#they just sometimes give you radiation poisoning

[riverofrainbows]

(please be advised that i am ranting about weird diet myths around sugar and fruit, and also addressing annoying and wrong comments i read recently with a hypothetical "you". I am not talking to you, the reader)

I decided to be mature today and look after my stress level and Not start what is sure to be internet beef by telling people in a comment section that sugar molecules are not magically different when they come out of an orange. I even get worse blood sugar spikes from grapes than from chocolate because that also has fat which slows down metabolisation so blood sugar rises more slowly. "But fruit also has vitamins and fibres wah wah wah" still doesn't mean fruit has chemically different sugar molecules than refined sugar (made from plants btw!!) and also not the fucking point. There is slightly different sugars which have different prevalence but funnily enough fruit has quite a lot of the sugar monomer that has a higher glycemic index, and at the end absolutely every carbohydrate except indigestible ones (mostly cellulose, which we know as fibre!) becomes glucose and gets turned into ATP which fuels your body. "But the fibre in fruit" thats why we eat meals with hopefully all types of nutrients in (including fibre) and then that fucking oreo also has some fibre to accompany it. Besides the fact that it already has less of a blood sugar spike than fruit because of the fat content. "But the vitamins!!!!!!!" I promise you will not die of scurvy if you don't eat 300% the recommended intake of vitamin c every day, you will be fine. Go worry about some vitamins that arent in fruit, or vitamin d. And read a fucking wikipedia article on different sugar molecules and where they are found while you're at it please i am begging. "The evil fructose in fructose syrup is different than good fructose in fruit" please employ one braincell and read that again omg.

(disclaimer fruit is not bad, i do like vitamins too, and if you don't have blood sugar issues the glycemic index of it (how much it spikes the blood sugar) is nothing you need to be concerned about. also reminder that vegetables also contain vitamins and fibre and shit, because sometimes this fact gets lost in the heated discussions around fruits)

[silvr-skreen]

misty and diane being both incredibly competent but that leading them into the trap of condescension to others and/or the belief they know the other person's abilities better than they do.

nyx hates his boss because: I CANT WALK TODAY FUCK YOU MEAN GET UP?

[inkskinned]

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

[greatestexpectationss]

Poison Ivy

Luke Castellan x Fem!Daughter of Persephone Reader

Description: You've been best friends with Luke Castellan since you were 14 years old. Now you teeter on the edge of something more, but your jealousy causes you to question everything.

You’re a child of Persephone, one of the far and few in between. Your mother had claimed you an entire year after you’d arrived at camp. Chiron had claimed it was to protect you from Hades' wrath,  but you’d had a sickly feeling it was more than that. Children of Persephone are all springtime and warmth, and perhaps you are in the light of day but in the cover of the night, there is something else that claws at you. You are more winter than spring.

Your dad says its normal to feel disconnected from your mother at this age, but you don’t just feel disconnected you feel abandonded.

You’d never met your mother but you're so so angry with her.

Being the daughter of the goddess of spring came with expectations. You are loyal and kind, with a bit of a wild side. Your powers had manifested as chlorokinesis, you're particularly fond of plants, much like the children of Demeter, but you've got a hardness they don't have, a certain darkness only a child of the underworld could understand. You’d learned that on your quest, where you’d even able to speak and command hellhounds.

There was more to you than meets the eye.

For instance, your infamous knack for growing poison ivy around those who piss you of. It had earned you a loving nickname from Luke…

“Poison” he’d called you after a particularly nasty sprouting during a game of capture the flag when you were just 14 years old. It had been Luke’s first game at camp, some Ares boys were terrorizing him up in the trees, when you’d seen it you felt bad for him. Everyone knew the story of how Luke and Annabeth had arrived at camp with Grover and what had been sacraficed to get there or rather who. You’d come to his rescue, sprouting poison Ivy from nothing wrapping it around their legs and taking them out of the game in one fail swoop with your daggers.

They glared at you for weeks.

It had started a long-lasting friendship between you and Luke. You two were close, and you helped him out in the Hermes cabin a lot. You trained together, ate together, really you did everything together. Luke understands the burning anger that sits beneath the surface of your skin. He knows the warmth and brightness you radiate during the days, but he also knows the bitter darkness that hides within you.

Luke sees you under your mask and still he stays.

Maybe that's why you’d fallen so hard for him.

It was hard not to fall for Luke. He’s all tall, dark and handsome. He’s the best swordsman this camp has seen in 300 years, he radiates confidence and commands respect. But even without all of that everyone loves Luke. It's hard not to, really. He’s kind and brave. It’s no wonder the Aphrodite girls are so enamored with him, really most girls are.

Sometimes you’d catch him looking at you with this funny soft look in his eyes. His touch would linger longer than necessary when helping you during archery practice, and he’d laugh a little too loudly at your jokes, and give you that rare goofy grin when he finds you in a room full of people.

It’s in those moment you’d wonder if he feels the same way. When his words are just for you, when he drags you by your hand to the dock and lays down beside you to look at the starts. When he kisses you cheek before the both of you return to the cabin, when he peeks over the side of your bunk and whispers the sweetest goodnight.

But then there are times you think you're delusional.

Like tonight for instance.

You're sitting at the post capture the flag bonfire with a few of your friends. Selina from Aphrodite, Clarisse from Ares, Katie, from the Demeter cabin, and Juliette from Athena. The Apollo kids are singing and you're in a particularly good mood from winning. But then you look across the fire and Luke has a pretty Aphrodite girl dotting on him, Haley, you think her name is. She’s whispering in his ear, perfectly painted nails wrapped around his forearm.

She's the type of girl Luke deserves.

Juliette's finger snaps in front of your face drawing you away from your pity party. You sit on the bottom step of the bleachers with a leg on either side. Facing you is Juliette, up a step to your right sits Selina, Katie, and Clarisse.

“Hello earth to Y/N, anyone in there??” Clarisse asks, your eyes snap to her and bounce between the others, they all look ammused.

“Sorry,” you mumble cheeks heating in embarsement.

They all look over your head where you’d been staring, There's a knowing look that is shared between them before they looking back at you with a mix of exasperation, ammusment, and pity.

You don't know which one is worse.

“C’mon you don't think Luke’s really into that chick do you?” Katie asks you.

“That chicks name is Haley,” Silena reminds, before reaching out and squeezing you hand, “and Katie’s right everyone knows Luke’s crazy for you, I don't know why she's even bothering.”

Clarisse scoffs and cracks her knuckles, “I can kick both their asses if you want.”

This draws a laugh from you.

“Hey, there she is!” Juliette exclaims, pinching your cheek, you swat her hands away and roll your eyes, the pity is leaving your body but you're still left with the bitter taste of jealousy.

“We’re just friends,” is what you settle with, earning an eye roll from all four of your friends.

“We are!” you insist, running a hand through your hair, “He can flirt with whoever he wants.”

“Y/N, do you think we’re dumb?” Clarisse asks.

“What? No of course I don’t—”

“Well then you know you can’t lie to us,” Katie says, she's much kinder than Clarisse who stares at you expectantly. A classic daughter of Demeter, she reaches for your hand and squeezes. You close your eyes for a second and sigh before looking back over at Luke. The Aphrodite girl is sitting closer to him now, he's nodding along to something she's said. You look away quickly.

“Katie’s right, and as a daughter of Aphrodite I can tell you without a doubt Castellan is just as crazy for you as you are him,” Silena’s so sure of herself, you wish you could feel that confident, you wish you knew how he felt.

“Yeah well it sure doesn't seem that way,” you gesture towards where they’re sitting. Across from you Juliette hums.

“Maybe he’s confused,” she says

“Or maybe Haley just doesn't know how to take a hint” Clarisse grumbles. You sigh and swing your leg over the bleachers before standing up.

“Where are you going?” Katie asks, brow furrowed.

“I just need some air,” you say.

“Y/N we’re literally outside,” Clarisse quips, you glare at her.

“Figurative air,” you say, gesturing wildly around you, away from all of this.”

You're much too aware of how pathetic this all is, you pining in a corner with your friends and Luke across the way with a pretty girl who deserves him. You're not some scorned lover, you're just a sad teenage girl.

“Do you want me to come?” Juliette asks you. She's such a good friend, fiercely loyal, they all are really, and you're incredibly thankful for them.

You wave her off anyway, “I’ll be fine, I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

Your friends say their goodbyes, not before reminding you for the thousandth time about the small party in the Aphrodite cabin later that evening.

If you'd been paying attention you'd have noticed Luke’s boredom, you’d have noticed his eye that always seemed to follow you.

It’s darker as you get further away from the bonfire, you don't mind, the few lanterns lighting the path to the lake give you enough light that you can at least see where you're going. When you arrive at the lake, you're thankful no one else has had the same idea. You can't even count the number of times you've snuck away with Luke only to find numerous couples making out.

Tonight there's no one, maybe because it had been a particularly rough game of capture the flag, or maybe because the usual suspects (aka Chris and Clarisse) are still at the bonfire.

You make your way toward the end of the dock before sitting down, feet dangling off the edge you lean back on your hands and lift your head back to look at the stars. Around you the only sound is nature, and very far off in the distance, you can hear the faintest sound of the Apollo kids singing. Their voices echo and combine with the sounds of the trees.

It would be peaceful if you weren't so miserable.

“There you are.”

You open your eyes and turn your head over the shoulder. Luke’s approaching you with that goofy grin on his face and a sweatshirt in his hands. He pops down next to you on the dock and hands you the sweater.

“I figured you’d get cold, you didn't have a jacket at the bonfire,” he explains when you give him a confused smile.

“Oh,” you say meekly, pulling it over your head, it's much too big for you and it smells like Luke and kind of makes you want to cry. Still, you tell him thank you. His smile drops a little when you don't say anything else.

“You wanna tell me what's wrong Poison?” he asked gently, nudging your shoulder with his. You pick at the sleeves of his sweater, eyebrows furrowed, but hearing the concern in his voice you manage a small smile.

“Nothing’s wrong, I'm just tired,” you excuse. You meet his eyes and you can tell he doesn't believe you.

“Y/N—”

“Seriously, I'm good, thank you for checking on me, and thank you for your jacket but you should go back I'm sure Haley is wondering where you are and I'm really okay,” you promise. He’s got the goofy grin on his face again and he lets out a breathy laugh.

“Are you laughing at me?” you asked annoyed. He’s still smiling like he knows something you don't, he's enjoying this.

“What?”

“You're jealous,” you go wide-eyed eyes at his declaration, but you recover quickly with a scoff.

"I am not jealous," you deny, your voice gives you away when it quivers on the last syllable of your sentence. Luke’s grin only grows.

