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ms0milk · 1 year

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𝟗 | 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐭

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"You are mine."

no cw bkg is no poet laureate. the curtain falls on y/n's business formal era. a long overdue confrontation, an eerie garden, IV drip of catharsis, romance a la knock down drag out fight, and an unexpected guest. memories of Alderan monsoons. we're halfway through, folks. the prince and his guard are more similar than they'd like to admit 5.8k

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glossary lmao featherbit is what happens when you're shooting with feather fletching (not plastic) and you don't move the thumb supporting the arrow out of the way fast enough. the feathers move so fast they slice your hand-- i once had to pull some out of my bone, they really get in there. i practiced archery with a bunch of old women as a kid so this might be their special term and not technically accurate. not sure, pls enjoy :)

In the interim between spring and summer, there are a few weeks filled with rage. Fights break out in the kitchens, porcelain shatters at the market. Children used to bumps and bruises suddenly snap the necks off their dolls in the moments after stubbing toes or pinching fingers.

The string of your bow snapped in a tight draw this past spring, while you were training in the forests beyond Aldera’s gates. The nocked arrow bucked sideways with no clear direction and panicked into the ground a few feet away but not so aimlessly that it didn’t catch your bowhand with its fletching first. You screamed that day, for the first time you ever remember and not because it hurt. A quirk like a sneeze maybe. You screamed again, something pent-up and ferocious, after biting the feathers from the thick of your thumb and then calmly packed up to go home.

When misfortunes pile up, there isn’t a person alive that won’t eventually snap. That’s what May is for, that’s all May is for. Those few weeks before summer are especially unlucky and nothing else, and the rage doesn’t mean a thing. Takoba is a vacuum and the prince is fire in a jar, nothing else. It doesn’t mean anything that your fingers are twitching, or that it’s November.

In the sandpit of Aizawa’s training quarters, Takoban soldiers watch on as Uraraka finally convinces you to shoot for her. They whisper on the sidelines sipping from their waterskins, chatting, gossiping all half dressed in some combination of armor and day clothes, or some just look. More than a few only watch you, somewhat apprehensive of the Alderan girl who fired into a crowd with no discipline from Aizawa.

In fact, the Master watches the pit now from his office above the sprawling arena, nursing black tea and a scowl.

You ready a borrowed bow. It’s so natural, the weight of the weapon in your bicep and the sting of fresh strings under your fingertips. “This one’s mine!” Uraraka beams while you repeatedly draw the empty string to your cheek and lower it again for adjustments, “I’m a terrible shot so it doesn’t get much use.”

For a week it’s been this. Training with the timid soldiers and their sweet apprentice captain. Declining a great many invitations from Denki and Mina to “sleepover.” Rising earlier than dawn, banishing the guard sent to watch your door and searching again for your prince. Avoiding the kitchens. Memorizing every corner of the seashell castle in cold autumnal hallways, its sprawling outer walkways battered by sea air, and studying all of the history parsed out in seedsized carvings along odd walls.

For someone so loud, your prince is adept at hiding. For someone so highly trained, your ego cannot take much more of this. Every morning spent searching for someone who thinks nothing of you unless it is to torment.

When the prince is at home he hardly dresses daintily, opting instead for hunting vests and all their loops and hooks for weapons. He wears gold and furs at home, so do you. In Takoba he wears stiff linens with silver climbing from the cuffs. Little blue bows to tie closed his tunic like a viscous babydoll. If you couldn’t still feel his hands at your throat you would laugh.

Shinsou is off running errands for his master and so your only other companion is Sero, gangly as ever, and grinning sleepily as he watches beside Uraraka and her men. “I haven’t seen you shoot in years, Y/n!”

“Why have you seen me shoot at all?” You murmur as you reach into the quiver at your hip to select an arrow. There’s no gallery in Jeanist’s arena at home so unless a lord or lady would like to stand amongst sparring soldiers there is no place to watch you train.

You finger through the decorative fletching and select the one that reminds you most of your queen. Oilslick green feathers, every shimmering color of a peacock sewn to a white birch shaft.

Everyday you find him at lunch, your prince and his friends, growling and smiling through their food in the Great Hall with all the other hundreds of castle staff taking meals. Everyday you station yourself outside the Hall, safe from lunch rush crowds, and everyday he must pass you to leave. You can follow him then. Noon is when you begin your shift. He doesn’t grunt or rumble or speak a single word. Not once all week has he looked at you and no longer do you want to watch him.

Uraraka beams, “Bullseye and lunch is on me!”

“Lunch is free,” you whisper through the draw of your nicely nocked arrow. The bowstrings sit heavy under your fingers as you pull strength to your shoulders in Alderan form. Hips grounded, back straight, shoulders bulging under the pressure, familiar and sore is the draw of a bow and arrow.

Hands trembling, sweat pooling, legs clenched and chest heaving, no matter how often you work your body to exhaustion you can feel him near you. Baths and laundry do not wash away the too soft touch of his hands. Even if it’s only to yawn– to blink– each time your eyes close the prince’s flushed face comes to you, and even more haunting than that is how cold you feel when those same eyes open again. How pitiful your appetite for remembering humiliation. You ready your body to shoot.

You haven’t trained for fifteen years just to miss a shot in front of foreign company. It’s perfect, you are perfect, you know exactly where this arrow will land and how to get it there, like a magnet the arrowhead screams bullseye. You draw tighter, pull the green fletching close enough to your cheek that it’ll cut you on release because the pain will distract from the rock between your ribs, the suffocating anguish tucked under your heart. Why can’t you ever shake him? It helps to hold your breath.

Prince Bakugou's eyes haven’t changed a single time in his life. Wet and worried in a violent carriage. Disinterested in passing on your way to class, bored and rolling when his mother stops to speak with you. Conceited around a campfire. Viscously entertained in windy hallways. No matter what they’re looking at, you will never mistake them, no matter where he is you will find them.

He’s watching you somehow now, you can feel it.

“Kats wait, look!” Sero hollers just loudly enough that you’re shaken from the memories and again focus on aiming. By now the soldiers around him grow impatient and they groan when Sero shouts again, “drinks‘er on Ochako if Y/n hits the mark!”

“I did not say that.”

Above the arena, beside Aizawa’s office, a great distance away, is a little blue balcony and its little blue princess. Right beside her, your prince glowers and slows to a halt as she does. It is well before noon.

Uraraka tries to calm the growing excitement from the crowd, “Princess Fuyumi, please note I said no such thing!” But her soldiers only chuckle and whistle when the princess pretends not to hear her.

What are they doing together? You flex the tips of your fingers just enough to cause pain. Bakugou is not merry, he swells too wide without his cape, he is not with his Champion and so he is not safe and gods how he sucks the soul from a room.

Steady.

Blood red eyes glow from under his fair hair as they always do and they brand you like two pinpoint spotlights. He doesn’t pay attention to Sero chiding or Uraraka bemoaning her wallet or the princess waving her lacey handkerchief beside him. He only watches you.

Smooth pressure like a papercut at your cheekbone and the tension in your shoulders disappears as it always does when an arrow goes flying. Release. For a second you do think you smile.

Perfect center. Finally you breathe again when the room bursts into laughter and clapping, lowering your aiming fingers from your cheek when you look up to the balcony. Amid the cheers, Uraraka is the only one to notice oilslick green blooming from the side of your thumb. Blood begins to pour when you make a point to turn, and to bow deeply to the observing princess while Bakugou glares silently beside her. His charged stare closes the noisy distance. It vibrates the feathers that pierce your flesh.

“I suppose we already knew you were an excellent shot!” Fuyumi cups her hands around her mouth so that you can hear the smile in her words.

Overlapping with her glow, savage eyes drink your blood– the blood that seeps between your fingers as you cup your featherbit hand and your weapon with the other and bow even slightly deeper before rising, weeping wound tucked politely behind your back, to catch the your golden prince leading the princess away.

Bakugou skips lunch today. He skips second lunch and tea and attends not a single meeting, and so you spend your entire wretched day searching for him.

What you would have given to stay in Uraraka’s training pit. To spread out in the sand and watch the soldiers laugh and spar while she bandaged your hand. While she scolded you lightly and slipped you sweet cookies to help with the bloodloss. Instead you left with Sero at lunchtime as you always do, to collect your prince from his hiding place.

The rock of your ribs turns to lead when relief hits you before worry. When Bakugou’s golden head doesn’t appear among his friends at their regular table. You cannot know rest until you know where he is and once you find him you will never know rest again.

You’re wandering now like you have been for hours, without direction from one twinkling meeting room to the next. From silly tea parlors, to the armories, to cartography offices, all empty of the Alderan Prince.

You don’t miss your mother often. In fact, there’s a warm wet hole where her face should be when you think back on golden fields and cotton aprons. You do miss Aldera, obviously you do, and with each mission’s obstacle it becomes more and more clear that home will never be what you left it as. Home will never again be dazzling your queen or hunting with your master, it will be dousing the prince’s flames. Aldera will never again be verdant and protective, it will be Bakugou’s hands on your throat and hips and cheeks and surely he will kill you.

Passing a tidying chambermaid or lazing guard, Takoba Castle has opened up. The prince’s chambers still evade you, but you’re no longer lost in chilly halls or tripping on the odd floor runner. Staff don’t stare anymore. A lord or lady might shirk away from your halberd but they don’t seem too concerned with the woman attached to it. Takoba is getting quieter. In your prince’s distance this week something like peace grows.

A collection of hardly audible voices are the first things to stir the castle in hours and you turn under the stairwell archway to mark where they come from. It’s easily evening now, cold sunsets tipping through windows you happen to pass.

“No– of course I will, but I don’t think–”

“Not for you to think about.”

Winding soft around nothing the voices become distinctly two. One of them is clearly a growling Alderan and as you climb up the tight butlers’ stairwell, the grandeur of an East Wing walkway spills over your face with that same sleepy sun. Seaglass Hall. A mnemonic device from your week of wandering; the ceiling of this appendage hallway like so many others in the castle is made of bottled glass, but in the east, only in the east, is it in shades of seafoam green.

Your eyes land squarely on Prince Bakugou, peering startled into the stairwell’s darkness and framed by the archway you trudge through. You’re not sure how much longer you can survive the sight of your jewelry twinkling in his ears. His gold is awash in soft greens beside Deku, who sinks into the shadows under such cool-toned light and you speak before thinking while dusting your hands on your trousers, “Is this where you’ve been hiding?”

Bakugou hasn’t so much as frowned at you since the incident in the kitchens. Besides the archery demonstration this morning, he hasn’t even flicked his hateful eyes in your direction. He hides, he’s hiding, the way he’s kept to himself this week is different than dislike and now the death of your peace is palpable.

You pretend not to feel your pulse jump when his lips part, before he remembers that you are no longer worth speaking to. Is that what he’s thinking as his jaw clenches? As he rights himself from standing casually with Deku to his usual intimidating loom. As his pretty red eyes drift through the empty hallway and do a terrible job of hiding his frustration with your words.

