his head against the bars each time? Should he submit, should he accept he will never have what he wants? 

Life has made him uneager to trust. But her lips have a deliciousness unmatched by anything he’s ever tasted, and he’s still a silly, stupid man.

“Let me try again,” he says, breathing deeply. “I want to make you feel good.”

She’s surprised. “Only if you’re comfortable.”

“It will make me feel better.”

“...Okay,” she says so modestly. Terra never figured out how to knock it into her head that he wants to give her everything, that he is so, so guilty.

He invites her into an embrace, growing desperate the more he detaches his mind. Her body, the curve from her waist to her hips. The brush of her body against his reminds him that while he is naked, she is not. He picks her up by the thighs. Lost in the momentum of deep kisses, he carries her to bed, straddling her on his lap.

She hums. “The… the sheets.”

Dry, messy layers of ink still track down his legs. He groans into her mouth. She’s grinding him, and while he really likes that, it makes it incredibly difficult to take her clothes off, one hand rising the hem of her shirt and the other deep under her shorts, cupping her ass. 

“Whatever, we can wash them later,” she says, lifting her arms up. 

Her bare breasts—stars, this is what it feels like to come home. 

“Kiss me,” she says, and he replies, nibbling down her neck, coming down to her breasts, where his lips and his tongue and his murmurs take in her nipples as they perk. Aqua stays quiet, leaning onto his shoulders. 

There’s something about her amazing body, the silk of skin draped over defined muscle, treasure and tenderness in his hands, that he’s needy for. Every time he tries to define what that means, his mind ceases to function. 

Xehanort tried to take it all away from him. If he lived, Terra would crush every tooth bloody. Damn him.

How dare Xehanort do this to him, lock him in this cage, keep him away from her? Damn him.

Why is he thinking about Xehanort?

“Are you okay?”

Terra is frozen, the nub of a nipple suctioned in his mouth. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

He lets her breast go with a pop. “I’m redirecting.” Leading her to the mattress, Terra lowers himself into her arms, but he’s halted by a light kiss and a hold of his face.

“Do you need me to check in on you?” she asks.

“No.” He smiles, kissing her with all the hope that she psychically understands his body is about to burst open, if only from the lack of space for the appreciation he keeps nurturing for her. “Thank you, but I’m okay.”

She nods, stroking his cheeks with her thumbs. “You take your time.”

Oh, he will. No more interruptions. Focus on the smell of her skin, on the collarbone at the base of her neck. Right here, it makes her bite her lip. On the hollow between her breasts, the sound of her breath getting heavy. On the slight movement of her legs as she instinctively responds, spreading them, hooking around his. The buoyancy of her breasts in his mouth. The way she arches to push them against his face. 

Under that left breast is the scar, tightly knitted.

The purpose for living is for memories, not reminders. Do not linger. Do not think about the cage. Terra lightly kisses it and continues downward. 

Terra’s fingers glide down, a caress at the hips, a squeeze of her ass, running a mile of goosebumps as he bunches her shorts and panties and pulls them off. Her skin is streaked with fingerprints of gray, at most of the places he’s been. Aqua shivers as his lips brush the sides of her waist, as he traces his tongue and inhales the dips of her pelvis, as he loops his arms under her thighs, as he kisses her between the legs. She gasps. He licks from bottom to top, sucking on the clitoris once, then starts over.

Footsteps walk by outside their bedroom door.

Aqua jerks up. “Terra,” she whispers, warning him.

“Hm?” Stars, what now? “Here.” He grabs the comforter and throws it over her head. She chuckles as she wraps both of them in hiding. “Relax,” he whispers back. “He’s not going to hear anything.” Not that Ven opts to stay; his footsteps are already fading away.

He goes back to work, and hears her sigh—it’s loud enough to make him look up but too hushed to escape the sheets. Bottom to top. Again. Again. She cloaks the sound of her moans with the comforter plastered on her face. 

It’s her taste. It’s the softness and suppleness of the skin between her legs. The way she fastens her knees over his shoulders, how wet she is. Her reaction. When he tongues the inside of her slit, she jerks, chewing her lip hard enough to make it white. Master Aqua, with poise and grace, for her there’s only love and the way his tongue curls up. 

Her fist crumples the sheet—it holds her own breast, caresses her stomach down to rake through his hair and hold him there. 

“Don’t stop,” she breathes.

Stars, that did it. He’s hard again. He drapes his arms over her pelvis, using his fingers to open her up so he has more access to her clit. She bucks, and he holds her down. 

Her entire body trembles: the first sign that she’s running off her own edge. 

Terra strokes her, the outside lips, the tease inside, the puckering motions. She’s a sweet, musky taste he can’t compare to anything else.

Aqua throws herself back on the pillow. Her thighs crush his head, and she clamps her hand on her mouth like a topper. Her mewl shudders and stops, it heaves, it mumbles. The wave rises then crashes, and she finishes with a long sigh, a release, a settlement, a tempered peace.

It feels so good to listen to her. Terra rests his head on her hip and brings a hand to his erection. A little bit of freedom paid with a little bit of control. 

“I’m ready,” he says. “I need you.”

She hums in contentment, fixing the comforter so they’re completely covered and opening her arms to him. “Come here.”

Terra crawls over her, bracketing her body like he’s a fort, tethering her fingers to his and cradling her head in a protective halo with his arms. Aqua has to spread her legs wide to take on his thick waist, and she breaks her kisses with whimpers when he enters—she’s always more sensitive after he goes down on her. 

She’s warm and tight, oh stars. Massaging him as he moves inside her. Their bodies compress into each other, hers curled up to mold against the way he rocks his hips, as though the subtle air between would have split them up too far, as though he can melt into her when he pushes, their hearts only separated by muscle and bone. He plants a messy kiss on her cheek, exhaling and inhaling in rhythms opposite of hers, her breath loud against his ear, tickling his neck.

Here it comes again, the oncoming of the precipice where he has to step off. 

Fuck.

He can’t do it.

At the sprint towards the edge of the cliff, he skids and scrambles to hang by the rockface. Terra grunts, all his muscles seizing up as he holds his breath.

Aqua strokes his hair. “Do you want to stop?”

Of course not. “Give me a minute.”

“Remember, you’re safe.”

Terra nearly chokes. “I’m scared of losing control.”

“You won’t. You’re in control.”

In control. The intent to wring his fingers through the bars, a sleight of hand to balance the padlock like it’s on strings, turning it over and pulling it out of the latch. But Terra is no escape artist. 

Terra licks his lips. He’s not in danger. He should trust she’ll catch him when he falls. In her arms, there’s no safer place to be. He has to remember this. Shut that mind up.

“I want to continue.” 

She rubs his back. It’s soothing. “Tell me what you need.”

Terra smirks. “To get back in the mood.” He takes one deep kiss. “Entice me.”

Her insides squeeze him and he trembles. “How is that?” she asks.

“Do it again.”

She wraps her ankles over his back and squeezes. He hums into her shoulder. 

“Again.”

This time, she takes back her kiss.

“Don’t let me go,” he says, and she hugs him tightly. 

He starts slow. Terra leans on his elbows, bunching the comforter in his fist so it stays in place. She looks at him with half-lidded eyes, a healthy red blush, her mouth gently open, cast in the filtered glow of a secret, sweaty cocoon. This body he’s thrusting into, the lips he’s kissing, may the stars bless her. 

“Aqua.”

“You feel so good.”

She stole the words right out of his mouth, squeezing his hips again. 

“Oh,” he moans. It provokes him to thrust harder, deeper, feel her, feel her breasts bouncing under him, feel her moans coming from her throat, the desperation in the way she squirms with her hands. She massages his slick back, her nails digging in.

There. 

Let him throw himself off. Give it his all.

“Don’t let me go,” he repeats.

“I won’t.”

He throws himself off. It’s not the wind thrashing him all the way down. Instead it’s fire, a combustion of flames in his muscles as his entire body submits to its force, leaving his knees weak. A flash of white that blurs everything he sees, a hurricane that knocks his mind into a stupor, a delicious burn that slicks over his body, trickling embers on top of sweat, hot and cool, good and better, good and fucking good. Terra shoves his face into her shoulder to muffle the sounds of groans escaping him, shuddering as the climax picks up again, a body alight in an ignition that throws him out of any awareness. 