"Yeah okay Poison," he throws an arm over your shoulder, "whatever you say."

I’m going to push him into the lake, you think to yourself. 

You don’t, instead, you settle for pushing his arm off of your shoulder.

"Whatever, I’m outta here," you say before promptly standing up and storming up the dock. You've got tears in your eyes you're thankful he didn't see. You can hear him laughing and calling for you but you don't turn around. You know he's not doing it to be mean, Luke's got a thing for teasing you, and you know he thinks that's what this is.

It doesn't make the sting of it any less.

Luke's got long legs, and you can hear him scrambling after you calling your name. You ignore him up the dock and the sand before he stops you stepping in your path.

"C'mon Poison I know I'm hard to resi–" he stops when he sees the tears in your eyes and you turn your face away from him. His brows furrow in concern when he realizes you don’t think it's funny. He reaches for you again but you take a step back and cross your arms over your chest. 

"Hey, hey, hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong"

"You're crying"

"So?"

He looks at you like you've sprouted 8 heads.

 "What do you mean so??" You pinch the bridge of your nose, you've seriously had enough of him playing dumb. "Can you just drop it please?" you beg, shifting on your feet and wiping furiously at your eyes before any tears can actually fall from your waterline. 

But he's Luke and your Y/N and you should know by now he's not gonna drop it.

"Wait," he hums taking a step closer to you and prying your crossed arms away from the safety of your body, he holds both of your hands with his own and presses them to his chest, you've got nowhere to hide. Finally, he asks, "Were you actually jealous?"

His tone is softer this time, it holds no teasing just a gentleness you can't quite describe. You don't know if it’s pity or fondness, you're not sure which answer scares you more. You still can’t look him in the eyes.

"No–"

"Y/N, c'mon don't lie to me."

You huff in response. He steps even closer to you. 

"Last week Lee Fletcher was helping you at archery practice," he says finally, you look at him now, his grin is gone but the soft smile he’s giving you, makes you feel like he’s going to let you down easy. He’s going to use Lee as a buffer, say it's clear there's something there when it's nothing. You feel for Lee the kind of platonic love you wish you felt for Luke. 

What you feel for Luke is world-changing and gut-wrenching.

"Okay,” is all you can say, you try to step away again but Luke just grips your hands a little tighter.

“Just let me finish,” he pleads, you nod your head and avoid direct eye contact with him, instead you focus on his dark hair, the dark curls that shine under the moonlight. If he notices you aren’t looking him in the eye, he’s at least nice enough not to say anything about it. 

"He said something to you, I wasn't close enough to hear what it was but it had you cracking up and laughing in the best way," Luke takes his thumb and stokes the corner of your mouth, "you get a little dimple right here when you laugh did you know that?"

You didn't, you also didn't even know he had been there that day. You don't even remember what Lee said that had made you laugh, something about your aim.

"What's your point?" you mumble, his touch on your face is searing and his other hand has moved to your waist, you can feel the burn of his skin through your (his) jacket. You finally cave and meet his eyes, he’s looking at you with such softness you think you might melt on the spit. You're not stupid either, you know what this is. But you need to hear him say it, or you might actually die.

"I was jealous," he shrugs, like it's no big deal, thumb tracing up your check to tuck a stray hair behind your ear before dragging it down to cup your face. "I didn't have any reason to be but I was.” 

Then with that goofy grin he says, “Kinda sounds like someone else I know."

You’re smiling at him now, you both know this is teetering far too close to the edge to come back from now. In fact, even without him saying it, without kissing him, you don’t think you could ever come back from this.

"Why?" you ask him, hands coming to rest at the nape of his neck, you play with the strings of his camp necklace to distract yourself from the lessening distance between the two of you. He’s dipping his head closer to you, so close that if he speaks your lips will touch. You want him to kiss you in a way you’ve never wanted anything before.

"You know why." And then he's kissing you. His arm around your waist tightens instinctively, and he presses his lips to yours hungrily, like a starved man who's just arrived at a feast. Your hands drop his necklace and weave through the shorter hair at the nape of his neck, something akin to a sigh of relief floods through both of you. His hand is in your hair now, and he tasted of marshmallows and spearmint, something so distinctly Luke. It’s incredibly intoxicating you don’t want to pull away. And you don’t until you absolutely have to in order to catch your breath, Luke chases after your lips with his own. Kissing them softly once, and then twice, before pulling back and looking at you with a smile on his face. This time you return it, a little laugh escapes your lips before it grows louder.

“Alright now who’s laughing at who?” he grumbles, still smiling despite his tone, his thumb strokes your dimple, and it allows you to compose youself. 

“I’m sorry,” you say reaching up to kiss him softly again. He’s smiling still, so you know you haven’t really offended him. “I just kinda feel like an idiot now,” you admit. 

“Well you are one,” he tells you cheekily, squezzing your sides with both hands in the way he knows you both adore and detest, you squeal and stumble into him, gripping onto his biceps in attempts to get him to stop. “You’re absolutely the dumbest person alive if you think there’s any world that I would wanna do this with anyone else.”

“Really?” you ask.

“Really,” he confirms. You reach up and kiss him again, a little more searing than sweet. Both of Luke’s hands are back in your hair and he’s kissing you back just as fervently, you feel his tongue slip in your mouth, and you swear you’ve died and gone to heaven. It’s Luke who pulls away this time, gasping for air. 

“I think I might be in love with you,” he admits.

“Yeah, I think I might be in love with you too.”

Suddenly you both hear footsteps approaching quick and heavy, Clarisse stops in front of you both and takes in your dishelved appearance, before rolling her eyes and yelling.

“Guys I found them! You all owe me $20!” she calls out to what you assume to be your group of friends.

“Clarisse what the hell?” you mutter stepping away from Luke reluctantly. Chris comes barelling out of the forest, tripping over shrubbery. Luke pouts at the loss of contact

“They were making out?” he pouts to Clarisse who gestures towards you both as if to say well just look at them! then Chris turns to you and Luke, “You guys couldn’t have waited like one more day?”

You laugh as Luke whacks him upside the head. The four of you begin making your way towards the rest of your friends and the Aphrodite cabin where the party (which is so not a party) is. Your girlfriends squeal and Luke’s friends cringe. Luke throws his arm around your shoulder, "All good Poison?" he ask.

"I'm good, how are you?" he laughs and kisses your head.

"Never better."

You look up at him fondly and kiss the bottom of his scar as the two of you enter the cabin with the rest of your friends.

Across the room, Haley pouts with her siblings, but you don’t notice. You’re too enamored with Luke, the boy you’ve loved for as long as you can remember. The boy who loves you back.

[solarmorrigan]

“Hey.”

Eddie looks up from the inventory sheet he’s bent over (the new shipment of records isn’t going to record itself – Christ, that was awful, Henderson is contagious) to see his coworker Kyle poking his head into the back room.

“Someone left something for you at the counter.”

“Who?” Eddie asks, brows furrowed.

Most everyone in town seems to have let the murder accusations drop (embarrassed enough by their own fanatical reactions that they’d much rather forget the whole thing), but a few people still treat him like a felon walking free; it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

“Uh, real normie-looking guy. Gives you a ride sometimes.”

Eddie blinks. “Steve?”

“Yeah, sure.” Kyle shrugs. “Says you left it in his car.”

Whatever Eddie is expecting to see when he follows Kyle back out to the front counter of the music shop, a brown bag lunch isn’t it. He most certainly hadn’t left that in Steve’s car this morning.

Steve hadn’t even given him a ride that morning.

But it’s got his name on it, sure enough, in Steve’s weirdly neat handwriting. The asshole even drew a little heart next to it.

Eddie can already feel a smile pulling across his face as he snatches up the bag. Maybe he hadn’t forgotten his lunch in Steve’s car, but he certainly hadn’t brought one in with him. He’d been planning to hit up the McDonald’s down the street if he got desperate, but whatever Steve’s brought him is bound to be better.

“Your girlfriend pack that for you?” Kyle asks.

Eddie lets out a little huff of a laugh, for a minute not quite sure how to answer.

Gender assumptions aside, Eddie doesn’t know what to call this thing with Steve – this thing where they’d started screwing and then they’d started falling asleep together without screwing and then they’d started spending all their free time together and now Steve does things like pack Eddie lunch and bring it to him at work.

“Sorta,” he finally settles on.

“Dude, if she’s making you lunch and writing little hearts next to your name, she’s more than ‘sorta’ your girlfriend,” Kyle says.

“Yeah… Maybe,” Eddie allows, because – well, because maybe.

“Pretty nice of your friend to drive it over, though,” Kyle says. “Pretty sure at least half of my friends would’ve just eaten it.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says again, warm and a little smug, “Steve’s a good dude.”

He digs into the lunch sack and finds an apple sitting on top (of course), a baggie of Keebler fudge cookies (score), and a Tupperware container filled with–

“Oh, fuck yes!” Eddie hugs the precious little tub full of macaroni and cheese to his chest like he’s doing his best Gollum impression. There is nothing in the world better than Steve’s mac and cheese.

It’s still warm.

“I’m taking my break!” Eddie declares, skittering off to the back room before Kyle can argue.

He sits himself down in the employee break area (a crappy folding table, two mismatched chairs, and a microwave so old he’s probably getting radiation poisoning just by sitting next to it) and digs in to the cheesy goodness that is Steve’s cooking.

He’ll eat the apple after, he reasons.

(No he won’t.)

As he eats, his eyes drift back to the crumpled brown bag, to the little heart drawn in bleeding black sharpie, and he thinks.

-

Steve’s house smells like chicken and herbs when Eddie lets himself in early in the evening, and oh, Steve must be in a good mood today.

Eddie feels spoiled.

He finds Steve in the kitchen, wrist-deep in sudsy water as he sways back and forth absently to the tune of the rock station coming from the radio on the windowsill. The room is warm, and something delicious-smelling in a covered pan is simmering on the stove, and the space behind Steve is invitingly empty, just waiting for Eddie to sidle up into it.

Eddie feels so, so spoiled.

Steve doesn’t startle when Eddie slides in behind him and wraps his arms around his waist, but Eddie isn’t really surprised anymore; it seems like Steve can always tell when someone is there.

He does glance over his shoulder, though, just long enough for Eddie to see the smile on his face before he turns back to the dishes. “Hi.”

Eddie’s pretty sure the smile on his own face is softer and infinitely more besotted. “Hi.”

“Good day at work?” Steve asks.

Eddie hums, pressing a kiss to the top of Steve’s shoulder. “You brought me lunch.”

“I’m glad Kyle actually gave it to you,” Steve says. “Wasn’t sure someone else wouldn’t eat it.”