There is a crater distance between you and family, between you and any semblance of familiar and soft or vulnerable and whose fault is that? So often it’s no one’s– it’s the queen and her station, it’s Jeanist and his rank, it’s your dead mother, it's the uniform you wear and the eyes that interpret it, it’s the soldiers who drink together and who salute when you walk past, sometimes it’s the color red, sometimes it’s recovering from an injury, it’s in the sympathy of strangers, it’s in your muscles and your favorite weapons and your inability to lose.

Even if only for a second, down the hallway, as you move forward Bakugou seems to lean back.

Deku perks up behind the broad frame of your prince who has begun to puff like a cat in the lengthy silence, and even though you haven’t had much of a chance to speak with the little Champion past your accidental spat in the throne room he doesn’t seem bothered by the memory or by the prince who seethes as he’s talked over.

“He’s all yours Y/n! I’m sorry, didn’t realize you were looking for him.”

Where Bakugou should have snapped or snatched, he only stills. No barking, not even a cross of his arms. He turns his head away as you approach as if pretending to roll his eyes but the prince you know doesn’t shrink in his anger. If he truly wanted you to meet his irritation all he’d need to do is blink. All else fails, he could just grab you again– a puppet on strings pulled too close and smile as you fall to pieces. It worked so well last time.

All three of you seem to realize more words won’t cure this quiet and as Bakugou peels away to storm down the hall, the little Champion nods his goodnights sympathetically and gestures through the seaglass after him.

Maybe this is what the sea looks like beneath its frothing waves? Maybe it’s quiet like this, sun bleeding through cool light at lengths immeasurable and asking at a whisper for you to follow.

“Royal summons. Katsuki hates being late.”

Maybe this is what hell looks like? Maybe the heat of the setting sun through stained glass is a warning and your prince, a golden fire, is just a trick the light can use to draw you in like a bug who doesn’t know better. Bakugou’s broad shoulders shrink the longer you let him get away. Maybe you shouldn’t fall for it again.

“Thank you Champion.”

When Deku slips down the stairwell you came up from, peace truly dies at sea.

Ten and some years ago was Aldera’s wettest summer. Thunderstorms, flooding, bugs like you wouldn’t imagine– most of the season was spent rescuing crops and standing still in rare breezes, but the children had school.

Between training and sleep you dragged yourself to class with civilian kids to learn numbers and poems that would do nothing to protect the queen, in a room full of people too nervous to speak with you. Green lightning ripped through the afternoon sky and caused such bruises that the clouds turned purple. Rain pelted the castle walls sideways.

You were late. You fell asleep standing on shift in the North Wing, tricked into resting your head on the wall from the lull of storm on stone and so when you remember this day the first thing that comes to you is sprinting through golden halls, school bag swatting your hips and back. Sliding down the banister of the Main Hall as if it were a playground, a swift turn under the maiddoor and then a mad dash to the East Wing where your lessons were bound to have started without you. Thunder shook the castle.

The sound of rain grew louder and after bounding round the building faster than a magpie, you realized why. In one of the four hallways overlooking the courtyard, wind, rain, and debris sailed through the line of open windows and beneath them an exquisitely detailed rug drank up the water that pooled inside. As the red and gold details wet, the castle seemed to be bleeding. It slipped beneath the floorboards and the space was soaked in an ancient smell that could only be dredged out of wood by divine floodwater.

If you were old enough to know the words, curses might have sprung from your mouth as you abandoned the school mission to seal your home back up. At eleven years old this was no easy task. Perhaps the bugs hiding in their trees outside laughed as they watched you leap to catch the first great window frame and drag it down shut. Maybe the birds winced as water filled your school bag and plastered your hair hot across your throat– at your soldier’s uniform, already too big, clinging to your bones now that the rain had taken them too.

Who left these windows open?!

The queen loved her art, she loved every floor runner and tapestry, and you would not watch on as the wilderness tried to reclaim her castle. As an adult now, fighting the rain for a rug is of course too silly to be noble but at eleven it seemed to be the most important thing in the world. You burned with purpose. You burned too with embarrassment, at the state of your uniform no other child wore and the mess of your hair even as you refused to take shelter or call for help. Then Aldera’s little prince rushed onto the scene from the opposite end of the hall.

Oh how you could have laughed at the state of it all. At Bakugou, scrawny and pretty and dressed up in jewels like he’d just come from an party, and at the thought of what he saw when he turned the corner. Besides how silly you knew you looked, the comedy of the situation hit you for a moment as curtains of rain, branches, and wind whipped inside the eight still-open windows between you.

It was the first of many days you would feel painfully ridiculous beside your beautiful prince. When an unripe peach sailed inside on the gales and cracked you over the head, the pity in his soft eyes stung. This was not how a royal guard should hold herself. Her hair should be kept back, her face should remain neutral, and most of all her cursed uniform was supposed to fit.

As you were knocked off balance, the prince jerked towards you but before he could take a full step into the storm another few fruits were dislodged from their tree and whipped inside around rain and leaves. Bakugou too was clocked in the head, a peach to his cheek and caught another before it could fly into his mouth and knock out a tooth.

As the pair of you righted yourselves and the hallway grew wetter, the thought of class felt too cruel. The decision between your queen’s rugs and her son, too overwhelming– which should you shelter? A bruised prince or a ruined hallway, which would the queen hate more? Your redemption for falling asleep on duty kept drifting farther away, and then Bakugou began to laugh.

He reached up for the window closest to him and shut it tight with a little hop and a whip of his shoulder. A vine of lightning lit the hallway in negatives for a moment.

He grinned, “Get outta here!” And tossed the peach in his fist across seven open stormy windows to you.

Bakugou’s hands are always fists and if you had known this when you were eleven it wouldn’t have charmed you so much. When the prince cracked a smile in the petulant wind tunnel something light like wheat fields came to life inside of you.

“Yes sir.”

As if reading your mind, the grown prince growls when you catch up to him in the Takoban hallway.

Bakugou takes up too much space to hide from anything. He could suck the air from the room like a great big fireplace if he truly wanted to and suffocate every soul inside, so it’s somewhat remarkable, as you fall behind him, that you aren’t brought to your knees or sent through the pretty glass ceiling.

Why doesn’t he speak? What right does he have to be acting strange after pulling you apart for all to see?

The sky through the ceiling above you shifts quietly to purple as the sun sets, although anything but blue feels wrong in Takoba. Immediately at the thought, the red glow of the kitchens plays over the backs of your eyes and your focus darts down again to those dangerous hands you keep at a distance. Bakugou flexes them as he steps.

His big hands dance. At no more than a step or two behind your prince, marching together down the longest hallway you’ve ever seen, you can’t quite look away from his gold fists under the bottlegreen light. Truly, they are always fists. Always a threat and a reminder like an iron to a branded dog. His hands that cupped your face and pinched you close in the cursed kitchens, exalted by your fear. They lifted you like you weighed nothing and then they caged you in. His hands are only for pain. Playing tricks around a campfire. They are only good for fighting, sweaty and tickling with ripping explosions.

Bakugou pretends he can’t feel your warmth at his back as you drift closer.

Those are the hands that tore through a royal crowd and grabbed hold of your nightgown when they thought no one was around to see. They’re thick and violent– they’re soft. Your well-kept rage stirs as you remember. When they brushed your knuckles warm in a cream calm dream or gripped the fabric at your waist on horseback. Plucking splinters from your bloody cheeks. Gentle when they smothered the flames in your hair at the edge of the forest.

The prince jerks to a sudden stop and when you’re too busy watching the ripple of veins in his fingers, you bump into his back. You both flinch on contact; only at the touch do you realize your prince has been keeping you exactly as distant as you him and then that flinch becomes a fling of mismatched magnets when he snaps his head around, you raise yours, and your pair of fraught eyes meet in lieu of shouting. It aches like a strike to the temple.

In a second your prince is turned and down the hallway again towards a set of modest wooden doors still ages away. “Fucking airhead,” he rumbles. The first words all week. Nostalgia turns to ash in your throat.

The seaglass hallway stretches on like a draconian landing pad with no decoration past the stained glass ceiling. From your week of research this is the only path in all of Takoba Castle that leads straight to the ocean. Something about floodwaters and enemy attacks by sea means that this maze of a seashell at least serves a purpose and that this hallway must be special. Your mind races with the possibilities of what your prince has to do on the other side of it. You wish he would speak to you, and then you wince.

What do you miss? His hate-filled spew? You just wish to be rid of this silence you determine, and slow down behind him with generous distance when you both finally approach the exit.

As the prince pulls simple wooden doors apart a great gust of salted air blows the loose hairs around your face with a horrible tickle and where you expect the sea, iron and blue flowers stare back instead. You and your golden prince look over some kind of solemn garden suspended under the moon.

Aldera is a lush green kingdom, Takoba is a portside merchant city. You know nature and fields and crops. This garden is man-made and more than that it is poorly kept. Metal flower beds, soil spilling over their lips from holes dug by birds or damage done by sea winds, and eerily, no weeds. Maybe the sea doesn’t carry weeds like rivers do? Only one type of sad blue flower wilting like a bell. The garden is at least as large as Aizawa’s training pit and filled with copies of the same bellflower weeping up trellises or littering the ground but still it feels vast and empty. Like a cemetery with no more plots to offer.

It’s only you two in the cliffside clearing, not a royal in sight. Who summoned him? Bakugou keeps his back to you while stepping between the garden beds and you wonder if he is unsettled too. You’re glad he does not watch you while you begin to wander.

By all calculations this path should have led to the sea but when you approach the precarious edge of the garden there is still a five story drop between you and high tide. The castle is built on a bluff above the beach. A foundation of rock. Below even that, black water stretches spindly fingers in the sand.

Who is this place for? On one side of you, Takoba Castle’s white spires reach into the now-night sky and on the other a deadly drop into the sea. A single type of flower planted over and over again into boxes that could hardly keep them alive. When you happen a glance between your feet, you’re startled by the movement you can see under them. Candles flickering inside a great many feet below you. A garden with a glass floor.

The air becomes suddenly thick with realization as you scan what parts of the clearing aren’t shadowed by clouds passing over the moon. The one door you came through and a steep drop off the edge with no railings. A single way in but decidedly two ways out. This is no garden.

“Hey.”

Something is trying to distract you. Had it not been just the two of you out here, you never would have registered the quiet voice drifting low through the breeze as Bakugou. Gentle? When you don’t turn around he rumbles soft again, “Eyes.”

His second words all week. The sound is warm wool. Bakugou is trying to speak with you and where surprise at his voice should make your heart race, something much more sinister has settled on your pulse. You are not listening, in fact you cut him off with a wave of your hand instead of turning at his shockingly soft cadence.

“Highness, who sent for you?” You demand delicately, back still turned as you skim the ruined garden. This place is meant to be a prison. You shouldn’t be here. Who is it supposed to keep in?

Had you been watching him, you would have caught the prince’s jaw slack and then coil tight again with your dismissal. He holds himself tenser and tenser.

“Highness–” You try again, but his voice, noticeably less gentle, cuts you off.