His eyes prick when he finally remembers where he is. Aqua is safeguarding him with a strong hold, keeping him in place with her. He sighs. The cinders that continue to radiate heat leave him with a hearth to wrap himself into, a happiness that he never thought he would ever feel again.

Aqua sniffs. She wipes tears onto his shoulder.

“We really should stop crying at these things,” he says.

She snorts, refusing to let her grip on him slack. “You did amazing. How are you feeling?”

“I’m…” he mumbles. Stars, wow. His arms can’t pick him up anymore but it’s a gratifying cloud to ride. He shifts his legs, alleviating the weight of his body. “A little weak.” 

She runs a hand on the back of his head, coaxing him to rest on her chest. “When did you know?” she asks, brushing hair off his damp forehead. “That you wanted to kiss me? You must have spent some time thinking about it before it happened.”

Terra smiles into her chest. Somehow, they’ve never talked about it. “Long after I knew I was going to marry you.”

He feels her laugh. “Is that so? I’m going to marry you?”

“You will.” He looks up at her grinning face. “I can see the future.”

She scoffs. “You can see my eyes rolling at you.”

“I knew before you did.”

“Prove it.”

“I was seven.”

“You’re older than me, that doesn’t count.”

“You asked me to have a tea party with you, but the one thing that bothered you most”—he brings up his hand, pinky out—“was that I wasn’t drinking my tea right.” He mimics the high pitch of a little girl’s voice. “Pinky out. Pinky out, Terra, don’t be a slob.”

She gapes. “I don’t remember any of that.”

With renewed will, he props himself up, leaning close so their noses touch. “I knew then. That early on.”

“Since when is this a competition?”

“Still the first to know.”

Aqua interrupts what she’s about to say, like she’s about to step into cold water. She’s having an epiphany. Vulnerable again, like she’s allowing him to cut her right down the middle. 

“I love you.”

She says it like the touch of a high note on a piano, a beautiful accident. 

He leans closer, lips to lips, whispering, “I still got there first.” 

She laughs into him. “I suppose, but I was the first to say it.”

“Then I’ll be the second,” Terra says. Like coming home, a shelter to withstand the downpour, that births life to the roots, that thunders, that opens for a clear day, he brushes her hair out of her eyes. “I love you.”

“Too,” she corrects. “You love me, too.” 

A knock on their door jolts them, like a hard punch to the stomach.

“Okay, Terra,” Ven says from the other side. “I thought about it and I’m trying out this knocking thing.”

Wrong timing. Wrong timing.

“I’m going to kill him,” Terra hisses, and against Aqua’s hushed chuckles, he throws the comforter off their bodies and announces, “Ven, we’re naked.”

The silence that comes after is as loud as the crash of a chandelier. Terra can feel Ven recoil, a tea pot at the verge of whistling. “I didn’t need to know that!” Terra is about to reply but Ven groans dramatically. “I AM NEVER GOING TO KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR AGAIN.”

Ven stomps away, and if the door was actually open, he’d slam it. 

Terra sits on his knees, pinching his nose. It’s hot in this room. He feels clogged again, back at the edge of the cliff. He wants to strangle Ven for dragging the moment away from him. “Great, I pissed him off.”

“Poor Ven.” When she sits up, Terra pulls her to him, sitting her on one of his thighs. “I can’t predict if he’ll ever get over that,” she says, balancing herself by hooking her arms around his neck. 

Terra presses his lips to her ear, whispering, “But I did predict that you wouldn’t stay mad at me for long.”

She slaps his bicep. “I haven’t seen what you’ve done yet. Don’t be so proud of yourself.”

“But I am.”

“You’re still a slob.”

Slobby as he is, Aqua hugs him dearly. Hold her, you never know when the dream will end. You never know when the cage takes you back.

“I don’t know if,” Terra says, “it will be difficult for me next time.”

“Then it may be difficult,” Aqua says, kissing his forehead. “But it will be okay.”

Hold her. Not passively. Not half-minded. Hold her tightly. Hold her in the quiet, undisturbed, uninterrupted.

A drop of hot liquid spills from between her legs and drips down his thigh, almost burning. When Terra looks down to see that it’s white, Aqua jumps.

“Oh,” she squeaks.

“Oh. That would be me.”

She squeals, hiding her blush. “I’m going to wash up.” 

“Such a slob.”

Aqua giggles, looking him in the eye when she rubs his chest. “Come with me?”

“Go ahead.” He kisses her. “I’ll catch up.”

If anyone told him twelve years ago that hope feels like a long day full of small conversations, the anticipation of cleaning a messy room, Terra would have considered that cynical. A sarcastic joke, the loss of the will to dream. 

Twelve years later, it’s the sound of the shower running that teaches him to look forward to the next day, when he wakes up next to her, when he prepares dinner with her, when he kisses her in the middle of the night and play all over again. Peace is a long-distance acquaintance, a pen pal that urges you to look at your day like a spectacle.

Terra leans back to twist the latch of the window open, letting the spring haze billow in. Much better, the room is cooler now. The sky is bluer somehow, the mountains as grand as a painting.

[pastelpressmachine]

Plan B offers a refreshing alternative to typical teen comedies

I’ve never watched a teen comedy on a streaming service without seeing a trailer first, being messaged a recommendation, or seeing mixed reviews on Twitter. This is especially true in the few cases with South Asian female leads, and after a handful of disappointing casting choices and plot points, I don’t usually have high hopes in the instances I do see someone who looks like me playing the main character.

The Indian Girl is usually highly academically driven, makes self-deprecating jokes about her body hair, and a socially awkward virgin with her eyes set on the (nearly) unattainable athletic, popular white boy. Whether it’s been the writing of Mindy Kaling with The Mindy Project (2012-2015) or Never Have I Ever (2020 - present), Natalie Krinsky’s The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020), you can never have all three:

- a central romance between two South Asian characters

- a South Asian female lead

- the brown woman not being her own constant punchline

I stumbled across Plan B (2021), which is directed by Natalie Morales from a screenplay written by Parthian Srinivasan and Joshua Levy, while mindlessly scrolling Hulu with my partner at the time, who — and I am aware of the hypocrisy — is a white man. Social distancing mandates had caused me to stay home more than ever and entertain shows and movies I hadn’t never caught onto or heard of. I no longer had the excuse of work/grad school because we were off for the summer or other plans to keep me away from what I presumed I would not enjoy. I’m definitely known in my social and even academic/professional circles as a vocational, outspoken media critic (film degree needed to go somewhere), particularly in regards to anything that attempts to champion representation for Indian women and/or queer folks.

“Ugh, this is probably going to be about a nerdy Indian girl who wants to ‘lose her virginity’ to a generic white boy,” I remember muttering, not even clicking to see the trailer or Wikipedia’ing the entire cast as I often do when I think I recognize someone from somewhere. (Hunter was the only vaguely familiar face; he is played by Michael Provost, who is known for playing Brick Armstrong in Netflix’s 2018-2019 series Insatiable, another show I decided to delve into during the pandemic.)

Again, I am aware that I myself carry biases and am constantly working through my own self-criticism as the highly academically driven Indian girl who “lost her virginity” to a white boy, too. I think that is part of my frustration with media that reinforces my own unoriginality and susceptibility to the most common narrative about people like me that could ever be made available to the masses.

My partner headed home for the night, and I ended up watching Plan B anyways while waiting for the text that he had arrived back at his place. This got me through more than half the film in the meantime. Call it a desire to chase my confirmation bias, cure my boredom, or maybe even indulge in a brief moment of open-mindedness and giving the movie a chance. Sometimes, we just click on something to help us pass the time, don’t we?

The movie starts as many teen flicks do, with an alternating montage sequence of our main character, Sunny (played by Kuhoo Verma) getting ready for the school day, contrasted by the routine of her best friend, Lupe (played by Victoria Moroles), the rebellious stoner type who begins vaping upon waking up. The dollhouse-like interior of Sunny’s bedroom is where she turns her stuffed elephant’s eyes away as she starts masturbating to an image of a naked person in her biology textbook, the closest she gets to a penis (until later that night). This scene alone probably should’ve been a sign that the nerdy virgin trope is being exaggerated, and this film is being ironic, but my past viewership of such narratives and depictions made it take me a bit longer to realize Plan B is actually a parody of everything I love to hate about these kinds of movies. And it did it so well, it seemed sincere. Which makes everything even funnier.