“I got it,” Eddie says, as if there was any doubt with the way he’s still smiling in between trailing little kisses up Steve’s neck.

Steve shuts the water off and dries his hands on the towel hanging off the cupboard door before turning in Eddie’s arms to give him a proper kiss. “It was good?”

Eddie hums again. “You brought me lunch.”

“We’ve established that, yeah,” Steve laughs, allowing Eddie another kiss as he grins.

“You made me lunch,” Eddie says, pecking another kiss to Steve’s lips, still smiling like an idiot. “And you drove it up to the store for me.”

Steve shrugs, a little coy. “It’s my day off. I had time to kill.”

“Kyle says that makes you more than sorta my girlfriend,” Eddie replies, as if that will make any sense at all to Steve.

Whether it makes sense or not, it does make him laugh, and Eddie peppers kisses all over his face while he does.

“So it was good?” Steve asks again, when he’s caught his breath.

“You made me lunch and then you drove it over to me,” Eddie stresses. “It could’ve tasted like ass, and it still would’ve been the best thing ever.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but is more than obliging to the deep kiss Eddie pulls him into after that.

“But just so we’re clear,” Steve says when they break apart, “it didn’t taste like ass, right?”

“Oh my god, no,” Eddie finally relents. “It was literally the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I’m going to marry you so you can make that mac and cheese for me every day.”

“Every day, huh?” There’s a funny little smile climbing back over Steve’s face. “You sure you won’t get sick of it?”

“Nah,” Eddie replies confidently. “Never.”

They’re both smiling a little too much now to really kiss, but they make a good go of it anyway.

[Prompt: Smiling between kisses]

[glimmeringtwilight]

Gilded Cage (Part Three)

ok. i'm not going to try to come up with a clever name for this one, this is just. part three. please send an ask or a DM if I missed any CW's! been a while.

Pairing(s): Dottore/Reader, Pantalone/Reader

Word Count: 3.6k

CW: NSFW, drugging (painkillers and other ment), rough sex, biting, threats of mutilation (mild. but it's Dottore), yandere themes, noncon/dubcon, AFAB reader, overstimulation, humiliation

Dottore has been on edge lately. 

You can tell. You can see it in his jaw when he’s sedating you as you lie on the operating table, eyes burning and dark as he stares through you at something presumably only he can see. You can see it in the way his hand sometimes twitches slightly– which bodes terribly for you– as he makes a small incision into your thigh, or your stomach, or your arm.

Most of the time, you think he just cuts into you simply because he can. Because he likes to watch the blood welling from the wound, dripping down your skin. He’s been doing it a lot more lately, sometimes forgetting to sedate you, sometimes forgetting to give you something for the pain, sometimes cutting too deep.

It feels like there’s a storm brewing that you can’t see; curtains drawn so you can’t look out the window and see the magnitude, brace yourself for wind or rain.  

His clones seem to be affected by it, too; usually it’s only ever the younger clones of his that lash out, but even the supposedly older ones are starting to show signs of agitation. You haven’t seen the same test subject twice in what feels like weeks. All of them seem to enter and leave the lab only once– something that should horrify you more than it does, whenever you watch them wheeling the covered bodies past. 

It’s this way for weeks. Dottore stalks around his lab like a harbinger of death, practically oozing poison and malice despite the deceptively calm mask he dons. 

You find out what it is that’s been agitating him when he opens the door to your cell one morning. Not a clone. Not the occasional trembling Fatuus. Him. His eyes burn into you. You can’t make out the emotion in them, but the complete coolness in his expression makes your stomach sink. You wonder, briefly, if he’s going to finally kill you– would that be a mercy, at this point? Killing you? Perhaps not. Knowing him, he’d draw it out. Make it hurt. 

Still, despite the terror that curls its fingers around your throat, you follow him quietly out of the cell and into the lab, staring at the back of his head as you walk and wishing you could read minds so you could at least brace yourself for whatever this is.

The two of you enter the lab and you finally realize what it is that’s crawled under Dottore’s skin, sat at the desk in the corner as though he’s not terribly out of place in the sterile environment. 

Pantalone sits comfortably in one of the chairs near the desk Dottore rarely seems to use, smiling as though he’s received a warm welcome and a parade. Dottore, meanwhile, looks palpably annoyed as he strides past the banker and takes a seat behind the desk, motioning for you to follow. 

It’s… Intensely uncomfortable, to say the least. You rarely find yourself sitting at Dottore’s desk, considering the doctor usually prefers to be conducting experiments rather than sitting and compiling data; he usually delegates that to his clones, who bitch and moan about the boring task. 

So sitting in a chair, next to the two men who’ve each held you captive at different points, as Dottore practically radiates anger… You don’t know what to do. You fold your hands in your lap, avoiding looking at either one, even as you can feel the two of them just… staring. 

You feel like you’re under a microscope, worse than any other time before when you’d been laid out on the operating table under Dottore’s invasive prodding.

Pantalone speaks first, breaking the charged silence. 

“I take it you don’t mind if I verify that this one’s real,” He says, rising from his chair and smiling at the way Dottore visibly bristles. “After all, I’m paying for this, aren’t I? I deserve that much.”

It takes you a moment to realize he’s talking about you, and the demeaning way in which he’s referring to you as though you’re some object that might be counterfeit is both unnerving and irritating. You’re careful not to let it show on your face as Pantalone approaches you. 

“What-” You start to ask, but you’re swiftly interrupted by gloved fingers prying open your mouth, prodding around in search of something that isn’t there. You feel them press down on your tongue, ghost over molars, then press against the back of your throat until you gag. 

Somewhat satisfied, the banker pulls his fingers from your mouth and grips your chin firmly with a now-damp glove, turning your head this way and that and ignoring the obvious discomfort painted on your features as the action smears drool on your skin. What is he doing?

You shoot a glance towards Dottore, who is still just watching. He’s obviously pissed– you can see a vein popping in his forehead, belaying his anger on his otherwise blank face. 

Pantalone lets go of your chin in favor of grabbing you by the arms, pulling you up from your chair and motioning for you to spin around in a circle. You do, though you’re still confused, unsure of what’s happening as the banker seems to be appraising you like a precious gem. It’s a different type of poking and prodding than Dottore’s usual tests and checkups, but it’s invasive nonetheless. It’s doubly unsettling that this is the first time you’ve seen the banker without his usual smarmy smile. 

Hands find your shoulders and stop you again, and you bristle when they trace the curve of your spine, exposed thanks to the open back of the hospital gown. You feel them stop, tap something just to the left of one of your vertebrae, and Pantalone spins you back around to face him, clearly pleased. 

You try not to flinch when he takes a lock of your hair in his hands– it’s gotten so long since you’d been brought back to the lab– and brings it closer to his face. His nose crinkles, palpable disgust on his features, and he mutters something about “that vile soap he makes you use”– likely referring to Dottore– before turning around to face the man in question. 

“Are you done ogling?” Dottore asks, his tone clipped. You can’t see him around the banker, but you’re sure he still looks as pissed as before. 

Pantalone tilts his head slightly, smiling, then glances over his shoulder at you. “Perhaps not yet, but I’m satisfied enough for now. You’ll get the funding for your little… project, and I expect to see this one at my doorstep every other month from now on.”

Every other month? You frown. Is this some sort of… custody arrangement that the two men worked out? You don’t know if you want to laugh or not at the absurdity of it all; like you’re the unfortunate child of two divorced bastards, except this is much, much worse.

“Fine,” Dottore grits out, in a tone that suggests it’s anything but. He gets up to shoo the banker out of his lab, but Pantalone merely tuts and makes his way back over to where you’re standing, confused, and rests one hand heavily on your shoulder.

“One month starting today, of course,” Pantalone continues, “It’s only fair, after all, when you’ve been hoarding my poor pet this whole time. I have to make up for lost time, after all.”

He delivers those words with a smile that only seems to irritate Dottore further, red eyes boring holes into him as Dottore visibly seems to be contemplating murder. Pantalone speaks up again before he does anything, however, offering a hollow consolation: “Of course, I’m not cruel. How about a farewell? A parting gift, to… tide you over while they’re gone?”

You don’t like the sound of that, and Dottore seems to pick up on the banker’s suggestion as you’re spun around once more and ushered towards the exam table you’ve become intimately familiar with for the last several months. 

For this supposedly being Dottore’s “parting gift,” Pantalone is awfully remiss to keep his hands– and commentary– to himself. 

“Ah, what a cute noise that was,” You hear him coo, a finger tapping your nose with just enough force to startle you so you flinch, “Don’t you think you’re being a bit rough though, Doctor?”

“Quiet.”

You jostle against the table, gripping the edge of it for support as hips snap into yours with bruising force. Dottore’s fingers are gripping your hips so tightly you’re sure they’ll leave bruises– that’s probably the point, honestly; he’s fucking you like he intends for you to feel it for the entire month you’ll be absent. 

Pantalone’s comments aren’t helping things either; despite the banker’s comment about roughness, it only seems to have encouraged the doctor to go even harder. 

Thankfully, you were given something for the pain, but not from Dottore. Pantalone had pressed a pill into your gasping mouth when Dottore had started, telling you that you were going to need it, and though swallowing was a struggle, you’re glad he did. 

Dull pain and sharp pleasure mingle together, and you’ve long since lost track of the orgasms that have been dragged out of you. You’re starting to numb, honestly, overstimulation bleeding into pain, and you gasp into the table with every sharp thrust into you. 

“Tsk– don’t pass out now,” Pantalone chides, fingers curling around your jaw and biting into your cheeks when your eyes threaten to flutter shut, and Dottore snarls something about cutting your spinal cord if you do; something you sincerely hope is an empty threat, given the black spots dancing in your vision. “You still have another thirty minutes to go.”

You don’t remember there being a timer set, much less a time limit, but you certainly know you can’t last that much longer. Your knees have already long since given out, and Dottore had to hoist you up further onto the table so he could continue, leaving your feet dangling a few inches above the ground. 

You feel weight against your back, heat, smothering you as Dottore leans down to sink his teeth into your shoulder as he spills inside you once more, and you shudder through another weak orgasm in response, your eyes rolling back and your vision blacking out for several long moments. 

Pantalone shakes you back awake before you can slip too far, and you sob as Dottore starts to move again. You already know that you won’t be able to walk for the next few days, if not for the next week. 

Tears blur your vision, the world spinning around you as a gloved hand comes to rest against your head, petting you in what’s likely intended as a comforting gesture but only seems to frazzle you further, overwhelmed and overstimulated as you are. 

It must be Pantalone, because Dottore lets out an irritated noise, sinking his teeth into your skin to leave a new mark as he resumes the harsh pace he’d set earlier. Another hand, this one not gloved, curls around your throat to dig two fingers into your racing pulse as he tries to engrave himself into your flesh through means slightly less violent than cutting you open. 