“Eyes, not n–” It’s your prince’s turn to try again, but this time you spin around to keep him quiet and take the upper hand.

“We have to leave.”

Suddenly you’re approaching him in the center of the garden, weaving over spilt soil and sad flowers faster than he is able to stop you coming closer, and you don’t yet know that there’s a reason he drifted so far away before trying to speak. You are too busy identifying blindspots to notice him curling inward from rage. All you register is his lack of haste and it compounds a preexisting fury in your bones. You can parse out your feelings about his words later, about the way he called to you, about his tenor, about a thousand things– later. Strong is the sea air tonight.

The distance you kept between his hands and your body this week vanishes under the circumstances and now you are so close you should smell the sweet of his ignition begin to drip in anger. Instead you watch shadows over his shoulder and pause in front of him, “Who summoned you?”

“Will you–”

“Highness who–”

“Shut up!”

Faster than immediately, somehow simultaneously, your body registers his threat that you are so practiced in withstanding and you take a steadying step back, no longer hiding your gaze from that which wants to kill you. Up, up, up is his shadowed face and those tiny shining suns that have done too good of a job until now, in protecting him.

The last time you watched each other like this you feared you might have to hurt him. He is a bit taller, he is much more beautiful than you. You wish you could have known him. It is only one terrible second before the shouting begins but in it is your prince’s final moments of softness, what might be fragility under the reds of his eyes, what looks like worry at the corners of his lips, washed over by crimson fumes like an eclipse or the death of a star.

“Highness–”

“Be quiet.”

But you have already had your fill of his golden cheeks and so you turn with your arm outstretched in the direction of the door, “We need to–”

“Are you fucking demented?” He growls. He does not budge. He stares and you no longer have the patience for him. It is slipping from you like sand.

“Walk and talk my prince, we have–”

“Excuse–?”

“Highness,” you hiss back at him and steady your hand on the hilt of your short sword.

You’ve pushed too far because oh how he bites the air now. He spits, “If you cannot–”

“I cannot–”

“– listen–”

“Come, now.”

“You will listen when I speak.”

“You do not speak to me!” And how you bite back.

He rushes you.

The prince is threatening in the best of situations and when the wall of his body obliterates the space between you, your arms move faster than you’re able to control as they pull your sword from its scabbard. Bakugou flies against your blade as you raise it, pressing his own chest against the flat steel you keep vertical in defense. You hate to admit that he scares you.

“You will lose the fight you pick with me,” you murmur close enough to taste the air he breathes too close. He does not fight back or raise his hands and sparks do not come to life around you. At your back, Jeanist’s halberd itches to hunt.

“And you will lower your weapon.”

“I am your mother’s soldier, not yours.”

Bakugou bares his teeth to the realization that your obedience has only been a courtesy to this point. Pillowed chest to yours, you are close enough to feel the rumblings of his ribcage. Of his biceps as he holds them still at his sides like two great snakes that would like nothing more than to kill you. Dripping fists. You can see it in the tremble of his throat, his resisting a thousand things, screaming, flying, eating you alive, biting down into the meat of your neck that his lips brush as he bows into your blade– all at once like an implosion. What is he holding back?

“Then run back home to your queen.”

“You are my responsibility.”

“Oh yeah my hero,” he swells and pressed deeper, drawing blood, “my little captain–”

The nickname from the night in the kitchens cracks the wax seal of your rage before it can even melt and in seconds you’re losing the fight to contain your ancient violence. Blade now cutting through his tunic and Bakugou still does not pull back. He does not raise his own weapon or his magic and his hands don’t reach for you.

“Check that ego, Eyes.”

“I am doing my job!”

“You! The havoc wreaker, charged with my protection? Careful not to make me laugh Captain or I might just slit my throat.”

The threat oozing from this garden is as far as a thought has ever been from your mind while it is otherwise filled with curses. Could you kill him? You will bite through your tongue before holding it. Every time he calls you captain something inside heaves like the sea.

“Do you tire of torture?”

“You think yourself so special?”

“You are a beast!”

“You are insufferable!”

“You suffer my charity easily enough!”

You almost want to wince at the shape your prince’s lips make when he remembers the weight of your earrings and he presses so deep into the curve of your body and blade that your foreheads bump in threat.

“Run away home.”

“You are not my queen and not my master.”

“And you are still Alderan!” He snaps sweet, “You are my responsibility!”

Sparks come like tears to Bakugou’s eyes and his canines shine when he bares them to you, too close to see the details of his delicate face.

“I am your prince and she’s not here! She is not fighting for her life in Takoba– Fuck the queen!”

“You–!”

“You!”

“You are cruel!”

“And you are mine.”

Somehow the ocean falls. The world stops turning and at the words neither you nor your prince make a single sound.

His scowl melts to shock, jeweled eyes first slits and now wide under slack brows. Blade to his neck and still Bakugou’s hands do not crackle and your breath hardly comes when you need it, and you want to touch him– strike him– you think you might kiss him. You think he might let you, and then comes a voice from the sea.

“Get a room.”

In a shadowed corner of the glass garden your blue ghost bends at the waist to smell bellflowers. His hair is white.

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tagged angels ✧.* @nnubee @jctaro @nonomesupposedto @zombiewarprincess @kotarousproperty @strawberry-mentos69 @sveetnn @eirlysian @lunrai @km7474 @arayoflia @annoyingleftpinky @noomaisdone @cr33pycrawler @iced-chai-tea-latte @cathwritestragediesnotsins @tragicallygray @idimmadontgiveashit @kooromin @k1tk4tkatsuki @litiri @kiwibao @kiwifuji @mmmaackerel @sarcasticlittlebook @condy-wants-a-cookie @mysticalfridge @dududubebo @falling4fandoms @katanaski @babitchsuki @romiinlove @cherripunch26 @acid-rain27 @madmayo @bakugouswh0r3 @heart-of-haunt @zukowantshishonourback @420mitskilover @ultracrii @nochuonii @carrobrumbrum @bkgthinker @chandiewashere @sleezy-axeriix @screechingdreameater @mecuryxmoonstone @onlysarcasm @ilovemushroomss @when-you-are-just-done @levisbae2

couldn't tag for some reason :,( pls check your security settings!

#bakugou x reader #a hymn to black water #bakugo x reader #bnha #mha #bnha fantasy au #mha fantasy au

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jess-the-vampire · 5 months

Text

Finally finished the wrapped requests

Catharsis

Birds of a Feather

Friends in Low Places

Grim Grinning Ghosts

October Sky

#my art #spotify wrapped #original characters #vampire #haunted mansion #the owl house #demon #toh #a reverse of feathers and mud au #a reverse of feathers and mud #areverseoffeathersandmudau #emperor belos #philip wittebane #caleb wittebane #golden guard #hunter toh #kikimora

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noelanik-art · 2 years

Text

Tonight, on “how many ways can you experience catharsis through someone else’s D&D campaign”:

“You can hold all the knowledge in the world, but if it dies with you, it doesn’t matter.”

“Do I know that he’s gone?”

“Yes.”

“My eye is on you.”

“Don’t touch me”

“I’ve waited so long to do only that”

“No no no no no no no.”

“There is a place among the stars where only your heart can reach, and I’ve known it since I met you.”

“What follows the age of arcanum eventually must be the age of salvation.”

“A love as profound as any that have been on Exandria surrounds you.”

“There is no god that strides this world that I worship more than I worship your heart.”

“I vow this: I bear your name. I bear it on this stone. And one day I will bring you home.”

Revivify and pure ether.

“Hope that you are forgotten.”

“Are your children safe?”

“They are. I hope it was worth the risk.”

“I just cut you off and kiss you.”

“In the kiss, I cast cure wounds on you.”

“I forgive you for anything you think you’ve done, and so does Evandrin.”

“I push the locket into your hand and run away.”

“I cast teleport to Maya, to Cerrit’s children.”

“I think it will be easier for us both to forget, don’t you?”

“And somewhere in the world, someone is holding the work of your life.”

“It’s all on you, smart girl.”

“We’ll all find our way to where we’re going next.”

“Damn the ring of gold, the people of Avalir must survive!”

“The material goods mean nothing anymore, only life. That is what we serve.”

“Avalir comes before any oath I made in a past life.”

“You choose ruin and the world. You choose to cast aside the gift of your court and the right of your kin and all those of the realm of your birth, to remain here in the realm you have chosen.”

“I’m sorry, my lady, I love you, but I love another more.”

“I would rather mine break and yours remain whole”

“Remember the architect arcane, Laerryn, the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“I’ve always chosen the city, and I’m going to choose my son.”

“You will always be five years old to me, no matter how much you grow.”

“What you see on the outside doesn’t matter, my son. Just remember what’s here, and you will always see me for who I really am.”

“Y’all decided to be dads, like what the fuck.” (Aabria and Marisha and I were all on the same page with this).

“Will you marry me?”

“This will work, Avalir be damned.”

“I love you, my family.”

Travis’s INCREDIBLE HDYWTDT

“I would like to ready an action so that, should I fall, I drive my blade into my best friend’s heart.”

“As I go down, I make sure I don’t miss.”

Patia’s final wish.

“Do not leave me. You cannot leave me now.”

“Are you the woman who doomed the world, or are you the woman who saved it?“

“What have you done?”

“My best. Finally.”

“There are many things that you do not see but it would be right for you to know.”

“The last thing you see is a griffin made of stars, called back to its feather, bearing on its back a young boy bearing a journal.”

“Elias leaps into the arms of Evandrin, reunited.”

“I will find the secret of how these worlds were made, and I will come and find you.”

“Do you think anyone will talk about how beautiful your dream was?”

“No, but that’s all right. It was real for us.”

“What matters more? The dream, or the dreamer?”

“There are many more dreams to come.”

“New dreams don’t have to tread the paths of the old.”

“Wingspan, I’m here. They’re both here. They’re both here. Tell me you’re coming.”

“Darling, is this goodbye?”

“No. No. Those children are the best thing we ever did. And it’s going to take a lot more than this to keep me from coming back to them, and you.”

“I’ve been able to become anyone I want my whole life. But I just want to be with you.”

“I can’t believe that the thing I almost broke beyond fixing was us.”

“Meeting you and being loved by you is a miracle, so I know they’re real.”

“I’ll move to the door, and look. My children deserve that.”

“That’s a 31.” Cerrit’s miraculous survival

“The brass ring endures. I want you to know, you gave us a chance.”

“I don’t think you hear anything back, you just feel relief.”

“One day, the people of Exandria will triumph, and the calamity will end.”

“At the end of it all, hope will return, as many times as it needs to.”

“And the fire as brightly as it may burn does not burn as brightly as your love.”

“And on a 31, at the very top of that cloud, the last member of the ring of brass gets to keep his promise to his family.”

“You don’t get to give your kids the world that they deserve, but you get to give your kids the world that they can fight for with you.”

“It did happen, and it did matter. And though the calamity is here, because of you, it will not be here forever.”

Truly an incredible collaboration by every member of the EXU: Calamity cast. I spent so much of this episode experience strong emotions. It’s been a while since I cried during a Critical Role episode, but this one definitely got to me.