Religious, conservative parents who leave little room for independence, mistakes, or creative expression. Check. This will fuel the fire, the secrecy, the mayhem that is going to ensue to keep whatever the secret is.

Establishing shots of a small, boring town that cannot contain their personalities or desires. Check. check.

Solo slumber parties with the only other friend you have who also indulges your nerdy hobbies, like anime and thousand-piece puzzles. Okay. Slumber party becomes a “rager” to capture the attention of the love interest while Sunny’s mom is conveniently out of town. Nothing new here.

But I was ignoring, in my own hunt for righteousness, that Sunny and Lupe are witty, unconcerned with popularity, and content in each other’s company. There are love interests, sure, but these girls aren’t pining for school wide validation, trying to win prom queen, or victims of a cruel bet. Megan and Emma are the popular girls (thin, white blondes who display their sexuality more explicitly to contrast the inexperienced Sunny) who get barely any screen time, with very little dialogue. Looking back, that might be one of the top three things I appreciate about Plan B. It didn’t entertain the idea that Sunny or Lupe wanted to be Megan or Emma, or that the other girls were necessarily the enemy.

Our dynamic duo is just angsty and horny, in a way that is honest and humorous without being crass or a regurgitation of every other portrayal of a sexually frustrated main character who will do whatever it takes to get the guy. In this story, the main character is driven by the will to do whatever it takes to not be pregnant, which will be more devastating for her than graduating as a virgin.

Lupe’s astute observations, snappy comebacks, and apathy for the opinions or well-being of anyone but her best friend complements Sunny’s anxious demeanor well. At one point, she counters Sunny’s description of her crush Hunter as “an athletic librarian” with the remark that wearing a cardigan while playing hockey actually just gives off “major guidance counselor vibes”. Lupe’s presence and commentary is not only a comedic foil to Sunny, but throughout the film, we see how she does not sacrifice her independent thoughts and desires to serve Sunny’s story, and Lupe herself gets a proper plot line that is explored meaningfully while the night goes on.

Like I said, it’s nice to not see screen time dominated by the forgettable popular girls (I had to Google the character list, that’s how little they are mentioned). I think the most memorable interaction was when one of the girls, Megan, grabs Hunter’s hockey stick euphemistically and comments how it’s dry(?) and proceeds to run her tongue upside it, as Hunter advises, “I definitely wouldn’t lick it.”

Some other classic traits of the teen comedy you may be able to spot are well distributed throughout the scenes in the high school and podunk small town places Sunny and Lupe that head to in their wild goose chase for a Plan B pill or the generous doors of Planned Parenthood.

The characters themselves often make jabs at many of the tropes that they represent themselves, reminiscent of the meta-comedic and punchy writing of Mean Girls (2004). There’s even a random line reminiscent of the tampon/pad joke about heavy flows, but I don’t know if that parallel was intentional. I also never expected to talk about that movie like it’s historical cinema. Oof.

Even socially uncoordinated and easily flustered Sunny provides a lot of snappy one-liners that land as criticisms of how teenage/Indian girls are perceived and not as conformity. And Kuhoo’s comedic timing and facial expressions — notably the entire time her character is accidentally high — are some definite highlights. Sunny is an underdog I was actually rooting for, and not because you’re supposed to even when the character is unlikeable. Sunny is likeable, and when we really only have the messy Mindy Lahiri or Devi Vishwakumar as examples, it was nice to want things to work out for her for reasons other than “Oh, finally an Indian girl as the lead! I have to like her no matter what!” Sometimes, I feel hesitant to be as critical of the few media representations I have because I don’t want to come across like I haven’t worked on my internalized racism or misogyny; I have and of course I still am. At the same time, there are productions in which the few South Asian characters I get to see are very difficult to defend, even if they are written as quirky, understandably flawed, or a “hot mess”.

Plan B makes room, without negotiating, for other important parts of teenagehood. At the root of the story is the bond between two best friends who treat each other’s company as what will make high school, heartache, an unexpected pregnancy, angry parents all survivable. Sunny and Lupe’s friendship is a love story in itself, as they show audience members all you really need is that one best friend at a party, on a road trip, through all the chaos of your life, as the trusted keeper of your secrets.

Similar to Never Have I Ever’s Devi and other teen movies, Sunny also participates in the omission of truth about who, if anyone, she loses her virginity to. Hunter isn’t concerned with public image or aligns with the dumb jock stereotype, instead offering a more surprising charm that even Sunny isn’t aware of at first. It is worth noting how much focus is placed on giving dimension to side characters in this movie, even if how they act doesn’t change the course of the plot overall.

I also appreciate the mention of the Indian Mafia, which, if you don’t already know what it is, you will find out after watching. And despite Lupe’s reassurance and this movie being fiction, it is very much real.

And so is the problematic “conscience clause”, mentioned early on as an obstacle to Sunny’s body autonomy. Important reminders of the additional barriers that young women of colour face in seeking reproductive healthcare in this country can be found throughout the mayhem that the two friends have to endure. At the same time, the movie also makes space for a low brow line in which Sunny complains that it will take 69 hours to get to the nearest Planned Parenthood.

Without denying or pigeon-holing the experiences of closeted queer teens, Plan B also reminds viewers that there are places throughout the country where kids do not feel safe to be themselves and do find solace, support, and love in online communities.

I found both Kuhoo Verma’s and Victoria Moroles’ individual portrayals of 17-year-olds juggling various aspects of their identities and their dynamic together as breakout performances, and I look forward to seeing what else they star in.

The pacing of the film is naturally aided by the race against the clock when it comes to the efficacy of retrieving and taking the morning after pill, but there is a fun rhythm that balances coincidence, pleasant surprises, and complete shock that challenged everything I thought I was going to see by the time I got to the middle of the movie. Often, there is a lazy montage to indicate the passage of time and the viewer has the responsibility of filling in the plot with an understanding that relationships have developed, changed, or fizzled out. But Plan B keeps you comfortably engaged, and by the time my partner texted me that he was home, I happily accepted that I actually had no idea what was going to happen in this movie and that it had grown on me. I was enjoying the ride that Sunny and Lupe’s overnight misadventures were taking me on as an amused bystander, and that wasn’t a feeling I had gotten from anything aimed at a young adult audience in awhile.

It even captures nuanced parts of being a teenager of color in a small, predominantly white town, like the gentle, fluttery feeling of finally getting to spend time with someone who helps you peel back so many layers, the unexpected blending of friend groups, innocent misinterpretations, and the underestimation of the love of parents who do try to sustain tradition but still know how to unconditionally love and support their children. This is especially important to see in 2021.

I appreciate the soft, mundane but vulnerable moments where the characters grow closer. There doesn’t need to be a massive blow out or tear that needs mending - though those moments do occur - for relationships to progress, and it takes good writing to not have to rely on “this only happens in movies” moments. People become friends and sometimes more in the regular, everyday moments during conversations, meals, or in chilly parking lots in South Dakota of all places.

In hindsight, I am glad I didn’t watch the trailer for Plan B, even if it likely would have meant I would have picked up on what was ironically or unironically included in the story. Because it meant that I got to enjoy the movie as a chaotic buddy comedy (Verma and Moroles are seriously hilarious together) and remove the lens of criticizing just how Indian and queer and feminist based on previous disappointments it could be. I wasn’t even watching it with the intention to write a review after, which would otherwise automatically apply the critical lens and often ruins my own viewing experience because I’m mentally picking the movie or show apart.

I’m writing this review mostly to say I liked having my skepticism put in check. Scattered across various stereotypical plot points were instances that made me appreciate that people are still making these types of movies, a genre I was hoping would die out if it was going to keep giving us the same formula.

Because that means there are going to be movies like Plan B, which take a different route.

[amyscascadingtabs]

expecto patronum

Post-The Fugitive. Jake and Amy talk Harry Potter, patronuses, and love.

✨read on ao3  ✨ 

“Hey, babe, I’m home!”