You can barely keep track of who’s doing what– your vision is too blurred and you’re too far gone to fully piece together a coherent thought before it and the breath are knocked out of you by another snap of Dottore’s hips. One of them reaches down to rub circles into sensitive nerves, and you sob as another climax is ripped unwillingly out of you. 

You black out for longer this time, shaken awake once more by Pantalone. He’s cooing something at you that you can’t make out, drowned out by the rush of blood in your ears and the sound of Dottore’s ragged breaths mixing in with your own. 

It feels like you’re burning up, shivering weakly under Dottore’s crushing weight as the man seems to be pouring every ounce of frustration into his thrusts, and darkness encroaches on the corners of your vision with every movement. 

Another shuddering orgasm. You twitch weakly through it, your body registering the sensation more than your mind does. 

The world seems to tip, swaying like a vessel rocked by choppy waves before finally capsizing. Your vision goes, and you’re pulled into a sea of static. 

It smells like lilacs. 

It’s the first thing you notice when you slowly come to, a stark contrast to the smell of bleach and copper that you’ve become accustomed to. You’re also dressed in some proper clothes– or rather, ”proper,” compared to the usual paper-thin hospital gowns you’ve worn since being brought back to the lab. 

Opening your eyes, you’re greeted with the familiar luxuries you remember seeing when you were last in Pantalone’s care, and the sight would nearly be a relief if consciousness didn’t bring with it the unbearable ache in every inch of your body. There’s a budding headache building behind your temples, stinging pains from various bites and bruises littering your skin like brands.

It aches most between your legs, but there’s an ache in your thighs and your stomach like you’d pulled every muscle within; you probably did, honestly, but you try to push back the memory invading your thoughts and you sit up in bed. 

“You’re awake,” A silky voice drawls from behind you just as you sit up, and you turn around to see Pantalone sitting in an armchair in the corner, one leg folded over the other as he reads a book. He doesn’t look up as he addresses you; he just pats his knee, indicating he expects you to come to him. You’re not sure you can walk…

Climbing out of the soft bed hurts, various muscles protesting the movement, and you’re not surprised when your knees give out on you the second you rest your weight on your feet. Pantalone simpers at you from where he sits, amused, but he makes no move to help you stand up or walk. He just pats his thigh again, smiling at you. 

“I can’t walk,” Even talking hurts, evidenced by the crackling of your voice when you speak. 

“Then crawl.”

He says it so simply, as though you should have already known the answer. Your ears burn with humiliation. You don’t move.

“Don’t make me punish you on your first day back,” He says, setting his book down so he can properly address you. His tone is disappointed, but you don’t miss the way the bastard’s smile widens at the idea. 

Pantalone’s punishments aren’t nearly as severe as Dottore’s are, at least in terms of pain. Rather than physical punishments, he seems to prefer humiliation. You’re tempted to try your luck, but… everything hurts. You don’t want him to decide you haven’t earned the privilege of clothes– or find something equally humiliating and degrading– on top of the pain you’re already in.

Crawling hurts. Every muscle protests the movement, yet again, but you force yourself to ignore the aches, to ignore the humiliation burning beneath your skin at being made to crawl over to him. 

When you finally reach him you sit up unsteadily so you can climb into his lap, but you’re surprised when he stops you by pressing a gloved hand firmly against your head to keep you planted on your knees in front of him. 

Instead of addressing your confusion, Pantalone merely smiles and takes hold of your wrist, raising your arm to inspect the scars and bruises littering your skin from the months spent under Dottore’s care. His face twists with disgust, shifting into faux sympathy when he addresses you again, “Poor thing. Look what he’s done to you…”

His free hand comes to rest on his knee as he straightens up, uncrossing his legs, and you hear a steady tap tap tap as he drums his index finger against his knee thoughtfully. “Aren’t you glad I’ve brought you back from that wretched place?”

It’s a leading question. You know he expects you to answer correctly, and you get the sense he’s leading into something; a demand. “...Yes.”

“I knew you would be.” He says, dropping your wrist and leaning back comfortably in the armchair. He looks down at you, clearly pleased with the position you’re in. He props one elbow against the arm of the chair, resting his head in his hand as he smiles down at you. “Why don’t you be a good pet and show me just how appreciative you are?”

The implication isn’t lost on you, but whatever hope you’d had that he might mean something else is dashed as he spreads his legs slightly further apart to make room for you between them, and you don’t miss the growing bulge in his dress pants. 

Your hands are numb as you reach for his belt, and you barely flinch when his hand rests heavily against the back of your hand as you take him into your mouth. 

One cage for another. You’re not even sure you’re relieved, because every part of you still aches from the reminders Dottore had left you with. 

His hand presses against the back of your head, guiding you to take him further into your mouth, and you struggle to breathe around his length. You nearly gag as he pushes you down further, pushing back in resistance, and Pantalone clicks his tongue in disappointment but thankfully, lets up. Maybe he doesn’t want to ruin his pants. 

“I’ll get you something for the scarring,” He murmurs, fingers curling in your hair as you bob your head up and down his length. “And those garish bruises.”

Whether it’s an insult towards you or Dottore, you’re not sure. You try not to focus on it, instead focusing on the task at hand. You lave your tongue along the base of his shaft, earning a small shiver and a heady sigh from him. 

He’s silent for a few minutes as you continue to pleasure him, but you feel him boring holes into the top of your head. You don’t look up at him; you don’t want to. You’re trying to get this over with, and hoping that his silence means you’re doing well. 

The hand on the top of your head leaves, and you flinch when you feel him trace his fingers over one of the scabbed over bites left by Dottore, nearly biting down in surprise. You swallow, suppress the urge, resuming your pace even as he traces the outline of every bite left littered along your neck, your collarbone, your shoulders.

Pantalone straightens up a little, pressing his hand against the back of your head again to force you to take more than you already can. This time, he doesn’t relent when you push back, just holding his hand still until you stop whimpering and you manage to swallow back the urge to gag. 

“Hush.” He tells you in response to your muffled noises, groaning quietly at the way your throat vibrates around his cock.

You eventually relax, eventually get used to the feeling, and he lets you pull back slightly before he’s pressing down again, repeating until tears are spilling down your cheeks as you struggle not to reflexively bite down each time you gag slightly around his length. 

“How would you feel about something… permanent?” He asks, and his fingers are tracing the bites again. You try to pull back to answer, but his other hand stops you and he rocks his hips lazily into your mouth. A rhetorical, then; he doesn’t care for your answer.

You try to blink back your tears as you resume the pace you’d set, sucking lightly on his cock as his hand curls into your hair. It’s hard to focus on what he’s saying as his hand keeps threatening to force you down farther than you can take, and you’re focusing on stamping down the swelling nausea. 

“Something- hm-” He hums, and you can tell he’s getting close now, with the way his breathing is starting to deepen, his hand tightening its hold on your hair- “something tasteful. Not like those eyesores he leaves you. A collar is- fuck- too… too easy to remove.”

You don’t like where this is going, but humming your dissent only earns you a pleasured hiss and a rumble of praise spilling from his lips before he’s curling his fingers around the back of your neck. 

It’s the only warning you get before he shoves your head down, holding you there as cum spills into your mouth and down your throat. It takes everything in you to relax your jaw, and you pull back gasping and sputtering the second he relents.

By the time your vision clears and you blink back the tears spilling from your eyes, he’s already tucked himself back into his pants and is just watching you struggle to catch your breath. He doesn’t even comment on the mess of cum and drool that spilled from your lips onto the floor. 

It takes you a second to realize he’s not staring at you, but rather at the marks left on your skin. 

After a minute of tense silence, he smiles again, patting his lap this time in invitation for you to sit, and you ignore the familiar sting of humiliation as you obey. Again, one of his hands curls around the nape of your neck, tracing some pattern into your skin. 

“Right here,” He murmurs, though he doesn’t elaborate when your brows pinch together in confusion.

It takes you a second to realize he’s tracing invisible letters across your nape, then another few to realize it’s his name that he’s tracing into your skin. 

Something tells you that Dottore isn't going to be pleased to see you again at the end of the month.

[c-rowlesdraws]

browsing twitter for longer than a few minutes gives me radiation poisoning these days, and it’s worse in the evening, in the hours when the dark feelings creep in anyway. So even though I’m really apprehensive to talk politics on my art blog (I mean, if the backlash to a hyperbolic post I made about a famous youtuber is this bad, posting about politics would turn my activity page into a window to hell), I have to vent some of my feelings or that radiation damage will just keep getting quietly worse. And a fair number of people read this blog, and seem to like things that I create and say, so for what it’s worth, I want to say some things I hope people will think about.

Someone I really admire tweeted recently about how hopeless they feel. They said that after many years of fighting for social change, they had no fight left. They said they were too exhausted to vote in the upcoming US presidential election. And I tried to understand where they were coming from, because this is someone I look up to. But I can’t. I understand feeling burnt out. I feel nauseous and heartbroken and scared, thinking about the situation in Palestine and the situation in my country. I understand that it seems like there is no good leader to rally behind.

But I can’t tap out. I can’t give in to hopelessness and say, “I can’t choose. I’m tired and I’m done”. When a choice is between maintenance of an imperfect society with incremental steps towards better things, and cranking human misery and suffering enthusiastically up to 11, I’m going with the former. We are all tired every day. But voting is not physically difficult. Even if you are tired, you can do it. There is a day where you go to a building, and you fill in a bubble next to a name, and you go home. They even give you a sticker. I said voting isn’t hard, but actually, it’s very important to say that for a lot of people in the US, voting is hard to access, and for some groups, impossible. It is made difficult on purpose, by people—Republicans, it’s fucking always them, I don’t know why I’m using vague language—who want to disenfranchise as many people as they can. If voting was really a useless gesture, if it really meant nothing— they wouldn’t be working so damn hard to stop poor people and immigrants and prisoners and folks in general from being able to do it.

If you hate Biden, god, fine, whatever. But he is going to be the nominee of the political party made up of judges and politicians that, for the most part, believe that climate change is real and ought to be mitigated, that the US should not be turned into an evangelical christian theocracy, that firearms should be regulated, that businesses should be regulated, that healthcare should be more affordable and accessible, that people should be able to get safe abortions, that trans and all lgbt people deserve to live their lives, and that asylum-seekers shouldn’t be shredded by concertina wire trying to cross the border. The wheel of social change is huge and fucking heavy and sometimes it looks like it isn’t moving at all. But we can feel it move if we all push together.