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yandere-daydreams · 1 year

Note

I'll bite. May I request to see what the genshin men of your choosing fuck instead of the reader lmao

i'm going with my mondstadt boys because i think they have the most Repressed vibes (save for, like, maybe alhaitham or ayato). again, this is going on below the cut because it gets nasty.

tw - disturbing themes, unhealthy relationships, obsessive behavior, and questionable behavior all around.

kaeya would fuck your wine glass.

it's colder than he'd like, and it's not the most comfortable method he could've chosen to vent his unrequited affection, but he's a determined man. he likes it when he can still see the slight smudge your lips left on the rim, when he has something to trace over with the head of his cock while he imagines what your real mouth would feel like, how warm your tongue would be against his cock compared to cold, hard glass. sometimes, if he really can't help himself, he'll invite you over to his apartment for a few drinks and steal your glass away when it's still half-full, set it aside so he can savor the taste of your lingering saliva while he pumps his cock into the stained bowl, letting it mix with what's left of your wine. his little hobby's cost him quite a few bottles of vintage, but still - a desperate man has to take what he can get, and he's nothing if not desperate.

diluc would fuck your pillow.

your favorite one, to be specific. it certainly wasn't his proudest moment - the long seconds it took to cut a thin slit in the fragile silk, the way the air hitched in his throat when he first felt the downy feathers against his cock - but there's a softened sort of catharsis to it, a spark of warmth in his chest as he breaths in your scent, shuts his eyes, and imagine it's you underneath him as he ruts into your pillow and he fights not to bite into the fabric and make himself seem more depraved than he already has. he knows he shouldn't, that one day, you're going to do more than comment on the strange dampness, the odd smell, the way his face goes red when you lay down your head at night, but he just can't seem to, not when you're still so delicate. not until he has something more accommodating to replace it with, at least.

albedo would fuck your lab supplies.

beakers, journals, chalk sticks and quills and inkwells - whatever catches his attention after you leave for the day and he's left alone with so many little reminders of his love for you. he's not an idiot, he's not going to stick his dick in a test tube again, but he does tend to get carried away - teasing himself with the tip of your favorite pen, grinding against a lab coat you'd worn early that day, jerking himself off to your scribbled notes and leaving you to wonder what strange, whitish substance he'd spilled across your logbook when you return, the next morning. sometimes, he'll take a risk, see what he can get away with while you're too engrossed in your experiments to notice his hand moving strangely underneath his desk, to question why your saline solution is so much cloudier than it should be. he loves your inquisitive mind, but sometimes, it can make you neglect things like flushed cheeks, airy tones, how tightly your lab partner hugs you when you say goodbye.

but that's not a bad thing, he supposes.

it's just another sign that you're meant to be together.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere genshin impact #yandere diluc #yandere kaeya #yandere albedo

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lokisasylum · 3 months

Text

A beautifully written article!

[I managed to translate a bit of it]

Crazy and ecstatic

In the formula of popular music, completing good music and performance is only half the success. What fills the other half is the artist’s capabilities. Stars have the power to make audiences dream. So their stage has a dreamlike sparkle and excitement. However, the icons of popular music who transcend borders and command the times have one additional ability. They make you want to. His first solo album FACE, created with Jimin's breath and heat, answers the question of how much fans want him. Like crazy. David Bowie once quoted Nietzsche's concept of 'God is dead' and asked, "If we cannot replace God, how will we fill the space he has created within us?" Jimin fills the empty space in his soul that only the highest value of sanctity can take over with his crazy feelings for him.

Jimin is ecstatic. Ecstasy is paradoxical. He simultaneously embraces despair as much as joy, danger as heavy as an anchor, and fire in ice. [FACE] expresses the paradox that only an ecstatic and upright being can show. The title , which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its debut, depicts Jimin's solitude amidst cheers and the direct gaze of floating through Jimin's alluring vocals and elegant moves, making you feel him with all your senses and gaze. The double title depicts Jimin's narrative of freeing himself from transparent chaos and oppression through primitive gestures. Jimin's dance, which has the softness and agility of a feather and the powerful vibration and intensity of a storm, causes catharsis and allows us to be swept away by his extremely personal truth. [FACE] amplifies the paradox of ecstasy through the dimension of Jimin and brings it into the inner self of the audience. It is no exaggeration to say that that sweet and hot experience is a joy that only Jimin can provide.

In his book , which created the 'Stendhal Syndrome', which refers to the shock and excitement felt when viewing an outstanding work of art, Stendhal defined it as "the degree of ecstasy is the only measure of beauty in music." [FACE] is as ecstatic as Jimin. This is why we can discover a high level of aesthetics in [FACE], an album that Jimin created with his breath and soul, and in which Jimin reborn himself.

Crazy fantastic

In [FACE], Jimin becomes the moon. The plot of the moon tattooed on his body, the presence of Jimin, who has a coldly shining gaze on stage, a mythical dynamism, and a subtle and mysterious aura that dispels the darkness, are represented by the moon and expanded into the entire world view of the album. The sacred fate of the waxing and waning of the moon has been the inspiration for numerous works of art throughout history. [FACE] creates a new grammar of K-pop by organically shaping the ecstasy, chaos, and vitality created by the moon with Jimin's music, dance, language, and images. Jimin elegantly grasps and holds these huge chunks of metaphysics with the power of existence, and at the same time overturns them with a sincerity that cannot be approached through interpretation.

The most dominant symbol of the moon in [FACE] is vitality. No matter how dark the moon goes through, it rises brightly again. This album sequentially deals with Jimin's journey to face and find freedom by confessing the betrayal, anger, wandering, and emptiness he experienced during the night of the pandemic. It starts with , where you look back with an angry face at the reality you want to escape from, , where you suddenly wake up from a dream to a loud knock on the door and face the present, and , where you walk alone in a room with the lights off. After passing the lonely peak of 'Set Me Free Pt.2', the last track, he declares to himself "Finally free". Through [FACE], Jimin learns how to coexist with the night and is reborn in a new light as a solo artist with his own narrative and sensitivity.

This narrative of recovery and regeneration is again visualized as waves originating from the moon, adding a layer to [FACE] as an artistic text. The concept trailer that announced the birth of the album is the basis of [FACE]'s visual worldview and depicts the passion of water created by the moon's gravity. This wave, created by light and darkness, above and below, water droplets and the sea, facing each other and reversing, spreads to all visible places, including [FACE]'s music video, artwork, and styling, condensing and resonating the lunar world view. The music video for the title literary depicts the highs and lows of Jimin's anxiety and isolation as he struggles in the waters of drunkenness and emptiness by comparing it to the dynamics of the tide. And with this rhetoric, we are submerged in the sorrowful joy of . The music video for focuses on the shape of the moon. On the stage of a circular prison, the poem from Rilke's “The Widening Circle” is engraved on the body and the bondage of life is expressed.

[FACE]’s moon world view is excellent and clever. It overwhelmingly satisfies the demands of ‘What should we tell?’ and ‘What should we show?’ that are particularly harsh to K-pop artists, and presents a new philosophy of popular art. As you explore the world of [FACE], which has been elaborately built with new imagination and grammar, you will fall into a daydream as if you are previewing Jimin dancing and singing dreamily under a pale light as bright as moonlight at a solo concert he will one day hold. The sense of synesthetic unity provided by this worldview that extends and is complete from Jimin also extends to the driving force and possibility of Jimin's success as he takes his first steps as a soloist. [FACE] The musical foundation Jimin has laid with just one album is so broad and strong.

Crazy violent

Jimin is a person who smiles at moments when he needs to grit his teeth and creates a rhythm at the breaking point. Jimin's beautiful and intense sense of rhythm, which simultaneously pierces and surpasses the anchor, and even leisurely looks back, bends even the universe to flow through his stage.

[FACE] was created with the impetus of that rhythm. [FACE] is an unexpected album. Even Jimin himself thought that he would be promoting conceptual music like an idol. Jimin in BTS music, who embodies his charm, lyricism, and performance ability in the best image, is powerful and brilliant. Even if he had released a solo album to follow up that appearance, the outcome of his predestined success would not have changed. However, Jimin quit street dancing and started modern dance, starting again from square one like in the past when he chose to become an idol trainee again. Among Jimin's many talents, his ability to judge when it is time to start over and push forward is the most crucial. He believes in himself that he will eventually do it.

[FACE] is bold like Jimin. At a time when the world, and perhaps even Jimin himself, were most urging him to show something right away ahead of his enlistment, he produced an album using a self-producing method that required a long time and pains. It would not have been easy for an idol loved by everyone to express through music the futility of a drunken night and the distress of human relationships. However, Jimin recorded the process in a documentary and even included a lyric note as an appendix, which included words that would make fans' hearts ache, such as "Even if you stab me." Jimin, who has always shown himself to be optimistic and cautious, must have had a lot of thoughts and concerns before making this decision. Nevertheless, the reason Jimin made this choice was probably because he had to.

Jimin created the album in-house for 10 months, writing lyrics while facing head on the ego he wanted to liberate through music, counting countless nights and dawns, and composing the melody with every note and breath. I tried to find the essence of Jimin's music by re-recording it countless times. Because they faced and jumped into the process so fiercely, there is no core in [FACE], even though it talks about sharp emotions that cannot be refined. Jimin's calm and elegant vocals as he sings the song convey the calm and contemplation unique to a creation that has been rethought and reworked countless times.

This album does not only contain the fierceness and sincerity of facing internal wounds. The title , created by adding sweet imagination to Jimin's sensitivity and narrative, may be the most honest song in [FACE]. This song, which is dizzyingly intertwined with Jee Man's deep and elastic vocals that pull at the depths of your heart and a climactic groove that makes you unable to take your eyes off, is a very bold display of Jimin's special charm, which has been expressed passively as 'knowing something'. Implement. The reason why that temptation is so powerful is because music and performance mix and explode violently within Jimin's mood. Because he started his career in music through dance, for Jimin, performance is not an afterthought to music, but a companion to it. Because Jimin created the title, wrote the melody and lyrics, and suggested the choreography, is filled with Jimin's own aesthetic rhyme from the origin to the lingering sound. is a song that only Jimin can express accurately. There aren't many artists who have songs that only they can complete.

Jimin was reborn as a solo artist with a new history and dreams as his story and inspiration matured and his album was created. He must have spent time working with thoughtful producers who understood what it was like to be Jimin, as if embracing each other, and realizing anew how joyful and great music is. So Jimin says that even if he could turn back time, he would work on the album the same way. Creation is painful, but only through that pain can an artist gain life. Being harsh on oneself is an artist's instinct and destiny. And Jimin has always faced that fate.

There is this phrase in Rilke’s poem “The Widening Circle,” which Jimin tattoos on his body in the music video for . “I live in a wide circle / The circle is getting wider and wider in the world / I probably won’t complete the last circle / But I give my whole being to the cause.” [FACE] is a song about Jimin giving his whole being. It is a ‘wide circle’ created. As if there were no limits to moonlight, the beautiful and true wave of circles created by Jimin will spread wider and farther.