The door makes a distinctive clicking noise behind Jake as he locks it. It’s only one of the many sounds he’s getting used to; his new home is full of them, and they’ve become much more noticeable now that he’s here every day. He’s known his way around this apartment for a long time, but living there, permanently, is different. It’s a good kind of different, though. 

“In here!” Amy shouts from her – from their – bedroom, and Jake hurries to hang up his jacket and bag before going to greet his girlfriend. 

    He’s coming home late tonight. A questioning at work dragged over after a surprise confession, and as exciting as those are, Jake’s bitter over missing dinner and Property Brothers with Amy. He half hadn't expected her to be awake still, but once he was finally free to text her that he was on his way home, she replied straight away to tell him she'd be waiting. Rosa had teased him about how wide he’d been smiling, but Jake hadn’t found it in him to care. 

Amy’s laying on her stomach in bed with a thick book leaned against the pillow, resting her chin against one hand as she reads and holding up the cover with her other. Jake recognizes the book; it’s Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the Harry Potter series. He was reading it himself a few weeks ago.

“Ah, Harry Potter. Good choice.”

Amy closes the book against her index finger and looks up at him. “Yeah, you inspired me. How was work?”

“We got a confession,” he grins. “It was dope. Guy just started rambling, pretty much told us his whole life story for some reason, and now we have him. I even got to call the victim’s mom, tell her the news.”

“Sounds like a good day, then.”

“Yeah. Missed seeing you, though.”

“You see me all the time, babe. We live and work together.”

“I know, so it makes me feel even weirder when I don't!”

Amy laughs, letting out that adorable chortling sound he only ever hears when they're alone. Then she looks back to her book, scooching closer to her preferred side of the bed, and Jake takes that as an instruction to change into pajamas so he can join her. 

Any regular night, he would probably have taken time to shower and brush his teeth first, but it's been a long day. He simply undresses instead, smirking as he notices Amy’s subtle side glance when he takes off his shirt. This, these small moments of appreciation between them, is yet another one of the parts he loves most about sharing a life with her – it’s nearly midnight, he’s exhausted and he remembers Amy mentioning starting her period, so sex is almost guaranteed to be off the table – but she still makes him feel attractive, makes him feel confident and wanted. He never realized how much that being an equal exchange meant to him before their relationship.

   “So,” he asks her, “where are you up to in the book, then?”

“Almost finished the whole thing,” she says, looking very proud of herself. “I’m at the time-turner chapter. Harry thinks he saw his dad cast a patronus from the other side of the lake, but then he realizes just saw himself.” 

“Man, that part was so sad.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah!” Jake huffs, crawling underneath the covers. “I just… felt for him, you know? He wishes he could meet his parents, just once, even if he knows it's impossible. He wants this family he never had.”

“It makes you realize how in the end, he's just a kid. A brave kid, but a kid.”

“A kid in desperate need of therapy.”

“Amen,” says Amy, flipping a page. “Hogwarts mental health services do seem to be severely lacking. Did you know the dementors were inspired by the author’s own experiences with depression, by the way?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Dark creatures with the power to bring out all the worst memories in your head, making you feel like you’ll never be happy again. Like you can’t even remember what it’s like. And the only way to defeat them is to hold onto the very happiest moments of your life and create a shield out of them.”

“Kind of deep for a kid's book,” Jake reflects, and Amy nods. 

“Maybe. But it's not pushed on them, either. It's a way for them to understand, without knowing that they're understanding. I always loved that about the Harry Potter books,” she says, a sudden dreamy look in her eyes. “They're just… intelligent.”

   Jake means to agree with her, but then his body remembers he's been at work for the entire day, and out comes an embarrassingly big yawn that makes Amy laugh. 

“Long day? I can read to you if you want.”

“Dreamgirl,” he mumbles. Amy rolls her eyes, but then she reaches out to pull him closer, her left hand running through his hair as she holds the book with her right, and he can see her smiling.

   Jake's not sure how long she's reading for. He loses track of time, but frankly, he doesn’t mind. Amy's reading voice is low, peaceful enough to relax him but varied enough to entice him at the same time. Her fingers keep brushing through his curls as she reads, tracing soft circles on his scalp. He listens to her read the part where Harry and Hermione fly on Buckbeak to rescue Sirius, and it doesn't matter that he read the book himself just a few weeks ago, because he could listen to her voice forever.

   He gets to do that now, he realizes, because they live together now. It may only have been a week, and not completely without its challenges, but it already feels like one of the best decisions of his life. Even though they were spending almost every night together before as well, there’s something special about coming home and Amy already being there. Not because they’ve made specific plans for her to be, but because that’s the norm, because home is the same place for the two of them now. There’s something intimate about getting to share a routine with her, working out a system for who gets the bathroom when in the morning, adding stuff onto the same grocery list. Even seeing his t-shirts next to hers in the dresser puts a smile on his face in the morning. It feels grown-up, and it feels stable, and it feels right. 

    He wonders sometimes if he could have imagined this the night she knocked on his door to tell him screw light and breezy. Honestly, he probably could have, even if he was too proud to admit it to himself in the beginning. But after a year and a half of dating, of which six excruciating months were spent apart (and hopefully no more will ever be, he thinks), Jake couldn’t care less about pride. He loves Amy Santiago, and he wants to spend all the time he can with her, give her everything and share his life with her for as long as she’ll let him. That, if anything, makes him proud. In any case, it’s like he said that first night undercover as Johnny and Dora – there’s really no one else’s opinion he cares about more than hers. 

    Amy finishes the chapter, reaching for a bookmark before putting the book on her nightstand.

“There,” she laughs. “That’s your goodnight story.”

“Mm, one more chapter.”

“Mm, no. It’s late, babe.”

“I have a question,” he says then, knowing it’ll garner her attention and give him some more treasured quality time before they really have to go to sleep. Amy raises an eyebrow and shakes her head lovingly at him, but then she nods. “Harry’s patronus is a stag, right? Like his dad’s animagus form. And in the fifth book, Hermione has an otter, and Ron some kind of dog.”

“A Jack Russell terrier. Yeah, why?”

“How is your patronus determined? Like… how does it know?”

“It’s supposed to reflect your innermost personality,” she answers, not missing a beat. “It represents something about you that makes you who you are. Something that gives you strength, I would say. So for Harry, that would be the thought of his parents fighting for him.”

“I like that,” Jake says. “A lot of things in that universe are just grossly poetic though, aren't they?”

This makes Amy chuckle. “Very true.”

“What do you think yours would be?”

“Oh. Hmm.” She presses her lips together. “I don't know. What do you think?”

“We could find out,” He grins, reaching for his phone. “I’m sure there's a BuzzFeed quiz.”

      He's right – and although Amy rolls her eyes at him at first, they end up having a laugh at the quiz, picking the options they think best suit the other one and shrugging when the results suggest Amy’s would be a horse, and Jake’s a stag.

“The descriptions are pretty accurate, though,” Amy says, reading from Jake’s phone. “Brave and fearless, and your greatest asset is your ability to love. Sometimes you get a bit hot-headed and impatient –” Jake fake-gasps. “– but your friends are your source of peace, getting you through the good and bad.”

“I still think it should be a ninja turtle,” he mutters. “But yours is true, too. Loyal, smart, underrated badass.”

“It just gave us the same patronuses as Harry and Ginny.” Amy smiles. “They do get together later, so I guess that works.”

“Spoilers! I haven’t gotten to that part yet!”

“Oh, come on, it’s really obvious.” She kisses the pouting grimace off of his face. “Different question. What memory would you use to cast your patronus?”

“I have thought about that,” he confesses, blushing. “It’s a three-way tie. The first time you told me you loved me. That evening when you stood outside my door and told me you wanted to be with me, for reals. Maybe even our first date, after the bet. All of those, together… I think they’d make a damn good patronus.”

“Wow.” Amy almost looks taken aback, like she wasn’t expecting that moment of sincerity. “I’m surprised you didn’t just say the first time we had sex or something.”

“Would you have wanted me to say that? Wait, is that yours? Santiago –”

“Oh my god, obviously not –”

“Obviously? Wow, hurtful, much –”

“Just let me finish!”