I caught a Trump ad on the radio the other day and it was some of the scariest shit. “Trump will bring order to chaos,” it said. “He will ban travel from terrorist countries, and end the disastrous open-border policies allowing illegal migrants and deadly drugs like fentanyl to flood into our country.” The fucking anti-muslim travel ban. It’s back, baby. That was the exact phrasing: terrorist countries. If Biden’s foreign policy with regards to the Middle East is frustrating and despair-inducing already, Trump’s would be a catastrophe. The Republicans think Democrats are soft on terrorism. As much as anyone with a conscience is horrified by the US’s continued passivity with regards to Palestine, this motherfucker getting back in office would bring greater horror. I’m really sure about it. I don’t know what that part of the world will look like next fall, but I’m confident that if this dumb bloodthirsty motherfucker regains office, there would be absolutely no hope of public pressure swaying US foreign policy towards “less murder”. Protesting against war and genocide or for any progressive or civil rights cause would become even more dangerous. I still think about the woman who was run over by a car at the protest in 2017

…I’m rambling. I can’t help it. But I don’t want to just ramble unproductively. I should end this with something I hope makes sense to people snd can’t be easily dismissed, even if you already disagree with something I’ve said. I want to say how I genuinely feel.

I believe that imperfect activism is valuable, because it is better to show up and stand in solidarity with other people fighting for a more just world than to not show up at all. I believe all activism is in some way imperfect, because activists are people, and people are imperfect. That is to say, one middle-aged woman who showed up to a DC protest wearing a hand-crocheted pink pussy hat, who maybe hadn’t been to many (or any) protests before but who felt fired up about this one, was worth ten of the smug “real leftists” sneering about her on twitter. Maybe more than ten. Your own activism will be imperfect. But keep an open mind— to your own learning and to others’. Doing “the bare minimum” (and, ugh, what a discouraging phrase) is still doing. We have to encourage everyone who feels drawn to fighting for social good. We have to link arms with one another and be strong. Even if you think the person next to you is a lame-o liberal, if they believe that (for example) trans people deserve access to gender-affirming care and should not be smashed flat into fruit-by-the-foot and sent straight to hell, they are your comrade.

Be wary of people who self-identify as Cassandras and unheeded prophets, especially if their messages consistently emphasize how everything is garbage and the world can’t be saved. If someone is telling you that only they understand how uniquely horrible things are, that no progressive or leftist political philosophy is viable except for the specific one they adhere to, that no news or media sources are worthwhile or even trustworthy except for the small handful of ones they endorse… I won’t say to stop listening to them or following them, but I’d recommend listening to other people, too.

Do your own reading about issues that are important to you. Read many people’s words, watch videos, think about what you believe, and how those beliefs have changed over time, and stay open to being further changed. We are all constantly learning and shaping ourselves, and teaching, and being shaped by others. All of us are tired. But we can hold each other up.

I don’t have a rousing call to action. Just the same things many people are already saying that I’ve felt encouraged by, in a grim sort of way: protest and donate when and where you can, support political candidates on the local and national stage who do support policies you agree with, who could do real good. It feels very hard right now to be hopeful. But we all have to live in whatever future comes eventually— so I think we have to still participate, and that means things like voting. We are all tired. But we have to keep going. There is, ultimately, no sitting out. People who opt out of voting still must live under the social climate and policies imposed by the person who gets elected, and who they endorse and empower and appoint, and who those people empower and appoint, and so on.

This post doesn’t have a good conclusion. I didn’t write it thinking about what would make for a satisfying structure in general. But if you read it, then thank you for reading.

[youremyheaven]

Sailor Moon & Nakshatras

I thought it'd be interesting to correlate the different Sailor Moons and their powers with the themes that are present in different nakshatras.

This is a super low effort post so all of it is just speculation and I'd love it if you guys told me what you associate with the different Senshi.

Other than Sailor Moon herself, there are 9 sailor senshi who protect the solar system.

Sailor Moon

A crystalline object which provides her basic power, contains limitless power and is the source of all energy in the universe. She can call upon her future self to use the power of both the future and present crystal to double its power.

she's the only one who has no power of her own and has to rely on some object so i guess that makes her Moon dominant??

Sailor Mercury

Sailor Mercury has the power to create and manipulate water. For the entire first story arc, she uses her water-manipulating capabilities only to create solid and dense clouds of mist and fog, chilling and blinding the enemy while her allies prepare more direct attacks

this is actually super on brand Mercury behaviour

Sailor Venus

I feel like Sailor Venus has more powers than other senshi??

It includes: Flight, Magic, Transformation, Longevity, Immortality (Type 4), Limited Shapeshifting, Teleportation, Forcefield, Light Manipulation, Energy Manipulation, Energy Projection, Weather Manipulation, Electricity Manipulation, Data Manipulation, Creation, Reincarnation (Overtime not applicable in battle), Can Survive in Space, Resistance to Mind Manipulation, Death Manipulation, Existence Erasure, Gravity Manipulation, Radiation Manipulation, Poison Manipulation, Power Nullification, Resistances to Status Effect Inducement and Soul Manipulation, Resistance to Telekinesis etc

idk if this is Venus' "being better than others" theme lol but i feel like these are powers that belong to all 27 naks and not just Venus

Sailor Mars

Precognition: Rei is shown to have strong precognition, where she can make full use of this ability to predict events from the near future, but it can fail sometimes.

Pyromancy: Rei is also shown to have a great affinity with fire, to the point where she is capable to manifest her future sights by forming images on the flames. The images are very enigmatic and unreliable.

Purification: Even when she is in her civilian form, she can use her "ofuda" (a Shinto talisman used to protect homes from evil spirits) to "exorcize" people, while yelling "Evil Spirit, Disperse!" (although it can cause normal people to faint, as shown in episode 10 when she tried to "purify" Usagi).

Sixth Sense: Rei is sometimes shown to have a "sixth sense", using it to detect "evil presences" and approaching danger, as shown in Chapter 6 of Codename: Sailor V manga, but it can fail sometimes when she mistook Usagi for an evil spirit.

Expert Archer: As a Shrine Priestess, she is an expert archer, and this potential is shown in her "Mars Flame Sniper" attack.

these are a variety of powers that don't really all connect to Mars energy, it's giving strong Venus & Jupiter vibes tbh

i associate the purification, pyromancy and precognitive abilities with Venus and the sixth sense, expert archer ones with Jupiter

Sailor Jupiter

Electrokinesis, martial arts, longevity, and "emphasized superhuman strength"

these powers are a bit random, i guess the author wanted to emphasize martial arts and physical strength with the masculine grahas but I get more Mars and Sun vibes ngl

Sailor Saturn 

Daughter of a possessed mad scientist, a terrible lab accident in her youth significantly compromised her constitution. After overcoming the darkness that has surrounded her family, she is able to become the Soldier of Silence, Sailor Saturn. She wields forces of destruction so powerful that she is rarely called upon to use them, and unlike the others, her Senshi and civilian personae seem somewhat disconnected. She is often pensive, and as a human has the inexplicable power to heal others.

this backstory is in itself very Saturnian and I think Saturnians do suffer a lot of abuse and injustice in their lives. So all Saturn naks like UBP, Anuradha & Pushya

Sailor Pluto

Manipulation and control of spacetime, Time Wave Generation Teleport others over short or vast distances. Open rifts or doorways in space through different eras Freeze all of time (forbidden) Erect a shield of time-space energy

i mean it goes without saying but this is literally Punarvasu & Swati. both these naks have themes of space and time travel

Sailor Uranus

she possesses powers associated with the wind and sky, precognition, as well as sword combat.

this is giving me Mars & Venus energy, more specifically Bharani as it is a Venusian nakshatra in the Mars ruled rashi of Aries

Sailor Neptune

exceptionally strong psychic abilities and is the only Outer Scout who has such powers and she can channel the power of the ocean. 

I associate Neptune's abilities with Pisces (neptune rules pisces so this is a no brainer) and I connect it to PBP, UBP & Revati

[werentwethestarsinheaven]

our hearts.

matty healy x female reader

a/n: here’s a small something i wrote as a little part 2 to at your back door as a thank you for giving it so much love!

You were hesitant at first. You were scared. Scared to lend him your heart again, not realising it was already permanently etched into his hands.

You and Matty soundtrack your seasons to the EP he wrote for you. He strums his guitar and hums softly, competing with the singing birds in the Spring and the icy rain spitting on the windows in the Winter. He’s told you now, of course. He's famous. He's an international rockstar who gets on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans desperately reaching out for him. But he’s also yours. Your sweet little Matty. Always there to kiss your heart so gently and hold you tenderly. You miss him while he’s gone. But you miss him even when he’s right next to you. Love simply isn’t enough for you and him.

When he’s gone, he still sends you postcards. ‘To My Darling’.

He still calls you. “Hello my beautiful Darling.”

That's your name.

You sit on your back steps waiting for him to come home from tour. Sometimes a thought poisons your mind and tells you he’s not coming home. Sometimes he doesn’t, and you fall asleep curled in the armchair by the door still waiting for him. You don’t worry though. You always wake to the smell of fresh coffee and cigarettes and you feel a warmth radiating from your heart. He’s home. He’s picked you up and carried you to bed. And you’re lying there in his arms, letting the sun soak into you and your soul.

“Darling, hurry up and come here, I already miss you,” Matty whines for you from the living room. You roll your eyes with affection, knowing you’ve only been apart for less than 10 minutes. Your feet pad down the hallway, hair still wet from your bath, leaving a trail of droplets on the hardwood floors. The day has slipped away into the evening and the sun has said it’s goodbyes. He came home a few hours ago, from New Zealand. Whenever he comes home to you it’s like you’re seeing him for the first time again. His gorgeous curls and his golden honey eyes and the stubbly jaw that’s etched into the softest parts of your body. There was exhaustion eating away at his cheeks as he smiled at you fondly, standing at your doorway with open arms. He’d come home at the perfect time for you to lounge together under the setting sun. He slept softly against your chest and you ran your fingers through his hair. Scraping over his scalp in circles and swirling patterns, reminding yourself he’s home and he’s here and he’s yours.

His curls are now damp too. He'd climbed out of your shared bath a few minutes before you, claiming the water was getting too cold for him and urged you to take your time, leaving with a kiss on your forehead. He’s standing there in the middle of your living room, cotton t-shirt on his fresh skin and vintage sweatpants hanging off his hips. He stands there with a smile glowing over his face, illuminated by the lamp in the corner and the small candles lit across the room. He belongs here. Just like the couch and the small television and the persian rug at his feet, like the pot plants that spread their vines and roots across the entire house. This is his home.

He pulls you into his arms, and you dig your face into the front of his chest. He smells like lemons and spring and nag champa.

“Mmm you already smell like me,” you muffle. He holds you so closely, chin resting on top of your damp hair.