#FACE #FACE_AnniversaryMonth #jimin #bts #park jimin #bts jimin #pjm #jiminie #bangtan #Isak Choi #Rolling Stones Kor #Like Crazy #Set Me Free Pt.2 #1YearWithLikeCrazy #1YearWithFACE

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skyloftian-nutcase · 7 months

Note

Well now. How does skyward sword link feel about your obvious adoration for Warriors? Betrayal?

LOL hey now, my love for Skyward Sword Link is strictly platonic, he is my child, my peanut, my blorbo, my precious little bean with the softest most adorable face, my punching bag, my catharsis, my relatable sky child, my soft feather boy. <3

Warriors is my crush. There's a difference XD Though personally, I'd fall for Twilight more so than Wars, but both are very lovely options :D

#you ask skye answers #lovely tellie

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endlessbigbang · 10 months

Text

Masterlist

And that's a wrap! We're so happy to conclude the first big bang for the Sandman fandom with 23 amazing collaborations. Endless, endless thanks to everyone who lent their support, to our writers and artists and podficcers, to the alphas, betas, and cheerleaders and, last but not least, the readers. We're so overjoyed with the success of this event, and can't wait to be back next year!

You can find all creations beneath the cut, please leave all our creators some love!

Love,

the mods (@kairenn-n, @magicinavalon, and @queerofthedagger)

Title: Feathers take Flight (find a home in my heart) Writer: @the-narwhals-awaken Artist: @amielot Rating: Teen and up Warnings: No archive warnings apply Word Count: 16,233 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus / Hob Gadling, Destiny of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Death of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Destruction of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Desire of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Despair of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Delirium of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Hob's Coworkers (just characters). Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe- Wings, all relationships other than dreamling are somewhat minor

Summary:

In a world where there are those that have wings sprouting from their backs, many things remain the same- after all, human nature is human nature, and wings can only change so much. However, when a belated meeting turns into a chance to get closer, to offer and recieve trust and care after a century locked in Fawney Rig, a new path can be set upon- and new futures open up.

Fic link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48303274 Art link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48587698

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Title: blue windows behind the stars Writer: celestarium (@meadowziplines) Artist: Blargh (@brokebrainmountain) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator chose not to use archive warnings / Suicide, suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts Word Count: 21,532 Pairing/main characters: Gen; Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Lucien | Lucienne (The Sandman), Death of the Endless, Hob Gadling, Destruction of the Endless, Matthew the Raven, Desire of the Endless, Despair of the Endless, Delirium of the Endless, Background & Cameo Characters Up to 10 Additional Tags: Trauma, Panic Attacks, Flashbacks, Depression, Nightmares, Exhaustion, Catharsis, Farms, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Hopeful Ending

Summary:

Dream contemplates what death would mean for an Endless after the resolution of the Vortex, dragged down by untold millennia of exhaustion, suicidal ideation, and self-loathing. Struggling with his own past and mistakes, but with the conviction that he should give the world a new Dream of the Endless, he attempts suicide. Lucienne, Death, and Matthew catch up in time to save him, and to aid him in the weeks following, Destruction of the Endless offers to let Dream (and his friend Hob Gadling) stay with him on his farm in Aotearoa (New Zealand). A vulnerable and emotional Morpheus agrees. While there, Dream struggles to reconcile his emotional state and sense of self with his duty as an Endless, and most of all, find hope again. His friends, family, and allies do their best to help him find answers, aid in nourishing hope, and plan for the future.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48335944/chapters/121909153

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Title: Room For Love Writer: @staroftheendless Artist: @pintobordeaux Rating: Explicit Word Count: ~ 65,500 Warnings: None Pairing/main characters: Dream x Hob Additional Tags: roommate AU, friends to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, sexual tension, fluff and smut, artist Hob

Summary:

Sometimes in life, we make little decisions that lead to things so much bigger, we can hardly wrap our heads around it. After never quite getting along with people, Dream is surprised to become best friends with his new roommate Hob. He might even have a bit of a crush on him. The only problem? Hob could never like him the same way. Hob makes friends easily, especially with Dream, who's the best friend anyone could hope for. The only problem? After five years of living together, Dream shows up in places of Hob's mind where a friend doesn't quite belong. Now the only question left is, who's going to make the little decision that leads to bigger things?

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48699178/chapters/122844601 Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48715300/chapters/122886778

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Title: By The Dead of Morning Writer: Essie (@essie007) Artist: @teejaystumbles Rating: Explicit Warnings: Suicidal Ideation, Minor Character Death, Temporary Character Death, mentions of revenge porn, mentions of stillbirth Word Count: 39,775 Pairing: Dreamling Additional Tags (up to 10): reverse verse, canon divergent AU, Hob Gadling is Hope of the Endless, Human Morpheus, angst with a happy ending, Endless Family Drama

Summary:

When Despair is killed by the Kindly Ones for spilling family blood, she departs to the sunless lands, never to return. Thus, Hob Gadling, a lowly mercenary living in London in 1389, becomes Hope of the Endless. Over six hundred years later, Death takes him out for a drink, Desire in tow, to the Tavern of the White Horse, where he meets Morpheus, a down on his luck mortal crying into his sangria after a recent break-up. Desire believes that Morpheus’s death wish is genuine and that he will be dead within a year, but Hope is certain the man has too much to live for. Death offers a solution, she will not take Morpheus until he asks for her gift, but as soon as he does, she will grant it. Hob approaches Morpheus with every intention of winning a bet, but Hob is the youngest Endless by far and doesn’t know the family’s full complicated history. Or their connection to Morpheus. A reverse-verse canon divergent AU.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48475690/chapters/122275639 ---

Title: The Moonstone Writer: gisho Artist: @vriah Rating: Not Rated Warnings: no warnings Word Count: 21,254 Pairing/main characters: Rose Walker, Dream of the Endless, Jed Walker, Gault Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Knightly Quests, fairytale logic

Summary:

Morpheus finds a way to avoid killing a vortex - he gives Rose his own heart, forcing her to take his place as Dream. The new Dream has to deal with a life she never expected and try not to repeat her predessor's mistakes. In the waking world, the people she left behind grieve and wonder. And when Roses's little brother Jed is offered the chance to switch from superhero to questing knight, with some help from an old friend, he leaps at the opportunity.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48314338

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Title: little by little, and also in great leaps Writer: she_who_loves_dreamling (all_fandoms_reader) (@i-love-all-books) Artist: @d8dc Rating: Teen+ Warnings: Graphic violence Word Count: 21,082 Pairing/main characters: Dreamling Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, The Love Is Requited They're Just Idiots, idiots to lovers, Getting Together, Canon-Typical Violence

Summary:

In one world, Jessamy and Death depart for the Sunless lands, and it will be long years before Dream is free. This is not that world. ~ Hob is eating breakfast on Tuesday, August 10th, in the year of our Lord 1926, when Death comes knocking. Or, the obligatory fishbowl rescue fic, followed by a series of dates in the Dreaming which Dream doesn't realise are dates and Hob doesn't realise are real. AKA mutual pining with a happy ending.

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48535429 Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49062727

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Title: It's Only Forever, Not Long At All Writer: @beholdingthegaytimes Artist: @mayhemspreadingguy Rating: Explicit Warnings: None Word Count: 25k Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling Up to 10 Additional Tags: Masquerade Ball AU, Vampire Au, Alternate First Meeting, Violinist Hob Gadling, Vampire Dream of the Endless, Blood drinking, First time, Lust at first sight, Strangers to Hook Up to Lovers

Summary:

Hob should know by now not to go along with Death’s schemes, but here he is at a masquerade ball for her baby brother. He’s never met him, but Death's told Hob that he was indeed that pale lord that left the White Horse in a stink just before Death sauntered up and gave Hob immortality. Surrounded by impossible creatures and otherworldly beings, one specific person catches his attention: an inhumanly beautiful dark haired man in a raven mask. Hob loses track of him and the night spirals out in mayhem as Hob gets himself into trouble. Fey trouble to be exact. Or An alternate first meeting with romance, dramatic disputes, vampiric flare, and classical music.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/endless_big_bang_2023/works/48594271

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Title: The Seven Lamps of Architecture Writer: Quilling (@Quillingwords) Artist: @the-cloudy-dreamer Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Word Count: 29,640 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Magical Realism; Gothic Atmosphere; The Dreaming is both a setting and basically its own character here; Literary and artistic references and allusions; Meta on storytelling and narratives; Dream goes by all of his names here; POV Hob Gadling; In which he gets to peel back each of the layers like an onion (or a tulip bulb - this will make more sense later)

Summary:

Moonlight made pools of yellow on the marble. What was this place? And the man he caught a glimpse of, the first night this place opened up to him, from between the windows that could have been doors. That was his Stranger from the Tavern of the White Horse, almost a century ago, Hob was sure of it. Hob had come to suspect that on that otherwise ordinary summer evening, he had embraced immortality and perhaps, given up his soul with perfect happiness. What a fable that would be. -- November, 1475. Hob Gadling arrives in Venice, explores a mysterious world of cosmic grandeur, trades ink-stained love confessions with his stranger, and embraces the most important lesson of all: that life is a story all on its own, past and present and an ending that isn't really an ending at all

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48302461/chapters/121819900

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Title: Holding On While You Slip Away Writer: @acedragontype Artist: @alexxuun Rating: Explicit Warnings: Outdated queer language/ideas, transphobia, minor character death, public outing, witch trials and drowning, warfare Word Count: 33,148 Pairing/Main Characters: Hob Gadling/Dream (Morpheus) Up to 10 Additional Tags: Trans Hob Gadling, Queer History, Canon-Typical Violence, Grief/Mourning, Getting Together, Dream Sex, Dream Transformation, Trans Hob gets his preferred body in dreams, Top Morpheus, Top Hob Gadling

Summary:

He was not born Robert Gadling, he'd spent the first 16 years of his life going by another name. And yet, he'd always been Hob in his dreams. A Trans!Hob au exploring his various relationships in the context of queer history, as well as how he feels about his own body and identity.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48290944

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Title: Closing the Distance Writer: Ryunya (@ryunyaz) Artist: innenui Rating: Mature Warnings: Attempted Sexual Assault Word Count: 18k Pairing/main characters: Dream/Hob Up to 10 Additional Tags: H/C, Blood and Violence, Fluff, Sensory Overload

Summary:

Distance (and time) make the heart grow fonder, and both Dream and Hob are very happy to be finally reunited. However, Dream gets affected by the Waking world in ways he never has before, and that complicates things a bit.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48624715?view_full_work=true

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Title: Shoulder the Sky Writer: im_not_corrupted (@im-not-corrupted) Artist: @kd-heart Rating: Mature Warnings: Major Character Death Word Count: 35,279 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling Up to 10 Additional Tags: Heavy Angst, Depression, Dream of the Endless | Morpheus has Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Grief/Mourning, POV Second Person, aftermath of imprisonment, Emotional Hurt, Suicide Attempt, Post Season/Series 01

Summary:

Dream's time spent caged by Roderick Burgess has changed him, and he is tired. The Dreaming is loud, an ocean that drowns him. His responsibilities are another cage, and Dream comes to the realisation that he does not want to be who he is anymore. But he is Endless, and the Endless cannot change. It is not enough to banish the exhaustion that haunts Dream's steps, but he finds comfort in Hob's company as the two of them navigate a tentative friendship. It is a break, when the Dreaming gets too loud. It is not enough. Dream finds himself unable to find the words to explain what is happening inside his own head, though many are willing to listen. Eventually, his own desire to change and be something different manifests itself as a door inside the Dreaming that will take him to the Sunless Lands. It is not the change he wanted. But he is tired, and this door is the only way to escape his function. Though he doesn't take the chance at first, eventually the Dreaming manifests his own resentment for his function as a fog that blankets his kingdom, until Death seems like the only way out. Thankfully, Death of the Endless has another solution to offer her brother.