“Title of –”

“Stop!” Amy’s shaking with laughter, holding her hand on top of his mouth just for a second. “Stop, stop. What I meant to say was that it’s the same for me. That’s what I’d think of, too.”

“Even the bet? Even though you lost?”

“Yes, babe. Even though I lost.”

“So it wouldn’t be the first time we had sex, then.”

She smirks. “We’ve had better since.”

Then she leans over him, and her lips are on his, insistent but soft at once. His heartbeat’s speeding by the time she pulls away, and it satisfies him to see that her face is a little flushed, too. 

“For the record,” Jake mumbles as she rests her head on his chest after, “this, right here – would also work for a damn good patronus.”

“Oh, yeah. No dementor would stand a chance.”

“Mm. You’re a nerd, but I love you.”

“I love you, too. Goodnight, babe.”

“Goodnight,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around her and allowing himself a brief moment to revel in the feeling that’s started growing in him recently.

Forever, this could be forever.

[hysterialevi]

Hjarta | Chapter 16

Fanfic summary: In an AU where Eivor was adopted by Randvi’s family instead, he ends up falling in love with the man his sister has been promised to despite the arranged marriage between their clans.

Point of view: third-person

Pairing: Sigurd Styrbjornson x Male Eivor

This story is also on AO3 | Previous chapter | Next chapter

A WHILE LATER

TEARS OF YMIR

Sigurd trudged through the snow-veiled woods, wishing desperately that he could veer off this path the gods had constructed for him. His mind was trapped in a perpetual state of fear, and the thoughts racing through his head only seemed to grow louder with every step he took.

He could feel it in his heart that Ulfar spoke the truth. There was merit in the accusations he threw against Dag, and Sigurd had even seen the man’s treachery for himself. He made it quite clear that he wasn’t on their side with the way he manipulated the assault at Kjotve’s Fortress, and the prince could no longer ignore the reality that was standing right in front of him.

But even then, Sigurd’s gut twisted at the idea of causing any harm to Dag. His entire childhood was formed of memories between the two of them, and he still saw him as the same little boy he once loved all those years ago.

He remembered the days they’d spend running around in the wilderness, only to end up covered in mud by the time they returned home. He hadn’t forgotten the way Styrbjorn would scold them for their reckless behavior, and how they’d make the exact same mistakes immediately afterwards.

The joy they shared, the sorrows they experienced, the burdens they had to carry -- it all stayed with Sigurd to this very day. He loved Dag like a brother despite the conflicts between them, and the thought of banishing him from Midgard tore a hole inside his chest. 

But he was a leader now. A future king. With Ulfar dead, Sigurd would have to step up and protect the people he left behind. His position as prince would no longer be a mere title, and he would have to do whatever it took to keep his clan safe. 

Even if it meant making a sacrifice as great as this.

“We’re here.” Sigurd said bleakly, stopping in his tracks once the waterfall came into view. He took a deep breath and gazed at the dreary environment, unable to even recognize the nature surrounding him.

This place once served as a sanctuary for the prince. It used to be a safe haven where he could take refuge when the troubles of his world proved to be overwhelming, and he often found a sense of tranquility in its earthly embrace. It always seemed to breathe with the spirit of the gods, and part of Sigurd even believed they walked with him sometimes when he ventured down this path.

Today though, the forest was barren of any life. The tragedies of the war had burrowed themselves into its very marrow, and it almost felt as if it could sense what was about to happen. The air was leaden with a suffocating anchor of dread, and it only seemed to crush Sigurd more and more the further he progressed.

He didn’t want to kill Dag. Every fiber in his being was screaming at him to stop. 

Part of even him was even considering simply exiling the man in order to avoid further bloodshed. Deep down though, he knew that wouldn’t be enough. He knew that Dag would most-likely run back into Kjotve’s arms once he broke free from the judgement of his clan, and cause their people a plethora of problems that they didn’t need.

It seemed like death was the only option here, and Sigurd hated himself for it.

“...Sigurd,” Dag said, approaching the man from behind. “Will you tell me what we’re doing now? Why have you brought us all the way out here? Is this about what happened between me and Ulfar?”

The prince kept his gaze on the view before him, leaving his hand close to his axe. His back was currently turned to the other man, and yet, he felt as if he could detect his every move.

“...Do you remember the day we met, Dag?” Sigurd asked. “All those years ago?”

The warrior noticed how his friend skirted the subject, but said nothing of it for now. “Of course. How could I forget? I was what, ten years old? Maybe younger? I had just given you a black eye during a training spar.”

Sigurd chuckled softly at the precious memory. “Indeed. And if I recall correctly, it wasn’t too long beforehand that I was boasting about how easily I’d be able to fell you. I was the king’s son, after all. Nothing could touch me.” The prince smirked. “...It seems that arrogance was my greatest enemy back then. The day I met you was the day I learned humility. It was the day I gained a brother.”

Dag leaned against a nearby tree, crossing his arms. “And do you still feel that way?”

The other man paused, his voice hardening with a cold edge. “...Yes. But I suspect that the sentiment is no longer mutual.”

Growing restless with anxiety, Sigurd finally decided to put this game to an end and shot an icy glare at his childhood friend, practically boring through his skull. He approached the older man and looked him in the eye, trying to keep his breath as steady as possible.

“...Dag,” he whispered, “you know how I feel about you. We may not share the same blood, but you are my family. No matter how distant we may grow, there will always be a link between us. And I will always see you as my brother. That’s why... I need you to tell me the truth.”

Sigurd took a few steps closer, barely shifting his gaze. “...Are you the traitor?”

Dag scoffed at the question and shook his head, reluctant to give a direct answer. “You can’t be serious. You actually believe in the nonsense Ulfar was spewing?”

“I believe his words held merit,” the prince persisted. “You can call it nonsense if you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that you stand as an accused man.”

The warrior stammered for a moment, taken aback by the preposterous notion. “What are you talking about, Sigurd? You were there! You saw what happened. I defeated Ulfar in honorable combat. I cleared my name. Isn’t that enough?”

“Enough for the Allfather perhaps, but not enough for me. Everything Ulfar said was true. The way you handled the assault nearly got all our people killed, and I know you well enough to know that you’re too smart to make such a grave mistake. You did it intentionally.”

Still, Dag remained in denial. “I don’t believe this. You would trust the word of a paranoid old man over someone you consider to be a brother?”

Sigurd raised his voice slightly, unable to hide his anger anymore. “I trust what I see! And over these past few weeks, I’ve seen you do nothing but traipse through the shadows like a thief in the night, hiding like coward whilst our men died on the battlefield. I saw you return from Kjotve’s Fortress without so much as a scratch on your armor, and I saw the apathy in your eyes when they fell on Thora’s corpse.”

The prince’s expression darkened with ire. “You claim you are innocent, but innocence always speaks for itself. I see no good reason why I should question Ulfar’s accusations, and I doubt you can give me one. So I’ll ask again--” he leaned in, “--are you the traitor?”

Dag rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at the waterfall, furrowing his brow in disbelief. It was evident that he had something to say, but the stone shackles of pride hindered his ability to come clean.

“How do you know Ulfar wasn’t trying to save his own skin by throwing me to the wolves? He was in a much more powerful position than I. He could’ve done anything he liked and gotten away with it!”

“What reason could Ulfar possibly have had to turn against Arngeir? You really think he would’ve been willing to endanger Thora’s life? Or Eivor’s? He saw them as his own children.”

“Who knows? All I’m saying is -- he was awfully quick to pass judgement on me. We had hardly set foot on Bjornheimr’s shores, and he was already prepared for a fight. The way I see it, Ulfar wanted to use me as a scapegoat. He was the jarl’s right-hand man, after all. He knew he could’ve said anything about me without raising suspicion. I mean, just look at how easy it was to fool you.”

Sigurd’s glare only sharpened at that. “You think I’ve been fooled, do you?”

“Am I wrong? I know you held Ulfar in high regard, but typically, the largest shadows are cast by those who stand the tallest. He may have been a good warrior, but that doesn’t mean--”

The prince shook his head in frustration. “--Enough, Dag! Enough with the lies. Enough with the deflection. Just give me a straight answer. I’m done running in circles with you.”