“I missed you so much, so so much” he says, voice slightly shaking.

“Hey,” you look up at him. His eyes are welling but he’s smiling. He’s got that look of hope and unconditional love.

You’re worried he doesn’t know how much you miss him when he’s gone. How you always choose his mug from the cabinet on the days that are especially cold. The way you put off washing your sheets for weeks when he leaves, never washing his pillow until the day before he returns, making sure you can always smell his cigarettes and sandalwood cologne. The way you lay awake at night, panicking when you realise you’ve forgotten the lyrics for the second verse of the ‘Autumn’ song he wrote for you, desperately raking through your collection of memories with him to remember. The way you kiss and hold every postcard he sends, swearing you can still feel his electric touch through the thin cardboard. The way you stare at the ceiling and whisper to him goodnight every night before you fall asleep, wishing he was there next to you, wishing he could hear you, wishing that he’d appear in your dreams that night. The way you crawl up into a ball on the couch and sob until your eyes are raw once he’s hung up, clutching your phone to your chest and exhausted from trying to hide your anguished yearning for the past hour.

You don’t know that he goes almost mad without you too. The way he snaps at George on the tour bus in the mornings because you’re not there in the cramped kitchen to sweetly pass him his favourite mug and because the coffee tastes like shit. The way he doesn’t wash one of his shirts for the entire time he’s gone, keeping it safely in his suitcase and preserving the smell of your lavender body wash that seeped into the cotton as you wore it religiously to bed every night. The way he spends most of his nights writing song after song in his moleskin, so he has a miriad to sing to you once he returns home. The way he presses a soft kiss to each postcard he sends home to you, hoping his love will still reach you over the vast seas that keep you apart. The way he dreams of you in his sleep, of your giggles and naked skin in the glowing sun and groaning with frustration when he awakens in the morning to realise that you’re nowhere near the blinding sun that blares through the curtains of his tour bus bunk. The way he loses track of time after he forcefully hangs up on the phone to you, staring at his lockscreen of your smiling face, tears wetting his pillow as the thought of you being right there in the pixels of his phone comforts his racing mind.

“There’s not a minute that passes where I don’t think about you, probably not even a single second,” you reassure him, pressing kisses to his beautiful nose and cupid's bow.

“Me too darling, me too.”

You both stand there in silence, breathing each other in and absentmindedly nipping at each other’s faces. After the silence has sunken into you comfortably, he pulls away from you and asks if you’d press play on the record player while he grabs the bottle of wine he brought back for you from New Zealand.

He doesn’t even get to reach the cabinet for the wine glasses when he hears you gasp.

“Matty, what is this?” Tears sting your eyes.

It’s a physical record of his songs for you. You no longer have to wring your brain out of it’s every drop to remember exactly how he sings them for you. The cover is a picture of you both laying on your favourite sunlounger, your head in Matty’s lap and his hand pressed to your chest, right onto your heart. You gather Hann must’ve snapped it with his film camera the day after Matty officially moved in and you threw a party in the garden to celebrate. ‘For My Darling’s Lonely Heart’ is written in his handwriting across the bottom. He’s standing by your side now, hands holding your waist and he leans to kiss away the tears that roll down your cheeks. You flip the record and the back cover is a quadrant of pictures. One from each season, a simple picture of your willow tree. From the deep green flourishes of leaves in the Summer to the piles of orange leaves in the Autumn, its freezing branches covered in snow in the Winter and the wildflowers that welcome the newborn green in the Spring.

“It’s perfect.” You whisper, choking on tears. “I love it.”

The day after Matty comes home from tour is always your favourite. Time stretches out in front of you endlessly, you find comfort and security knowing there’s weeks if not months until he has to leave again. You slip back into your shared life. Two pairs of mugs in the dishwasher and two pairs of boots by the backdoor. Two toothbrushes lining the bathroom sink and two towels dripping, hanging up to dry. Walks down to the park, hand in hand and stolen kisses. Trips to the grocery store, arms overflowing with groceries and each other. Laughter and whispers and moans.

But there’s yelling too. Matty’s only been home for three weeks when he steps out into the garden to answer a phone call, Jamie Oborne’s name glowing urgently. You were both curled on the couch all afternoon watching a movie he had suggested you’d love. It had been paused for 20 minutes as you shredded apart the loose threads of the crochet blanket wrapped around you, watching anxiously as Matty grew more and more frustrated and was pacing aggressively on the patio. Until he hung up with anger and huffed back inside, head falling into his hands as he slumped back onto the couch. Your hand fell to his back and drew circles soothingly, lips kissing at his ear, the blood in his veins immediately cooling down.

“I have to leave for London tomorrow morning, some legal bullshit to do with the label,” he murmurs hesitantly, almost scared for what your reaction could bring.

“Okay,” you whisper into his neck.

He pulls away roughly, standing up to face you. “Okay???”

You stare at him dumbfounded. “Okay.” You repeat again, more emphasis on the casualty of your tone, like he’s just told you he needs to head down to the shops for some more milk. His face is contorted with pain and betrayal.

“What do you mean okay? Do you want me to go or something? Want me to leave you?” His voice is raising, yelling and tears are pooling in his eyes.

“Oh so you want to get rid of me now? I thought you needed me? Won’t you miss me?” He blabbers on.

“Matty, baby stop,” you grab his hands and pull him back down to you.

“I meant okay as in I’m okay. We’re okay.” He grows silent.

“I’m okay with you gone because I’m used to it. My heart is used to waiting for you. And that’s okay and you’re okay and we’re always going to be okay.” You smile at him, continuing, voice shaking. “It’s okay because I love you.”

A tear rolls down his face, his lungs finally expand again.

“Oh Darling, I’m in love with you too.”

It’s the next morning. You’re leaning against the doorway, watching the curls on his head bounce as he walks down the path and to the car on the street waiting to take him to the airport. He stops halfway and abruptly drops his bags, running up the stairs and you giggle as he lifts you up to spin you around in his arms. Your chest is pressed into his face as he muffles, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Spilling every word from his heart directly into yours and repeating it until your heartbeat starts to mimic the pace of his words. He kisses you sweetly and you both know it’s always going to be okay. He quickly races back down to his bags as the car beeps its horn impatiently. He takes one look back at you and he waves. You blow him a kiss, watching the car peel away and fade over the horizon. You stand there at the doorway so dazed, you think the car is probably halfway to the airport by the time you step back inside.

Your heart is full and as it overflows, Matty is always right there to catch every drop in his open arms. You’re carrying his heart in your arms too.

You walk over to the record player and grab Matty’s record, your record. With a pen and a shaking hand you neatly press it to the glossed cover.

‘For My Darling’s Lonely Heart’

You press play and his angelic voice floods the room.

[blood-grove]

ruffled feathers

avian/harpy! ghost & soap + child! naga reader

tws; broken bones, near death experience, angst, kidnapping?, idk if this would count as DDD :( its jut overall a dark au take on avian and the world they live in, .

a/n; yeah this one is really heavy compared to my other ones stay safe, also my interpitation of harpies are the ones that have normal human arms and a set of wings but everything else about them is cryptid like

I really hate how stupid I was sometimes, I thought if I could just reach the nest get the eggs I'd be done head back down and enjoy the small feast along with all the other things you've foraged today.

The further I went the more painfully exposed I felt glancing around anxiously before reaching the nest digging threw it snatching up the eggs I could grab stuffing a few in my mouth already before starting down the tree a bit unevenly trying not to drop the eggs or fall.

My tail subconsciously wrapping around a branch as I almost had reached the bottom—

Only to have some huge slam into me the bark of the tree digging into my tail as it attempt to try and hold on my brain registering what the hell was going on till there was loud snap and crunch and my own scream of agony till my tail went limp and I was snagged away from the tree a few branches snapping and creak in the process.

Pain radiating threw my body like I had been crushed like a tin can, I was in the air.

I was in the air?

Did I die that quick is this heaven?

"Hope your still alive down there."

That gravely voice was clear indication I wasn't in heaven and possibly in hell.

Simon honestly did not know why he had picked up the small thing he could barely tell if it was still in his talons grip the ragged breaths and tired sobs it started to let out were a great reminder to him.

The thing would barely even be a snack honestly but better than nothing Soap needed that food badly ever since the loveable idiot broke his wing its been critical to nurse him back to health of course Price and Gaz also helped but they also had there own lives own territories so it was usually down to him to help.

Whatever the Owl Harpy could grab he'd bring back ranging from larger to smaller prey.

Small centaurs, hybrids, humans.

You name he's probably killed it.

But right the task at hand feeding Johnny.

Another few eerily quiet wing beats and he was back on track.

Landing on the ground couldn't have been fun from the little snake he hoped it broke or passed on already lifting his talon to examine the snake making sure it didn't look like it was infected the last he needed was to give Johnny food poisoning.

When he saw the little thing stirring out of its unconscious state he sighed rolling his eyes as his talons popped unlocking from around the little snake that started to sob again as I picked it up it weighed decently he hoped it wouldn't put up much of a fight for Soap.

Not his fault the thing decided to keep living usually he aims for the head or body the force of him pouncing and the whiplash of being torn away from where ever they wear would stun them long enough or kill them.

"P-please let me go-"

"What?"

God it was a mess its left arm clearly limp and useless as of now bruises blooming on there body and the few smaller cuts on there tail no doubt either from the tree he yanked it out of.

"Please it hurts—"

Simon just ignored it as he went into the interior of there little nest outpost enough room for wing spans but small enough to conserve heat as he tuned out the Naga's begs and sobs looking to see if Soap was awake finding the man stretching out his uninjured wing perking up at the sight of Simon with a smile.

"Ghost! Ah thought ye'd be gone for a few more days?

"Wasn't findin' much food out South brought ya' a snack though-"

Simon slightly waved the weakly squirming naga Soap grimacing a bit.

"Why is it still alive?"

"Thought it died on the way here guess not, What? Need your food chewed up like a fledgling?"

"Shuddup! Whatever give it-"

Simon grinned as he pulled the snake away out of reach chuckling as at Soap's huff.

"Please d-don't eat me.."

"It can still talk?"

"Yeah?"

"God's Si ye' sick bastard just crush it already you know how I feel about you toying with food- Espcially young ones-"

"Alright alright-"

"Please don't kill me I-I'm sorry!-"

Soap just huffed making a grabbing motion towards Simon as he begrudgingly handed the sobbing thing over.

"God it's barely got any meat on it."

"Best thing I could find when winters coming around the corner soon enough.."

"Can't we just..let it go?"

"And let it just freeze to death up here in the mountains sure-" Simon grinned as he looked down at Soap who just glared back up at him from the nest of pelts loose feathers fallen feathers along with whatever other makeshift bedding they've collected.