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48299206 Art (Podfic): https://archiveofourown.org/works/48631597

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Title: It's A Kind of Magic Writer: artful_fanfic (@artfulusername) Artist: @jeniidrawsshit Rating: Explicit (E) Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Drowning-Related PTSD Word Count: 21,957 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling; Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Matthew the Raven, Lucien | Lucienne (The Sandman) Up to 10 Additional Tags: Movie Night, POV Alternating, Appearance by Death of the Endless, Mutual Pining, Idiots in Love, Blowjob

Summary:

While Dream and Hob navigate their newly-admitted friendship by engaging in traditional movie nights, neither of them seem prepared to admit that being simply friends is the last thing they want. Will their assumptions about the other's wants and needs keep getting in the way? Will Dream stop wanting to glare at Matthew for teaching him about "Netflix and Chill?" Only time will tell. Fortunately for them, they've got plenty of it.

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48640318/chapters/122695573 Art: https://www.tumblr.com/jeniidrawsshit/725505982684397568/endlessbigbangitsakindofmagic

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Title: More Than a Concept Writer: AnneMcSommers Artist: @five-and-dimes Rating: Mature Warnings: Dysfunctional Family, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Touch-StarvedTouch-Starved Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Self-Worth Issues, Self-Acceptance, Homophobia, Acephobia, Internalized Acephobia, Non-Consensual Body Modifications, Trauma, Bad Parenting, Food Issues Word Count: 15345 Relationships: Desire of the Endless & Dream of the Endless, Death of the Endless & Dream of the Endless, Delirium of the Endless & Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Despair of the Endless & Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Dream of the Endless & Hob Gadling, Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling

Up to 10 Additional Tags: Family Feels, The New Inn is a Temple to Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, non-binary characters, Angst with a happy ending, Dream of the Endless| Morpheus needs a hug, Miscommunication, Sensory Processing Disorder, Misunderstanding

Summary:

When Desire plans to host a June family dinner, with human aspects that Dream doesn't understand, he turns to his human friend Hob Gadling for more information. What he learns leads Dream on a journey of self discovery, about who he is, what it means to be Endless, and his relationship with those he calls family.

Fic & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48096463/chapters/121279201

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Title: An EPIPHANY of POPPIES upon the BATTLEFIELD or Robert Gadling and Delirium of the Endless' Adventures through No Man's Lands Writer: @questing-wulfstan Artist: Mockspeed ( @mock-arts ) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, Canon-typical violence, the Corinthian is his own warning Word Count: 26k Pairing/main characters: Morpheus & Hob Gadling, Morpheus/Hob Gadling, Delirium of the Endless & Hob Gadling // Hob Gadling, Delirium of the Endless, Death of the Endless, Lucienne, the Corinthian, Dream of the Endless Rating: Explicit Up to 10 Additional Tags: Canon Universe, Canon Divergence, Hob Gadling saves Dream of the Endless from Burgess' basement, World War II, Substance Abuse, Hallucinations, Suicidal Thoughts, religious Hob Gadling, Catholicism, Blood and Violence

Summary:

April 1940, On a French battlefield, Hob Gadling doubts his will to persevere in being alive for the second time of his existence. He swallows morphine in the hope to soothe his horror-scarified mind, and summons a mirage of the stranger who occupied his thoughts as the patron of his immortality. In a Japanese psychiatric ward, Delirium of the Endless is alerted by Dream's irruption in her realm, who she found missing when she sought his company on her quest for the Prodigal. Disappointment overcomes her as she finds it was but an image of her brother conjured by a mortal, and so it does Hob when her eruption dismisses the vision. Delirium will not resign herself to her exponential loss of brothers however, neither will Hob Gadling withhold his help from any entity in distress, whether the stranger or his younger sister ; they just might hold the potential to liberate Morpheus between their four hands ...

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48626764 Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48305194

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Title: ask what you want of my soul Writer: PanBoleyn (@eidetictelekinetic) Artist: kdheart (@kd-heart) Rating: Mature Warnings: Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Word Count: 16,354 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Dream of the Endless/Hope|Elpis; Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Elpis (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Mythological Characters, Endless Siblings - Character, Original Characters Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Fem!Dreamling, Hope Hob (or Hope Ella), artistic license - mythology, Canon-Typical Violence, Temporary Character Death

Summary:

In modern English, they will even speak of hopes and dreams together, as if they were one. They are not, but hope is often what starts the turn of someone’s dream to their reality, and so perhaps it is not surprising, that the youngest child of Brightness and Day was drawn to the thirdborn child of Time and Night. In which Pandora's jar was never a jar, and Hope was in love with Dream before she was lost. And long, long after, Ella Gadling caught the attention of Dream and Death, setting in motion the end of a curse, and revelations along with it.

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48314875 Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48631930

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Title: Do you believe in life after love Writer: dino_cattivo Artist: spiaem ( @spiaem ) Rating: teens and up Warnings: none Word Count: 17,667 Pairing/main characters: dream/hob Up to 10 Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending self-Esteem Issues, Nosebleed ,illnesses ,Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting

Summary:

God's like Zeus have shown themselves to humanity in modern times as they felt their power dwindle. With the worship of the people at an all-time height, they recover and are stronger than ever, sometimes even forfilling their followers wishes. History teacher Hob doesn't pray to any god. The history texts have taught him gods were only kind as long as they needed something. A belief that wavers after a bad breakup with his long-term boyfriend. Though before he can do something, he meets Morpheus, a handsome stranger showing interest in him and pushing for a relationship. They end up together but Morpheus has a hidden agenda.

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48302005/chapters/121818418#workskin Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49454986

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Title: where dreams dwell not Writer: jamais_vu0 Artist: foxish (@kitsune2022-artish) Rating: Teen Warnings: canon-typical violence, temporary character death Word Count: 89,523 Pairing/main characters: Hob Gadling, Dream of the Endless, Hob/Dream Additional tags: fairy tale AU, Hob saves Dream from the fishbowl, slow burn

Summary:

Hob Gadling is wasting away, aching for adventure and the chance to live life as it's meant to be lived. When he receives a mysterious letter promising all the adventure he could want in exchange for a year of his company, he takes the offer and finds himself in a lonely castle in a land of magic, a strange figure haunting his dreams. And when Hob himself breaks the one rule he's been given days before the year is complete, he finds himself embarking on the adventure he's always wanted, in order to save his Dream from a fate worse than death.

Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48303526/chapters/121823242 Art: https://www.tumblr.com/kitsune2022-artish/726233688430477312/my-art-for-the-endlessbigbang-2023-for

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Title: Love at Third Sight Writer: Gfawkes / LLflorence (@llflorence) Artist: @hpurlnovi Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Word Count: 20,455 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Top Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Bottom Hob Gadling, Explicit Sexual Content, Identity Reveal, Mutual Pining, Romance, Light Angst, Emotional Sex

Summary:

Hob is dyslexic, and music notes are just like letters. B’s and d’s and p’s and q’s all look the same, as do all those little bastard tadpoles on the musical staff. So he does it a little differently, with a little humor and a lot of close-ups of his hairy fingers. And for some reason, it’s a hit in more ways than one. As Robyn begins to tune his instrument, Hob cases the room for his stranger. It’s the third time the handsome man has been to one of their gigs. There’s something familiar about him, something Hob can’t quite put his finger on. But the fact that he’s made eye contact for the third time is extremely intriguing. Johanna, of course, notices. “You’re looking for him again, aren’t you.”

Art & Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48001063/chapters/121029040

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Title: Sunrise in Chocolate Ink Writer: @aquilathefighter Artist: @vriah Rating: Teen Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Word Count: 15,047 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling Up to 10 Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Autistic Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Anxiety Attacks, Hurt/Comfort, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Getting Together, Love Confessions, Social Anxiety, Poet Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Barista Hob Gadling

Summary:

Dream Endlaez is newly living on his own and trying to make it as a poet. He starts going to work at a nearby coffee shop known for supporting local artists, where he meets a handsome and charming barista named Hob. Dream learns the business is not doing well, so he decides to host a poetry reading night to attract customers (and boost his career at the same time!), all the while falling for the barista.

Art & Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48363172

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Title: The Many Lives of Hob Gadling Writer: @landwriter Artist: @teejaystumbles Pairing/main characters: Dream/Hob Rating: M Warnings: Chose Not To Warn Word Count: ~20K Up to 10 Additional Tags: Canon Divergence, Non-Linear Narrative, Reincarnation, Letters, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Devotion, Quests

Summary:

A man, supine and utterly still, in what might have seemed like a deep sleep, draws in a long slow breath and opens his eyes. He smiles up at the sky, for he knows not much at all, but he knows this: Hob Gadling is a man of good fortune. A story about refusing to leave. A story about a quest that spans lifetimes. A story about losing someone, and bringing them back with love.

Art & Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49088941

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Title: Strains of a Melody Writer: @ginoeh Artists: Theotherwillow & @kairennart Rating: M Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence Word Count: 55 526 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Hob Gadling & Orpheus, Hob Gadling, Dream of the Endless, Orpheus Up to 10 Additional Tags: mild gore, past character death, angst and hurt/comfort, suicidal ideation, comic compliant assisted suicide of minor character, Hob's inability to die despite bein fatally wounded, look this has a hopeful ending okay?, Light At The End Of The Tunnel, Orpheus is a warning all for himself really, Comic spoilers for Brief Lives

Summary:

When Hob Gadling strands on Naxos at the beginning of the 20th century, some long-laid-plans and designs unravel. While the great stories always return to their original forms, for some this is the start of an entirely new narrative. The Fates, though, demand their due and neither Dream not Hob are free until all debts are paid in full.

Story & Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48637858/chapters/122689126

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Title: Which Prisoners Call the Sky Writer: @dreamerinsilico Artist: @harukaspiegel Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence Word Count: 16,339 Pairing/main characters: Dream of the Endless|Morpheus/Hob Gadling; Hob Gadling, Dream of the Endless|Morpheus, The Corinthian, Desire of the Endless, Unity Kinkaid, Matthew the Raven Up to 10 Additional Tags: Angst With a Happy Ending, Nightmares, The Corinthian is His Own Warning, a particular Siamese cat, Dreamwalking, Medical Abuse, Fishbowl Rescue, the rescue is mutual

Summary:

In his lucid periods, Hob worries more and more often about how long he has been asleep. People dream of things that don’t exist all the time, of course, but not the same things, with such consistency. In 1916, Hob Gadling falls asleep and doesn't wake up. He begins to realize that he can wander after an encounter with a young girl on a black-sand beach, and he knows there's something important missing, everywhere he goes. When he learns it might be a someone, he puts all of his six centuries of being a tenacious bastard to use.