The other man fell silent, completely at a loss for words. “...You still don’t believe me, do you?”

Sigurd lowered his head in sorrow. “...I wish I could, Dag. Trust me. I wish I could. But if I’m going to keep this clan safe, I can’t allow anything to hinder my judgement. Not even when it concerns you.”

Dag let out a sigh and nodded in defeat, staring blankly at the ground. It was clear to him that his arguments were doing nothing in terms of swaying the prince’s mind, and he didn’t know what else he could say to divert the man’s skepticism. 

“...I see.” He murmured, looking back up at Sigurd. His demeanor had completely shifted compared to when they first arrived at the waterfall, and a grim sense of treachery clung onto his shrewd face. “...Very well then, old friend. If that’s how you wish to do things.” 

Dag pushed himself off the tree and straightened his posture, finally deciding to reveal the truth.

“...Indeed, your conviction is rightfully placed, Sigurd. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep up this facade, but I see no point in maintaining it any longer.”

The warrior paused for a brief moment, taking a deep breath. 

“I was the one who warned Kjotve.” Dag confessed. “I was the one who assisted him when he ambushed Bjornheimr, and I was the one who told him to flee his fortress before our clans could arrive. I told him of this alliance.”

Sigurd’s heart instantly shattered upon hearing the confession, and his jaw clenched in rage as a spark of betrayal flared inside his chest. He knew his suspicions had to be correct, but even then, nothing could’ve prepared him for the immense disappointment he’d receive from a revelation such as this. 

The prince wandered away from Dag in shock and began pacing along the waterfall’s edge, uncertain of how to respond. 

“...And why exactly... did you do it?” Sigurd questioned, his tone alarmingly quiet. “What led you to commit such... foolish treason?”

“I did it for the good of our clan.” Dag answered monotonously. “I did it to protect us.”

The other man threw a puzzled glance at him, bewildered by his justification.

“To protect us?” Sigurd gestured to the distant village, storming towards the warrior. “Bjornheimr lies in a bed of its own ashes thanks to you! The jarl’s daughter has been murdered, and you have the nerve to act as if this was an act of heroism? I grow tired of your deception, Dag. Just tell me the truth. What is the real reason you did this?”

The traitor’s nose crinkled in envy, and a newfound sense of contempt twisted his expression. He was behaving in a manner that Sigurd had never seen before, and yet, the prince felt as if he had known this side of Dag for his entire life. 

“We don’t need the Bear Clan,” Dag said. “All they’ve done is weaken us. They’ve even weakened you. Especially that boy.”

Sigurd cocked a brow. “Boy? What boy? You mean Eivor?”

“Yes. He’s turned you soft, Sigurd. Everyone can see it. Before we came to this forsaken village, you were a warrior. A leader. A man worthy of holding a crown. You led raids on our enemies, and you crushed anyone who dared threaten our people. You were a king in everything but name. But now? You’ve just become another pawn.”

“What are you talking about, Dag? How have I become a pawn?”

The traitor laughed. “Are you joking? I see the way you look at Eivor. That man has you wrapped around his finger. He’s distracting you from the war, and you’re allowing it to happen.”

The prince’s face was plastered with a look of dread. “You know about me and Eivor...? Who told you?”

Dag waved a dismissive hand. “No one needed to tell me. It’s as clear as day. You may be wed to Randvi, but we all know where your loyalties really lie. You’re only fighting this war for one reason, and that’s so you can take Eivor to bed while the rest of us do the hard work.”

Sigurd’s eyes snapped onto Dag with an iron grip, and his voice dropped to a dangerously low level.

“Watch... your tongue, snake.”

The other man chuckled. “The truth is painful, isn’t it? Nothing stings quite like the bite of a harsh reality you can’t accept. But please, by all means -- continue to ignore it. Ignore it like you ignore everything else, and let your kingdom crumble for your own selfish needs.”

Sigurd brushed off the traitor’s taunts and got straight to the point, eager to put this to rest. “So you’re a puppet for jealousy now? Is that it? You did all this... just because you envied Eivor’s position?”

A scoff escaped Dag’s lips. “Pfft. I want nothing that man has. Like I said before, I did this for the good of our people. Whether or not you choose to see it that way doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. The gods know this too.”

“The gods spit on oath-breakers like you! Odin has no need for men such as yourself in his company, and neither do I.”

“Then deliver your justice, my lord. Strike me down with the judgement that you deemed so righteous you had to hide it away from prying eyes. The people of Bjornheimr may not be able to see you here, but the Allfather does. And he will remember.”

Sigurd turned away from Dag and rested a firm hand on his axe, using every bit of his strength to stifle the tears that threatened to spill. He wanted nothing more than to scream at the gods for putting him in such an impossible situation, and he could already feel himself breaking down from what he was about to do.

But he had to keep his promise. He had to. Although no longer in this realm, Ulfar was depending on him to protect their clans, and Sigurd didn’t have the heart to deny the man his dying wish.

...But he loved Dag. In spite of all of his crimes, the prince still saw the traitor as the same boy he grew up with, and his memories of their time together only seemed to be resurfacing with every second he spent delaying the inevitable.

What was he going to do when the man was dead? Sigurd may have despised Dag for going behind his back, but a piece of his soul remained bound to him nonetheless. There was a link between them that couldn’t be broken, and the prince felt as if he was about to sever one of his own limbs. 

A part of him would undoubtedly go with Dag once the man departed from this realm, and Sigurd couldn’t imagine himself ever getting it back.

He just prayed he would be able to forgive himself someday.

“You... you were my brother, Dag.” Sigurd said, his spirit collapsing with every word. “I loved you. I did. You turned my childhood into something that I’ll always hold dear. I’ll never forget the time we spent together, or the joy I’d feel when you were around. Those memories are something that no one will ever be able to take from me.” He tightened his grip on the axe. “But I can’t let you walk free from this. I can’t let you hurt my clan anymore. I... I have to keep my promise. I’m sorry.”

Yanking the weapon out of its sheathe, the prince lunged at Dag without saying another word and buried the axe in his chest, immediately causing the man to stiffen in his clutch. The two of them toppled over onto the snow after a single strike, and within seconds, the traitor was already gasping for air.

He writhed in Sigurd’s embrace like a worm on a hook and desperately tried to pry the blade away from his heart, but to no avail. The other man simply held him down and forcibly kept the axe in place, pushing it deeper and deeper into his torso as tears began streaming down his cheeks.

Sigurd couldn’t believe what he was doing. As a child, he always pictured himself leading their clan into a glorious victory that would forever grace the lips of bards across the kingdom, and spread into endless sagas for generations to come. He thought his role in the war would be one of grandeur just like in the tales his father often told him, and he believed his path to Valhalla would be laden with silver and gold.

But now that he was actually here... he was finally realizing just how torturous the nature of war really was. He wept at the sight of Dag’s life vanishing from his eyes, and his stomach churned at the feeling of the man’s blood staining his hands.

There was also the fact that the traitor died without an axe in his grip. He left it with Ulfar back in Bjornheimr, and thus, paved the way straight to Hel’s gates. His soul would forever evade the magnificence of the Corpse Hall, and a part of Sigurd crumbled at the thought of never being able to reunite with his friend again.

Dag was gone for good... and it was all his fault.

Letting go of the axe’s hilt, Sigurd allowed himself to relax and climbed off of Dag’s body, taking a seat beside him as a series of breaths fled from his lungs.

...He did it. He actually did it.

The traitor had been removed from their midst, and their clans would be able to proceed without worrying about betrayal. Kjotve would no longer have an ally inside their walls, and Gorm would give them the last step they needed before taking him down at last.

Sigurd supposed he should’ve been relieved now that things were finally in their favor, but all he felt was emptiness. 

His closest friend lay defeated under the blade of his own axe, and his world remained shaken by the multiple losses it had just suffered. He experienced no pleasure in the face of this so-called victory, and the only thing he had left to hope for was the sight of Kjotve’s head.

He just wanted this war to end. He wanted the constant turmoil of these never-ending battles to become a thing of the past, and he wanted to cleanse the seas of the blood that stained their shores. 

Sigurd dreamed of a future where people wouldn’t have to share his clan’s pain, but deep down, he feared it would never become a reality. 