"Not what I mean but I guess you make a decent point.."

Soap sighed as he looked a down at the small naga who sobbed and whimpered.

"I- Well I can't kill them Si-"

"Alright I will then-"

"No!- I.."

"Soap..You need food you haven't even in a couple of days and neither have I.."

"Well..can't you get..something else?.."

"..Fine but I'm going to eat them then-"

Soap flinched at this subconsciously tugging the naga closer much to the pain and bewilderment of the child and there broken arm.

"For the gods sake Soap!- Do not make me take that thing away it's a waste of heat and air were already struggling to eat anyways and you haven't been healing well-"

Simon grumbled rubbing his temple as he sighed heavily.

"Please Johnny."

Soap shifted as he looked down at the writhing form in his arms there snake half had constricted barely around his leg in a attempt to force him to let go which did not work as he basically ignored them as he frowned.

"I-..Can't we keep em' Si?"

"No"

"But just look at the poor thing- Look I- Please-"

Simon just just sighed as he turned his feathers ruffling as he picked up a satchel.

"I'm going to go find some more food and some berries or whatever if I can..If you haven't eaten it by then, Then fine you can keep it or whatever but it's not eating our food."

Soap frowned slightly but he took it as a fair enough deal grinning slightly as he looked over to the little naga that had passed out either from pain or shock.

When he looked up Ghost was gone leaving him alone again.

Well not completely.

I could barely register anything that was going on the next time I woke the pain in my arm had gone down surprising a sour tart taste in my mouth either from the lack of water so far or blood.

I was warm,

Like unnaturally warm.

It kept me still the pervious cold that had been biting at my body was gone it made me lethargic looking around I noticed my arm was a in a makeshift sling.

It felt nice..It would feel nice if I didn't feel eyes on me.

"..Ye alive little snake?"

I shifted away slightly letting a raspy hiss.

"Thought so, Y'know ye know A dinnae want tae eat ye honestly yer very small skin an bones"

"I wanna leave"

"You can't really not with that broken arm..You sound parched as hell let me get some water.."

Soap smiled softly shifting a bit as he got up heading over to a part of of the cave coming back with a small bowl full cool clear water.

"Theres a spring that leaks into her..should be cool enough."

Soap sat infront of me as I glared trying to slither back as he pushed the bowl towards me.

"C'mon.."

I just hissed again as I coiled up grumbled ignoring his offer He sighed mumbled before shuffling back to his spot.

This was gonna be a long night.

a/n: WHY DID I MAKE THIS ONE SO LONG ITS SUPPOSED OT BE SHORTER THAN THIS...idk if i wanan make a pt 2 tried keeping it 1st person for reader i default to 'You' a lot bad habit.

[prettyboypistol]

I know you’ve done this with Sniper previously, but I like to think that Pyro would also be the type to collect little trinkets or trophies that belonged to the person he’s crushing on. Maybe he likes to draw his crush, too, and has a secret pile of said drawings hidden away somewhere. What do you think?

Warning for stalkerish behavior

Honestly? I think Pyro might do that, but a little more innocently.

Well- it starts off as innocent.

You had accidentally left your sunglasses on the table and they picked it up. They meant to give it back to you, but forgot. Now it's been weeks and you've bought another pair so... Pyro just puts it in their drawer. They didn't do anything bad by forgetting! Honest!

Then it turned to coaxing you to forget things by causing distractions. After all, you're really scatterbrained! Maybe you just lost that pencil in the cushions? Maybe you had accidentally put your shirt in the burn pile instead of the dirty clothes pile? Maybe that smashing sound from the kitchen was your favorite coffee mug- Scout's too much of a coward to apologize, so that'd make sense.

Sometimes, Pyro looks at their drawer-shrine of you and feels disgust with themself. The idea of stealing from you feels like a violation deep in their heart. They want to just give it all back; no, you would be furious. Burn it? No, no, they had grown attached to all the objects! They are deeply terrified of you finding their little stash of you hidden in their nightstand drawer.

At least Miss Pauling hasn't said anything about it during routine room checks for radiation and gaseous poisons. They know she knows, and it drives Pyro into panic spirals. They know that the mask makes them intimidating... it's not a threat to just stand in a corner with their axe! Besides, making Miss Pauling too scared might make her tell you- oh god, nobody can tell you. If you find out, their life is over. They can't let you know, no matter what.

[sadnightforus]

SACRED PLACE  (SES) 

boyfriend!eunseok x gn!reader 

SYNOPSIS: The sun is setting and you know it’s childish that you want to keep holding onto this moment for forever, because you know his heart will never be yours. 

WORD COUNT: 2.2K 

WARNINGS: unreliable narrator first of all (for clarification), emotional lololol but which sadnightforus’ work isn’t, occasional pet names, insecurities and so much confusion. I promised eunseok loves reader but they are wrapped up in their head okay. inferiority complex is strong, do not yell at me. 

A/N: I wrote this one in the morning cause I’m cranky and i like miss carly rae jepsen. slightly inspired by bends by her. this is not self-indulgent fun fact, her music just got me acting up that’s all 

reblogs, comments and likes are appreciated! 

5:39 PM. 

 The sun begins to set, as you can see from the corner of your eyes. If you turn around, you’ll be met with a breathtaking view of the sky sinking and reflecting its light onto the ocean water. 

 But you don’t want to. 

 You don’t deserve to see it. Pretty things like that will disappear and they’ll never stay. 

 You and your boyfriend are laying on your back on the beach, legs tangling with one another as you often look to your right and sometimes the left, yet, never the front. 

“Baby?” 

 His gentle voice calls out to you, reminding you that he’s still here. 

“Yeah? I zoned out, I’m sorry.” You rush to apologize as you quickly retrieve your attention back to the man near you. 

“It’s okay. What are you thinking about, hmm?” He asks, his fingers now making their ways into your hair as you let your thoughts roaming wild, eyes shooting up to the orange hue of the once blue sky that will be soon decorated by the warm embrace of the darkness in just a few more hours. 

“Not anything that interesting that interesting.” You give him a small smile, reassuring him that he shouldn’t be worried about your long train of thoughts that seem to be involved in the picture of him and you. “Just think about how pretty you are.” 

 And you never lie about this matter.

 He’s extraordinary, you’re nothing special in comparison. He has always been showered in compliments for his out of world, sharp yet such a masculine look, and he knows it too. You’re just a person who exists and you’re not sure what’s the purpose behind why you exist. You personally think only people who have star power like Eunseok should be the one to stay on this earth, to show how beautiful life can be. 

 You’ve seen his exes, they are all beautiful. You can’t compare because why would you compare goddesses to a person that never radiates a sense of mystery or intrigued others’ interests? You’d think they’ll be so embarrassed to be compared to someone like you.

 Even if he tells you that you’re the prettiest person on the planet, you don’t believe him. How could you when you’re a plain jane, while he is the most beautiful boy you’ve ever met anyway?

“Funny, I think about how pretty you are too.” He chuckles, his eyes has a bright sparkle that you only wish to be able to witness this close. You hope you don’t lose this privilege any time soon.

“Umm hmm.” You hum, pretending to agree with his statement. “But you’re like the beach waves that are steadily rolling. You’re just so comforting.”

 My beach boy, my comfort boy, something you wanted to say but hold yourself back from doing so.

 He’s just one of a kind. 

 Every time you’re sad, you often go to the beach. It’s something you’ve been doing since you were a kid. You’re still an adult and you feel a bit childish that you’d still go to stare at the ocean waves rolling, but right now, it does nothing more than being a poison to your mental health ever since you let a pretty boy with strong features of the name Song Eunseok invades the space of your loneliness. And you begin to associate him to every little thing that you used to like. 

 Just like right now, you’re thinking that he is truly reminiscent of the fresh air that washes over the both of you, with the heart in the sand that you used to draw for him whenever you both get here. 

 He has your heart, but does he know that? Does he care that you’ll be willing to do anything for him? 

 Probably not. You’re happy to keep that thought hidden from him. 

“Don’t think so.” He chuckles. “You know what I think of when I see you? I think of you as the sunset that people will never get tired of seeing.” 

 You’re gloomy, how could he sees you as the sun of his life? Or in his eyes for that matters, even worthy of his attention?

 You can’t comprehend it. 

 He’s so much better than you in every aspect. You think that he should’ve been with someone who is on the same level as him, not someone who has nothing like you. 

 You never know what love is, until you meet him. In school, there was no one who had ever shown their interest in you, but you supposed that it’s better than to be heartbroken at the realization that the love someone gave to you was merely because of a bet. 

 You always kept your head down, afraid to meet people’s eyes. You’re timid, meek and shy because you never feel like you fit in. Even the people in your family, they’re all charismatic and charming, except for you who is not at all an interesting character to think about when they ask about your family. 

 You think you're a pretty forgettable person to others. 

“That’s you.” Your eyes lock onto his face, observing how a person can be this beautiful. God indeed has favorites, and your boyfriend is one of them. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve seen. You’re as beautiful as the sun that shines during winter, to keep someone warm.” 

 It’s true, you’ve always felt like the walking embodiment of overwhelming loneliness since birth. And Eunseok is your sun who provides warmth into this stoic, cold life of yours. 

 For the first time, you are able to see the world in more than just two colors that you’re so used to being familiar with, black and white. You see a variety of colors in its glory with his love, but you’re not sure if his love is out of obligation or not. 

 You begin to love yellow, aside from chronomatic colors that have been your favorite colors growing up. It’s because it reminds you of Eunseok. He is nothing but sunshine, the brightest star that shines amongst the crowd of people like you. 

 You remember that you didn’t particularly like yellow as much when you were younger. You didn’t feel like it suits you— it belongs to happy people, special people like Eunseok. You wonder, how could someone born and carry something special since birth already? Was it made or was it a practice to enhance the exquisite god given gift? 

 You sometimes resent god for making you a boring person with no drive and easily moldable into whatever they want you to be, instead of being distinctive. 

 You want to be special, heck even feel special, just for a minute like him too. 

 What does that feel like? 

 It probably feels nice, being loved for simply who you are. 

“I know you said I’m like the beach waves, but personally, you’re like the ocean. You’re unpredictable, but very calm, beautiful and breathtaking.” He maintains eye contact with you. “You really remind me of the color blue. You have a kind of depth to you that people would love to write about.” 

 What is he talking about? 

 Oh right, you remind him of the color blue? 

 You know about the association of the color blue and melancholia. You know it means sadness. 

 Is that how he perceives you? 