Story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49760731 Art: https://www.tumblr.com/harukaspiegel/727195638811574272/wich-prisoners-call-the-sky-by?source=share

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Title: The Other Kingdom Writer: Banhus (@that-banhus) Artist: Mockspeed (@mock-arts) Rating: E Warnings: Gore, attempted suicide (OC, minor character, not too explicit), canonical minor character death, starvation, illness, sexual content, horror. Word Count: ~50k Pairing/main characters: Dream/Hob Gadling; Dream/Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Randall Burgess, Johanna Constantine, The Corinthian, Jessamy, Destiny, Mazikeen. Up to 10 Additional Tags: WWI, AU - Death captured by Roderick Burgess, Sandman-typical roadtrips, plot heavy, po-ta-toes, slow burn, I will show you fear in a handful of sand.

Summary:

In 1916, Roderick Burgess successfully summons Death, and Hob Gadling wakes up in no-man’s land alongside three dead soldiers.

Story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49615189 Art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48305038

#the endless big bang #the sandman #masterlist

136 notes · View notes

onyx666 · 6 months

Text

☽◯☾ let the moon settle you ☽◯☾

chapter 1

pairing : finnick odair x black fem!reader

warnings : none

don’t hesitate to click on the links （＾ν＾）(underline text)

In the dimly lit room, the air was heavy with the scent of incense and the echo of distant memories. Reclined on a worn leather chair, the cold sensation of the tattoo artist's gloves on her neck is sending shivers down her spine. The walls were adorned with faded tapestries depicting scenes of both despair and triumph, a visual testament to the haunting stories etched into the skin of those who sought solace here. The steady buzz of the tattoo machine hummed in the background, filling the room with an ominous soundtrack as she braced herself for the ritual about to unfold.

The inker, a silent figure with eyes that held the weight of countless stories, prepared the ink that would soon be embedded into her skin.

As the needle met flesh, the pain mingled with a strange sense of catharsis. The molnija, a symbol of the life she took in the arena, began to emerge on her skin like a dark omen. Each stroke of the needle echoed the haunting memory of that fateful moment, the arena's unforgiving atmosphere, and the desperation that had led to the kill.

The room seemed to absorb the shadows, amplifying the somber mood as she thought about that soul she had annihilated on that battleground. The flashing ghost that lingered in the recesses of her mind, its presence intensified by the ink weaving its way into her skin. The pain and regret converged in a melancholic dance, leaving an indelible mark not only on her body but also on her soul.

The lodge became a sanctuary of shadows, the only illumination emanating from the dim glow of the artist's lamp. The mark, now etched into her skin, seemed to pulse with a life of its own, a macabre testimony to the harsh reality of the Games.

Near the end of the process, a heavy silence settled in the room. She, marked by the indigo ink that told a story of survival stained with sorrow, rose from the chair. The molnija on her skin was a permanent scar, a visual echo of the arena's brutality and the darkness that had seeped into her soul.

In the mirror, she confronted her reflection—a visage altered by the weight of her choices. That mark is going to stand as a haunting emblem, a constant reminder that, in the pursuit of life, one will have to confront the shadows that cling to the edges of survival.

Capitol - [17 - 19]

As she stepped into the grandeur of her victor's party in the Capitol, the contrast between her humble origins and the extravagance surrounding her was stark. Winning the 69th edition of the Hunger Games became real. The venue, adorned with opulent fabrics and sparkling lights, gleamed with a decadence foreign to the simplicity of her home District. The air was filled with the lively hum of Capitol citizens, their colorful attire and extravagant hairstyles creating a spectacle that seemed to defy gravity.

Finding herself in a world where excess was the norm. The walls were draped in cascades of silk, shimmering in every hue imaginable. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting prismatic patterns across the room. The Capitol's eccentricity was on full display, with citizens dressed in outfits that defied logic and science—feathers, metallic fabrics, and avant-garde designs that hinted at a creativity untamed by the constraints of practicality.

A live band played a lively tune in the garden, the music pulsating through the space and drawing Capitol attendees to the dance floor. Still adjusting to the splendor around her, she couldn’t help but observe the vibrant dance of colors, both in the attire of the people and the kaleidoscope of lights that danced above them. Waiters glided through the crowd, bearing trays of delicacies that she had never imagined.

The exotic scents of Capitol cuisine wafted through the air, tempting her senses with a richness she hadn't known in District Eleven. Golden platters held bite-sized treats adorned with edible gold leaf, and glasses filled with effervescent drinks bubbled enticingly.

Despite the festive atmosphere, she felt a pang of homesickness. Her gaze lingered on the holographic displays showcasing scenes from Eleven, a stark reminder of the life she had left behind. The Capitol's citizens, however, seemed oblivious to the disparities between the districts, lost in their own world of excess.

The eccentricity of the Capitol population was a spectacle in itself—each person striving to outshine the other in a display of flamboyance that bordered on the surreal.

As she navigated the party, she encountered Capitol citizens eager to engage with the new victor. They complimented her on her triumph, but their words felt like a distant murmur amid the overwhelming opulence. The Capitol's fascination with the Games manifested in their insatiable curiosity about the victors, turning her into a temporary celebrity in this glittering world.

She exchanged bitter pleasantries with Capitol officials, their polished manners contrasting sharply with her straightforward sincerity. The conversations were a delicate dance between the genuine and the superficial, as she struggled to navigate the unfamiliar terrain of political niceties.

In the midst of the celebration, her eyes met those of a fellow victor from a previous Hunger Games. A mentor now, they approached her with a knowing smile filled with sadness. Their eyes held a shared understanding of the harrowing journey she had undertaken, a journey that went beyond the glitz of the Capitol.

One Capitolite, a woman, with an elaborate headdress that seemed to defy gravity, giggled and remarked, “You must have had quite the adventure! I can’t imagine living without all the luxuries we have here.” The implication hung in the air—her life in Eleven was inconceivable, a distant and inferior existence compared to the opulence of the Capitol.

Despite the glittering surroundings, she felt an undercurrent of isolation. The Capitol citizens, in their pursuit of entertainment, had forgotten the humanity behind the victor. It was as if her struggles and victories were reduced to a theatrical performance, a diversion for their amusement.

The conversation fading in the back of her mind, her eyes met those of the fellow victor who had approached her earlier. There was a silent acknowledgment between them, a shared understanding of the dichotomy they faced—the duality of being celebrated and yet diminished to mere entertainment.

As the night unfolded, She found herself torn between the allure of the Capitol's extravagance and the memories of District Eleven. The party was a swirl of colors, music, and laughter, but amidst the celebration, she couldn't escape the shadows of the arena that lingered in her mind.

In this juxtaposition of luxury and survival, her, the young victor from Eleven, stood as a living testament to the resilience that could emerge from the darkest corners of Panem.

In the midst of the discomforting conversations, she felt a rather presumptuous touch on her shoulder. Turning, she found Finnick Odair, the charismatic victor from District Four, wearing a smug smile that hinted at both arrogance and mischief.

His tanned, sun-kissed and golden skin provided a striking contrast to his sea-green eyes, a captivating blend that reflected both warmth and depth.

He seamlessly interrupted the group, his presence demanding attention.

“Care for a dance?” Finnick’s request was accompanied by a challenging smirk, and he extended his hand, as if daring her to refuse. With a mix of reluctance and annoyance, she accepted the offer, escaping from the scrutinizing gazes and disconcerting questions.

The sudden shift from interrogation to an invitation to dance was met with a collective pause from the attendees. Finnick's effortless arrogance had transformed the atmosphere, turning an uncomfortable spotlight into an impromptu moment of forced celebration.

As she took his hand and joined him on the dance floor, the live band adjusted its tune to a rhythm that matched the graceful movements of the two victors. Finnick's skilled steps and her stoic expression turned the dance into an unexpected spectacle, a blend of tension and compliance.

Their dance, devoid of any genuine warmth, became a symbol of reluctant participation, a forced interlude against the Capitol's tendency to objectify victors. Finnick's cocky banter and her occasional biting remarks created a dance that mirrored the power dynamics of their world. The Capitol citizens, momentarily intrigued by the unexpected turn of events, witnessed a performance that teetered on the edge of social discomfort.

As they twirled and moved across the dance floor, Finnick maintained his smug demeanor, enjoying the discomfort he had thrust upon her. Yet, she refused to let his arrogance go unchallenged.

"So why did you accept? Was it my pretty smile or the infamous reputation that lured you into this dance?" Finnick's voice carried a mocking tone, attempting to unravel her composure.

A wry smile played on her lips. "Oh, Finnick, don't mistake my acceptance for admiration. I merely thought a dance might provide a more tolerable alternative to your insufferable conversation."

Finnick's attempts to steer the conversation away from personal matters met with her sharp retorts, turning the dance into a verbal battleground.

Undeterred, he leaned in with a sly grin. "You can't deny there's a certain charm to this it. Perhaps you'll find it more enjoyable than you anticipated."

Her gaze remained unwavering. "Your charm may dazzle those pigs you occasionally call your friends, Finnick, but it holds little sway over me. This dance is a strategic maneuver, nothing more."

He chuckled, a low, confident sound that reverberated through her. "A strategic maneuver? You give this dance far too much credit. Perhaps you're not as immune as you'd like to believe."

The response was swift. "Charm is a fleeting illusion, Finnick. It holds no power over substance. This dance is a calculated choice, not a surrender to you."

Finnick's eyes gleamed with amusement. "Most would have succumbed to the allure of the Capitol by now. Yet here you are, dancing on your own terms."

A flicker of something unreadable crossed her eyes. “If you gaze long enough into an abyss-”

"The abyss also gazes into you" Finnick finished her sentence, intrigued by the cryptic response.

The party, once an uncomfortable ordeal, had transformed into a nuanced dance of social dynamics, where she navigated the Capitol's expectations with a mixture of defiance and composure. Meanwhile, he, though seemingly victorious, couldn't deny the unexpected complexity that had unfolded beneath the surface of that interaction.

As the dance concluded and the crowd rejoined them on the dance floor, they slipped away, finding solace in the secluded beauty of the garden. She couldn't shake off the resentment for what he represented – the embodiment of the Capitol's playboy image, a pawn in their elaborate game.

He noticed the lingering tension and attempted to break the ice. "You know, not all of us chose this life. We're just pieces in their twisted puzzle."

She shot him a skeptical glance. "You seem to be enjoying it quite a bit, playing the part they want you to play."

Finnick sighed, his eyes momentarily betraying a hint of weariness. "It's all about survival. You play the hand you're dealt."

She scoffed. "Survival? You seem to be doing pretty good from what all Panem and I can see."