The war had already lasted for a couple decades, after all. He saw no reason why the gods would allow it to end anytime soon.

“Sigurd?” Someone said abruptly, dragging the prince back to his senses.

The man glanced upward from where he sat and gazed in the distance, only to find Eivor watching him from afar. 

“Eivor...?” Sigurd whispered, quickly wiping his face dry. “What... what are you doing here?”

The blonde viking stepped out from the trees and approached his lover, careful not to distress him even further.

“I saw you leave with Dag earlier,” Eivor answered softly, still drained from the shock of Ulfar’s loss. “The two of you were gone for a while, so I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He paused for a second, allowing his eyes to wander towards Dag. “...You really killed him.”

The older man stared helplessly at the sky, peering into the canopy of branches swaying above him.

“...Yes. I did.” He said, his voice trembling slightly. “I had to.”

Sighing morosely, Eivor pushed his way through the mounds of snow and walked over to Sigurd, crouching down in front of him. He comforted the distraught prince by gently caressing his cheek, and flicked away some stray tears with a simple swipe of the thumb. Afterwards, the young man reached over to the axe protruding from Dag’s chest and carefully removed it, wiping it clean before laying it in Sigurd’s lap.

“You did the right thing. I know it wasn’t easy, but our clan will sleep better at night thanks to you.”

Sigurd loosely met Eivor’s gaze, entirely devoid of life. “...I feel like a monster. Dag was... he was my brother. I know everyone else saw him as a traitor, but to me, he was always that little boy I met in Fornburg.” His expression sank with grief. “...That little boy is dead now because of me. I killed him.”

Eivor held the prince’s face in his hands. “No, Sigurd. You didn’t kill that boy. Dag did. A long time ago.”

The redheaded warrior offered nothing but silence in response, causing Eivor to return to his feet.

“Come, my love.” He beckoned, reaching an arm out. “We should return to the village.”

Sigurd remained motionless on the ground, simply looking over at Dag’s body.

“Wait. Could we... bring him back with us? I’m aware of Dag’s crimes, but even then, I’d like to give him a proper burial.”

“Of course,” Eivor assured. “Many in the clan will question his presence at the funeral, but I’ll send someone to retrieve him once we return. Don’t worry. We won’t leave him behind.”

Sigurd propped himself up on one knee and grabbed the other man’s arm, rising from the snow. “Thank you, Eivor.”

The Wolf-Kissed guided his lover away from the waterfall and called for his horse, leading the prince back home.

“Come on.” He whispered lovingly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

[chuchiotaku]

[Preview] TBA 16: On Flamel, Quidditch and Noble Houses

The Holidays may be over, but the adventure is just getting started. Bullies, Quidditch, secret meetings, and red herrings, oh my! But wait, what’s this about noble houses?

Just to let you guys know I’m still alive and writing. :)

[Target Release Date: April]

But then the portrait hole opened, and in hopped Neville, panting and sweaty with his legs awkwardly bound together by the Leg Locker Curse. He tried to make his way to their group, but a missed hop caused him to fall flat to the floor.

Ron’s eyes widened. Right. This happened.

It took a second before the majority of the occupants of the Common Room burst into laughter, including Dean and Parvati. It made Ron’s gut queasy with disgust, especially when he saw the pained looks in Neville’s eyes.

“Neville!” Harry exclaimed, running over to the fallen boy while Hermione whipped out her wand to cast the counter curse.

“SHUT IT, ALL OF YOU!” Ron snarled. “Before I shove that curse right up your stupid arses!”

One of the Gryffindor older year’s smile dropped into a glare. “Who died and made you Merlin, Weasley?”

“He said shut it, Towler.” Lee growled. “And there’s nothing funny about this! Neville could barely move right!”

“Bit rich coming from you, Jordan,” said Towler coldly. “Pranks and shite are only funny if they’re coming from you or the Weasley twins, eh?”

“Why you—!”

“I’m OK.” Neville panted with a hand in the air. “I’m OK. Sorry for the trouble, but I’m OK.”

Dean, who now looked rightly mortified for his initial reaction, went to help Neville to the couch. At that, the crowd in the Common Room shrugged the whole event off as if it were nothing and went back to their own business.

“Sorry about that, mate.” Dean said apologetically.

“Sorry, Neville.” Parvati seconded weakly, looking just as guilty.

Neville smiled understandingly. “It’s OK. If the circumstances were different, I’d be laughing with you too.”

Harry frowned. “What happened, Nev?”

“Malfoy. Ran into him at the hall near the library. Wanted to practice that curse on me or something like that.”

“You should have gone to a teacher!” Hermione exclaimed..

“What good will that do?” Neville said sadly.  “Snape will make it my fault somehow, and then Malfoy will just get back at me! I don’t want to cause any more trouble!”

Ron exhaled noisily at that. He knew Neville still had confidence issues around this time, but he had hoped that by being included earlier, the boy would be better this time around.

“You ought to stand up to him, Neville!” Parvati said strongly. “Those bullies will just keep tormenting you until you do! You can’t let him keep getting away with doing this to you! Frust me, I’d know. Padma and I get it a lot because we’re not pure Brit.”

“Or pureblood.” Dean added. “But you’re a Gryffindor, Neville! And you’re worth more than ten of that snake!”

Lee frowned thoughtfully. “Shite, we all know the lions and the snakes have bad blood between them, but to think firsties would actually do this to one another…” He nodded. “I’ll have to bring this up to a few people sometime. Can’t have you lot worrying about getting hexed out of nowhere, can we?”

Harry fished out a Chocolate Frog pack from his pocket and handed it to Neville. “We have your back, Nev. Like what Dean said, you’re worth more than what Malfoy will ever be.”

“...Am I?”

“Sure you are!” Ron said confidently. “Malfoy and his dumb and dumber babysitters got nothing on you! One way or another, we’ll rub that onto their sorry mugs!”

Neville let out a watery laugh after a bite into his frog candy. “Thanks, mates.”

“Ouch! What the—?”

“Oh,sorry, Weasley, didn’t see you there.”

That familiar, annoyingly nasal voice had Ron forcing air through his pursed lips in an effort to keep calm. “Fancy seeing you here too, Malfoy.”

Beside him, Neville stiffened while he heard Hermione hiss in irritation. The red head ignored them all in favor of subtly glancing at the others in the stand with them. Aside from Crabbe and Goyle, he saw Nott, Zabini on the stand with them, as well as a number of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, some of which he recognized.

Well shite, not a lion in sight, since we had to sit somewhere else to get a good vantage point. But why does Malfoy have to be here this time too? If I didn’t know better, I’d say he just followed us here to be a total prick. Ron shook his head. On second thought, knowing him, he definitely would. Shite, what I’d give to smash the ferret’s face in...no, Ron, stop! Change for the better, remember? You’re eighteen years old! You’re not supposed to let that idiot get a rise out of you!

“Wonder how long Potter’s going to stay on in his broom this time? Want to make a bet, Weasley?” Malfoy crooned haughtily. “Oh, that’s right, you probably don’t have even a single Knut to your name!”

“Hilarious, Malfoy, but I actually have a couple of Sickles on me right now.”

Ron did a mental cheer when he saw Malfoy do a double take at his deadpan answer. Since he was fairly certain that Harry would stay safe in this match, he wasn’t as high strung as he was in his first life, and was in a better mindset to verbally spar with this pathetically young version of their rival. Seeing that Ron was keeping Malfoy occupied, Hermione gently directed Neville to focus on keeping his eyes on the pitch. 

Snape had just blown the whistle to start the match, and at once, the players quickly dispersed, with Harry circling the pitch like a hawk in search of the Snitch. Hermione made a noise at the back of her throat, crossing her fingers while keeping her eyes on Harry, while Neville sucked in a breath and stayed rather still and stiff while gripping his wand.

“You know how I think they choose people for your Quidditch team, Weasley?” Malfoy tried again. “They pick people they feel sorry for. There’s Potter, who’s got no parents, then your brothers, who have no money. Maybe you should try for your team, Longbottom, having no brains and all.”

Neville’s blush was especially apparent with his face as pale as it is right now, but he managed to say clearly. “I’m worth more than ten of you, Malfoy.” It got a laugh out of the idiot and his airheaded bodyguards, but Neville didn’t say anything more.

Ron grit his teeth in a bid to reign his temper in, but bloody hell, even at eleven, Malfoy was brilliant at pushing someone’s buttons, even if he wasn’t any good at dealing with the aftermath because he was such a snivelling, spineless berk. 

There has to be a way to get him off my back without having to use our fists or getting detention. Come on, Weasley, think. 

What ever made Malfoy leave us alone whenever he’d try to pick a fight with us? Other than punching his stupid face in? A nice jinx? Like that one that’ll give him oversized buck teeth? Ron shook his head. No, Weasley, no ideas that are can get you detention! So what else? Other than getting hurt or jinxed, it’s usually because there’s a Professor around, wasn’t it? So an authority figure. But there’s no one around right now with enough authority or power to scare Malfoy... 

...Wait, power?

A wild idea suddenly occurred to Ron. Now that he thought about it, it made a lot of sense since it was something Malfoy took as much pride in as being a Slytherin. He wouldn’t have thought of it before, but after everything that happened, everything he had to learn this month…

And with the people around me, this could actually work. What do I have to lose at this point, anyway? At least I could say I tried to not go straight to giving Malfoy that black eye.

[sevenstarsinning]

Summary: Raditz loses his mate when Planet Vegeta is destroyed and finds himself working alongside Prince Vegeta. When he comes to Earth to recruit his brother, he’s dealt another devastating blow when Goku refuses to join and leaves him near death. He’s found by a human and attempts to adapt to life on Earth.

Ch.1 - Ch.2

Chapter 3

Raditz

Raditz stared back at you with murderous intent. A human questioning his worth? That was something he could not stand for.

But as you went back to tending to his wounds, not disgusted or berating him further, something occurred to him. Humans were weak, that much was obvious. But the weaker ones weren't cast aside as nothing. In the very short time he spent in West City before tracking down Kakarot, he saw it first hand. The weak were not treated as less and the strong as more.

His eyes trailed down your body, fully taking in your appearance for the first time. He found you pretty, for a weak human, anyway.

He did feel slightly bad about destroying your house but your attitude made him not care as much as he should've.

"Sorry about going off on you," you finally spoke, as if you were reading his mind. His brow furrowed, curious if you really were a mind reader.

He arrived on Earth with very little information about it's inhabitants. For all he knew, that's exactly what you were, a mind reader and all of his deeply guarded secrets were wide open for you to invade.

After you finished patching him up, he watched as you examined all of the damage the crash had caused. Your entire bedroom was gone, replaced by his pod. The bathroom across the hall was salvageable but still a disaster. Half of the kitchen was collapsing but, luckily it was the side opposite the major appliances. Overall, the damage could've been much, much worse.

"Hey, Raditz, can you lend a hand? I need to get this at least partially closed up before the storms start tonight," you called from the kitchen.

Raditz reluctantly agreed, at least it would distract him. He helped close up the open spots in the walls with tarps and plastic sheeting from the shed. It wasn't perfect but it would keep most of the rain out.

"I guess we're leaving the pod here for now," you said, examining what was essentially a UFO.

Raditz watched you take in every detail of the pod you could while you circled around it. For him, there was nothing extraordinary about it because he was used to seeing them and traveling in them only when absolutely necessary. But to you, he imagined it was something quite remarkable based on the childlike wonder you displayed while you ran your fingers along the edge of the door.

He held his hand up to a scanner to the left and the locks disengaged. The door slowly lifted revealing the inside.

"Okay, totally thought that was just a window," you admitted before stepping forward to take a peek inside.

"It's very small compared to the other transports we have... had on our planet," he corrected himself without considering the ramifications. All he could do was hope you didn't catch it.

Right when you turned your attention to him, he braced himself for a marathon of questions. But they never came. You merely looked at him with an expression he wasn't entirely familiar with. You seemed... sad. But that couldn't be right unless you really were a mind reader.

"Do you mind if I check out the inside?" You asked, turning your head back to the pod.

"Don't press any buttons." His tail uncoiled from his waist and moved slowly back and forth behind him while he watched you explore. He tried to keep his mind as clear as possible in case you were listening in.

When you sat down in the plush seat, you looked up at him and immediately screamed when you saw the furry brown appendage. His tail puffed up and whipped around wildly.

"What!?" Raditz looked around for whatever threat nearby that made you let out that god awful sound.

"Is that a tail? I thought it was some kind of ridiculous furry belt." You took a deep breath and calmed your nerves while his tail went back to it's normal amount of floof.

"A furry belt... why would I wear something like that?" He asked, puzzled by the odd assumption.

"Dude, you're wearing a battle speedo, a furry belt is not that far out of the realm of possibility."

"A battle speedo? Are you still speaking this planet's language?" He asked, brow furrowed while his tail darted back and forth.

"It's called English, it’s not the only language here, and yes, I'm still speaking it. That little piece of spandex covering your... " you trailed off and gestured towards the middle of his body, "that whole area is pretty much a speedo and you said you're a warrior. It is, therefore, a battle speedo," you explained.

"Step away from my pod, you can't be trusted if your mind conjures up those sorts of ridiculous things," he chided, ready to close his pod up and ban you from it for making a joke about the remainder of his Saiyan clothing.

"Whatever, big guy. I need to call the insurance company and get screwed over on this claim anyway." You brushed past him to the living room and made yourself comfortable on the couch.

By the time you got off the phone, you were seething. It turned out there was no fine print in your insurance premium about losing part of your house to a space pod. Most of what you were saying went over his head. He had no idea what insurance premiums were and considering the way you were acting about it, he didn’t care to find out.

"This is perfect, I have no idea where I'm going to sleep or how the hell I'm going to fix this." You crouched and leaned against the pod. Fighting off anxiety was a lot more difficult than it should've been. It had a way of swallowing a person whole and plunging them into darkness.

Going against everything his own brain was screaming at him, he sighed, "you can sleep in my pod."

"Thanks, but where are you gonna sleep?" You asked, looking down at the shredded hunk of springs and memory foam that used to be your bed.

"In my pod, obviously. You're not foolish enough to think I'd leave you alone in there, are you?"

"Come again?" You asked, eyebrows raised as you regarded him.

"It's just sleeping, human. What's the problem?"

"Sleeping next to random strangers you found in a field isn't exactly safe for females here."

"It's cowardly to attack while someone is asleep or unable to defend themselves." He felt a twinge of guilt saying that, he wasn't afraid to fight dirty if the situation called for it.

"I guess if you were going to hurt me you would've done it by now. It's not like I could fight you off, even injured." You stood and looked around for something to keep you occupied before the stress did you in.

The sun lowering in the distance turned the sky into a tapestry of pink and orange. Raditz was sore from his rib injury but he was still determined to keep himself distracted by helping you move some of the bigger things in your house. He wasn't sure what compelled him to do it. He had zero interest in befriending humans, you were no exception.

Sometime after midnight, Raditz retired to his pod. You opted to give the couch a try and see if it could work as a bed for the time being.

He climbed in his pod and engaged the locks. It was far too soon to be back in the cramped space but it was at least a piece of home. The only piece he really had left. His armor was broken along with his body and he was stranded on a planet meant to be a quick stop on his journey.

Everything changed so drastically in such a short amount of time that he barely had a moment to process all that he lost when Planet Vegeta was destroyed.

His chest ached when memories of her played through his head. That was the biggest question that needed answering. How was he supposed to continue without his mate? Their bond was stronger than it had ever been last time he saw her. And then she was just gone, dust spread among the space in which his home planet used to reside.

A tap on the door was a welcome reprieve from the thoughts that haunted him. He blindly hit the side panel to open the door for you.

"So, I'm terrified the roof is gonna collapse on my ass," you announced. Without a word, Raditz scooted as far to the left as he could and put his massive hand out to help you climb in. The two of you kept your eyes on one another as he pulled you in to settle next to him.

The same expression from earlier returned to your face. You looked at him as if you could see past all of the bullshit and right into his mind. But it was more than that and it finally clicked in his stubborn head. You weren't reading his mind at all. You recognized his overwhelming sadness because it was in you too.