He paused, his gaze meeting hers with a flicker of sincerity. "Not everyone is as free as they appear. There are strings attached, and cutting them comes at a cost."

They strolled amidst the vibrant blooms, the moonlight casting a delicate glow on their conversation. She couldn't deny the complexity of his existence, even if she resented the role he played.

"I've navigated shadows, walked paths I'd shield from the sun," Finnick admitted, his voice a delicate unveiling of vulnerabilities veiled by his charming facade. "But survival, that's the currency they demand from us."

Her skepticism softened into a momentary understanding. "Surviving at what cost, Finnick? Your fucking soul?"

He chuckled bitterly. "The Capitol doesn't leave much room for souls, darling. They don’t even care for it"

She sighed, the weight of the Capitol's influence pressing down on them.

He met her gaze, his eyes revealing a complex blend of defiance and resignation. "Did Snow spoke to you?" he asked dodging the look in her eyes.

"Not yet. Why?" she replied, searching for understanding in his guarded expression.

Finnick shrugged nonchalantly, a slight smile playing on his lips. "Just curious. The Capitol tends to play its games, and Snow is the puppet master. Always worth knowing whose strings you're tangled up in, especially after a victory."

She frowned, a knot of unease forming in her stomach. The mention of President Snow brought back memories of his looming presence in the Capitol, a figure synonymous with control and manipulation.

"What does Snow want with me?" she questioned, her voice tinged with actual concern.

Finnick chuckled, a wry edge to his laughter. "Who knows what goes on in that twisted mind of his? Just be cautious. Capitolites love to weave narratives, and we're all characters in their grand spectacle."

He deftly shifted the conversation, steering it away from the enigmatic dealings of the so called regent.

“What was the anchor that kept you going in the arena ?” he asked.

A pensive silence hung in the air before she began, “It’s not a memory; it’s a feeling—the warmth of the sun on my face as I worked in the orchards, the rustling of leaves, and the quiet whispers shared between workers.” Her voice carried a nostalgic lilt, a reflection of the simple and rarejoys she had known in District Eleven.

Finnick listened attentively, the subtle dance of moonlight casting shifting patterns on the garden floor. “But in the arena, that warmth turned into the cold steel of weapons, and the whispers became the screams of those who fell.”

Her words bore the weight of the transformation, a metamorphosis from the familiar embrace of home to the unforgiving arena.

As she spoke, the moon’s glow accentuated the contours of her face, revealing a tapestry of emotions etched in every expression. Finnick, still standing in the shadows, observed with a silent intensity. The night seemed to unfold like a novel, each sentence adding depth to the narrative they were constructing.

“What about you, playboy ?”

He painted the scene with his words, “It was during the calm before the storm. The sun was setting, casting a warm glow over the district. The waves gently lapped against the shore, and for a moment, the air was filled with tranquility. I stood at the edge of the fishing docks, surrounded by the familiar scent of the sea. In that brief respite, I found a seashell on the beach. It wasn’t much you know, but it was enough. Just a simple reminder of a world beyond the brutality that was awaiting. Holding that seashell, I felt a connection to something pure, something untouched by the darkness that we were immersed in. It was a moment of quiet pride, watching the boats return with their bounties. I believed in a future where I could contribute to our district, make it better.”

Finnick’s gaze held a mix of nostalgia and sorrow. “But dreams have a way of shattering. The hollowness set in after the celebration, and the silence in my heart matched the quietude of the sea after the cheers faded away. I faced the reality that awaited me, all of us, as a victor, and it just became a distant echo of the life I had hoped for.”

"Live fast, die young, be wild and have fun....they say." she expressed with a bitter laugh slipping off her lips still cringing at the mantra.

As the gloomy moonbeam reflected on the side of her face in the moonlit night, she spoke with a grace that caught the peacock's attention, still standing in the shadows. The moonlight painted her face with a soft glow, revealing a tapestry of emotions in every expression. As strands of her hair danced in the gentle breeze, Finnick observed in silence.

The night, wrapped in the luminous embrace of the moon, held the promise of a new narrative written in the language of stardust and whispered confessions.

"I believed in the country Panem used to be." she said, still holding hope for the person she wanted to become.

In this moment, bathed in the soft glow of moonlight, she became Moon, a celestial muse -a constellation of emotions and experiences that left an indelible mark on his heart, even him not noticing it.

Their conversation meandered through the intricacies of their existence, touching on the compromises they made to survive in a world that thrived on spectacle. Finnick, typically a master of charm, revealed fragments of a soul that yearned for freedom beyond the Capitol's whims.

As they continued to wander through the garden, the dichotomy between them softened. She glimpsed the cracks in his playboy facade as he caught a glimpse of the fire that fueled her resistance.

a/n : i keep seeing ppl do the ai voice cloning thing for a more immersive reading so why not try it

1) Finnick and Moon are 19 and 17

2) since the majority of Eleven’s population is predominantly Black and Native American/Indigenous, it seemed logical to me that Moon came from this District.

#finnick odair #finnick x reader #finnick x y/n #finnick fanfic #finnick x you #finnick x oc #hunger games finnick #let the moon settle you #finnick odair smut #thg series #thg finnick #thg #thg fanfiction

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oh-yeah-i-exist · 9 months

Text

Let me take care of you

Astarion x Durge OC (Eiji) oneshot

Author's note: the idea came to me when I realized I'd been giving all my healing potions and strong spells to Astarion.

Content warning: some gore (par for the course in this game), a bit angst but mostly fluff. Might contain SPOILERS.

Camp was more quiet than usual. Fighting a conniving wizard and his elemental myrmidons had not been an easy feat - even Dame Aylin, who had emerged victorious against yet another villain aspiring to exploit her immortality, had fallen into contemplative silence. By her own words, revenge felt... hollow. In quick succession, the proverbial "bad guys" had fallen by their swords and spells, but when would it all end? Was the end where they really wanted to be? A long road lay ahead, with the Elder Brain still writhing violently against its loosening chains. The party knew what they had to do, knew the price of being the hero, but Gods, a deep exhaustion had settled into their bones this night and none could shake it off quite so easily.

As she peeled off her dusty boots, Eiji mulled over her decisions. Though many in the group would sooner keel over and die than admit they were following anyone's leadership, the bulk of strategic planning had fallen on her shoulders. And as if resisting her psychopathic god of a father was not enough of a monumental task, she had her companions' conflicting desires to balance. Choosing Dame Aylin over the powerful wizard, who could have been a valuable ally instead of a useless, crumpled corpse, was one of those bets she was not entirely certain would bear fruit. Strong and fearsome as the Moonmaiden's shining offspring was, Aylin's temper may yet prove to be her undoing - without thinking, without a single moment of hesitation, the paladin had charged headfirst into battle, practically forcing Eiji's hand. Being referred to by the celestial being as "ally mine" afterwards was barely a reward, and it appeared that even Isobel understood the tension when she'd expressed her fear of her lover's future folly and offered her thanks.

But without any clear recollections of her bloodied past, there was not much else Eiji could rely on besides her instincts. And her first instinct was to never betray her companions, her friends, no matter their faults.

Rummaging through her pack, she was surprised to find five bottles of superior healing potion. She could have sworn her stock had been down to only one or two, especially since she had explicitly refrained from using the precious resource during battle. Even with the mysterious surplus, she figured there was nothing a night's sleep wouldn't fix. No point wasting the very thing that could save someone else's life the next day.

"You know, I do feel for the Dame, considering how revenge against Cazador gave me less catharsis than... well, emptiness," came Astarion's voice behind her back. As was natural for creatures of the night, the pale elf's footfalls were as light as a feather and made no sound, allowing him to make her heart jump whenever he drew near on his own accord.

Straightening up from reorganizing her pack, Eiji sighed in agreement. The movement caused the wound on her back to stretch and throb painfully. She tried to hide a wince, but nothing escaped her lover's blood-red gaze.

"Gods, there really is no justice in the world, is there?" continued Astarion with a frown, taking her pack from her hands. He strode towards a fallen tree trunk nearby and motioned for her to follow suit. Since that one evening in the Underdark, which felt like a century's worth of ceaseless struggle ago, they had grown accustomed to sharing these private conversations while the rest of the party hunkered down for a long rest.

"I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of sneaking these into your possession if I'd known you were too stubborn to use them," Astarion abruptly changed the subject, his tone going from contemplative to annoyed.

"I-- what?" Eiji turned to look at him, genuinely confused. It was the last thing she'd expected him to mention, given where their conversation had started. "Don't tell me you didn't even realize you had healing potion on you," the elf rolled his eyes.

"No, I... I saw them," though not quite understanding what the fuss was about, Eiji went along with his harmless banter. "But I don't think I need them, really. I'll just go to sleep and wake up tomorrow, good as new."

"By that same logic, the rest of us should just snooze our injuries off instead of using the potions you so generously lavished on us," he pointed out. "Or is there something special about Bhaalspawn physiology that I might want to know?"

"No, I don't think so..." she answered under her breath. Vaguely, she was beginning to catch the drift beneath his characteristic quips. "But I don't lavish anything on anyone. I do what is necessary," she insisted. It was not entirely the truth. Only now did it come to her attention that indeed, she'd been loading her companions with as much aid as she could, her own safety be damned. And she might even be guilty of favoritism, seeing how she invariably made it a priority to shield her lover on the battlefield. It was as though her body moved on its own, without so much as a conscious thought on her part.

"And you find it necessary to leave yourself an easy target?" Astarion retorted, almost angry at what he deemed utmost foolishness. "Gods, I should have known you were doomed when you first started feeding Gale our hard-earned loot."

"That was necessary, too. Can't have him blowing us all up one sunny day," she chuckled, half-hoping the joke would persuade him from this particular line of inquiry. But she could see it in his eyes that he wasn't going to let it go. She could see his worry behind the annoyance, his concern and affection. Hells, she could see his love that she returned in equal measure. "I just don't want to see anyone hurt. I don't want to see you hurt. I wouldn't be able to think of anything else during a fight if..."

Astarion's expression softened as he listened intently to her quiet words. Gently taking her hand in his, he asked, "And has it ever occurred to you how much it pains me to see you fall?"

She said nothing in reply, rubbing his knuckles with the pad of her thumb in an effort to soothe him.

"There has been enough pain and suffering in my life to haunt me for a thousand years. If you're really asking me to stand aside and lose the one person I've ever truly cared for, then you should just drive a stake through my heart and end it all," he said shakily, lacing their fingers together so she'd know there was no smoothing over the matter. "Let me take care of you. Please."

For a moment, she refused to look at him. But he waited. Until she finally caved and leaned her forehead against his, letting him support her wary body. "Alright," she breathed, arms circling around his midriff for an embrace.

"Alright," he smiled, his hand coming to rest at the nape of her neck. Gingerly, he pulled away just enough to be able to examine the cuts on her cheeks. "I've got you, darling."

#bg3 astarion #astarion #bg3 tav #bg3 oc #astarion x tav #astarion ancunin #astarion romance #bg3 spoilers #baldurs gate #my oc: eiji

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