 Truthfully, you think that people aren’t blind to the fact you look down all the time. You radiate off the 'damsel in distress’ vibe and you’ve been told to brighten up more. You even had people approaching you and willing to listen to your stories because you just looked so troubled and you might need a hand or a shoulder to cry on in case you had no one. 

 You think these kinds of things only happen to pathetic people like you. You personally don’t know someone who is alike to you at all. 

 You have so much to say, but in the end, it’ll all boil down to you being lonely and miserable. 

 You always feel so blue, can he feel it too? 

 Why can’t you be happy? 

“You always say these things.” You try to avoid saying that you don’t believe it, because it’ll show that you don’t believe in yourself as much as he always told you that he has always been so amazed by him. “I see myself as a dessert.” 

“Whatever you say, cutie.” He shakes his head. “But in my opinion, if you’re a dessert, then I’d rather die of dehydration just to be close to you.”

 You know that it’s supposed to be a compliment, but you don’t feel like it. No matter how much he tries to flatter you, you don;t ever feel like those compliments ever get through your head and soak into your brain.

 You’re not enough.

 And you know that he’s too good for you. 

 You believe that you’re truly a dessert, there’s nothing that excites people about you. You’re just someone who is meant to be in the background, not someone in front of the camera, not someone who attracts attention from the others. If people stay around you long enough, they’ll get a thirst to seek for someone who can fulfill their excitement in being adventurous and interesting as well as striking, something you lack.

 And if you’re the ocean, you’d kill people with the tsunami of your overwhelming blue-esque. Nobody should put up with you, but he does. You don’t understand why he stays around with the way you’re like an unpredictable ocean wave that could make others fear for their life.

“Baby?” He mutters out softly, seeing you losing yourself in your train of thoughts. “Let’s get up. It’s getting dark. I want to walk around this beach with you.”

 You don’t notice that the sun has been long gone and has been replaced by the moon now, but you supposed that you’ve always been quite a daydreamer. You’re flustered however, as you sit up, using the support from one of your arms before you can stand up, then you dust all the sand that attaches itself onto your clothes.

“Let’s go.” He smiles at you, and for a moment, your sadness vanishes like the air that brushes itself all the way from thousands of miles away to softly blow his hair, making him look almost so dream-like.

 You think you’re so special that you’re the only person whose person he directs this smile at. And you’re the cause of his happiness just as much as he is with yours.

 He takes a slow step, you follow along. He takes your hand in his, then grip it tightly, like a sweet cotton that is inseparable that never wants to let go.

 You see some shops start lightening up their place, as you’re visiting a tourist attraction. However, you can’t help but feel like it’s just the ghost of Eunseok who talks to you. And you might be seen as crazy for holding onto an imaginary man.

 Then you’re back to being sad again.

 Because no matter how real he is, you feel like you’re holding onto a version of a man that doesn’t exist at all, or a version of a person who you might’ve made up in your head.

 What if he doesn't love you as much as you do with him? 

 It’s funny that you’re probably in an unrequited love in this relationship, maybe.

 You know about the kind of love that people all shared throughout their lives. However, you can’t be too sure about the feelings that he has been upholding for you.

“I love you.” His eyes land directly into yours, gazing deep into your soul, as if he tries to read you.

 You suddenly feel terrible for your earlier thoughts and equally as self conscious.

 And you almost wanted to cry.

“I love you too.” You say, eyes almost brimming with tears and it takes you a crazy level of self amount to not break down in front of him.

 And you mean it. You mean every single word that you respond back to him. 

 This beach is your sacred place. You introduce him to this place because you make a room for a boy named Song Eunseok in your heart, a place that is just as sacred as this place you’re standing at. It’s very vulnerable and you’d hate it if he walks out with your heart in his hand, squeezing it until it explodes and bleeds uncontrollable and the memories of the beach waves rolling as you both walk by the shore, admiring the view under this moonlight. 

 This love itself is very sacred too, and you hope that he’ll continue to love you for a long time as much as you love him. 

 Because you know that there’s no other room for any man who comes after him anymore.

COPYRIGHTED BY SADNIGHTFORUS, 2024

[nanamikentoseyebags]

pairing: kento nanami x f!reader

content: just two grumps being grumpy together, alcohol consumption, pathetically self ship coded!!

wc: ~ 1.3k

a/n: my poor lil attempt to write something again, don't judge too hard, i just needed to feel some comfort

Whoever is in charge of the event has terrible taste in music, Kento Nanami mentally remarks, taking a small sip of the way more disgusting whiskey and placing the glass on the bar with an audible "clink". He wearily surveys the room, running his eyes over the expensive gilt-framed paintings, the elaborately inlaid furniture, and the huge elephant in the room in form of a grand black piano, that most definitely hasn't felt a human touch in at least a couple decades.

Myriads of stars are scattered across the ceiling in intricate patterns, like fluttering moths surrounding a lonely chandelier, decorated with what looks like tiny diamond droplets. It radiates a soft glow that seems to make even the faces of these people look pleasant somehow. He hates this place, or rather he has to hate it, because now it has become a nest of the most poisonous snakes - a reception for the richest, most prominent, most influential people in the city: the owners of the biggest financial companies that seem to own the whole world in their heads. Kento frowns, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly and cursing his boss for obliging him to attend it.

A quiet “Ughhhh, that’s disgusting,” snaps Nanami out of his thoughts, drawing him to turn in your direction, watching curiously as you spit out one of the appetizers and wrap it in a napkin. "This is a real culinary crime! Who the hell would think of ruining food so cruelly? Ugh, I should sue them for the moral damage this appetizer just did to me". Reaching for your glass, you took a couple sips and held it out to your boyfriend, cringing, "and serving people champagne like that is a crime too. I thought everything was top notch at these receptions," you paused, "you know I'm going to say this, but I'll say it anyways, here: I could have done it better...God, I need something to wash this disgusting taste down with."

"Of course you would, darling," Kento chuckles, "And I don't think there's anything edible here at all," he sets your glass on a tray of a passing waiter, "I'm afraid you're the only sweet thing here."

A death stare, that's what he sees, turning to you again. "Very funny," you roll your eyes playfully, nudging him lightly in the side, "I always wonder…how do they do that?" you motion your hand to the groups of people talking amongst themselves.

"Do what?" his tilts his head to the side, leaning closer to you, his arm goes around your waist, slowly stroking the curve of your hip.

"Pretending to like everything, from terrible food to engaging into conversations with people they can't stand. Sometimes I think their faces are about to crack from those strained smiles."

“Long years of practice, I think. I doubt they'd be much good at it if they didn't know how to cast fake smiles at every partner and then ruin their firms with the same grin."

"Atrocious," you give a dismissive glance to another pair of presumably millionaires fluffing up their feathers and parading like male birds in front of a couple of women.

"Sorry for bringing you here, I-" he doesn't have time to finish the sentence, feeling your arms tightly circle his torso.

"I don't mind at all, I might even enjoy standing here with you all grumpy and dissatisfied with everything and everyone. It's more fun together," you wink at him, stroking his back.

“Oh yeah, I wouldn’t want anyone else to be grumpy with,” he pauses, looking at your perplexed expression, “okay…” with a sigh he continues, “in my defense I might just say that it sounded less cheesy in my head”. You giggle, watching the tips of his ears turning red. “On the other note,” Kento’s hand flies up to gently caress the apple of your cheek with his thumb, “I know I’ve said it like a thousand times today but you look absolutely divine.”

And he means it, as much as he hates to be here, he thinks you are made for this. You are made to be surrounded by this splendor he believes he fails to give you. As if you'd stepped out of one of those ornate paintings, in that ethereal silk dress of yours and hairdo, you really do look like a deity to him, walking around your chambers.

And before he even gets a chance to tell you this, a loud “Nanamiiiiii,” thunders across the whole space, the approaching steps of his boss reverberate tenfold in Kento’s head, as he reluctantly lets go off you and turns to face the horror in the flesh.

"Our most reticent Nanami has finally shown the world his gorgeous chosen one," the nearly bald, stocky man approaches you two with a broad smile, plastered on his face, exposing his porcelain teeth. His wrinkled face is adorned with a pathetically thin mustache, with gold-rimmed sunglasses perched on his nose. He smells of expensive alcohol and cheap cologne, you have time to notice a pair of huge rings on his fingers when he, without a second's hesitation, takes your hand and brings it to his lips. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Y/n, Nanami doesn't spread himself too widely about his life, but your name almost never leaves his lips."

"Y/n, this is my boss, Mr...."

"I'm just Steve to you," he blurts out in a half-drunk grin, still not letting go of your hand. Kento’s eyes roll to the back of his head, as he rubs his temple tiredly, struggling to keep his cool.

"Nice to meet you...Steve," looking absolutely unimpressed, you gently pull your hand out of his iron grip, taking your now speechless with anger boyfriend, under his arm, and smiling with feigned gentleness, "Kento has told me a lot about you, thank you for inviting us to this wonderful dinner."

“Nah, that’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” he chuckles, “you should try to convince your man to go out more often, especially with such a beauty by his side, it should be a real pleasure. He has a great future, my dear, a great future,” he wagged his finger right in front of your face, “okay, lovebirds, I have to go… I have to go, I have to cheer up a couple of losers, whose careers I will destroy tomorrow.” And he bursts in an almost inhuman laugh that seems to make everyone in the room but him uncomfortable. “But I'll see you soon," and once again taking your hand in his leaves another loud, wet kiss on your palm before retreating to another direction.

“Ugh, what an asshole”, you wipe your hand on the soft fabric of your dress, "'so, did I get to act all happy? It was quite hard since I was affected by the sight of his awful mustache.”

Hearing no reply, you raised your head to meet the two agates that had been staring back at you for a long time, gleaming adoringly. Kento's face is playing with the brightest smile you've seen this evening.

“What?” you frown, not sure where the sudden burst of amusement is coming from.

“Nothing”, he smiles wider, “just glad I'm here with you. Speaking of which, why don't we sneak out of here right now?” he holds out his hand to you.

“I thought you'd never ask”, you let out a sigh of relief, intertwining your fingers, as you quietly head for the exit. Away from the lying people and cruel games, quietly grumbling about various little things along the way. He carries a pair of your uncomfortable heels in one hand as you walk beside him in your evening dress and favorite sneakers, clinging to him tighter and thinking that the world isn't so bad when you have someone to be grumpy with.

[hannibals-favourite-meal]

The Lost Princess Chapter 7

Jotun!Loki x plus size reader

When Jotunheim and Asgard are on the brink of war, only a marriage of convenience between the two worlds can unite them. The only problem is, Odin does not have a female heir, or does he?

Submit your own character!

Warnings: violence, arranged marriage, angst, enhanced!reader, swearing, slightly unhealthy relationship, Loki is an emotionally stunted person, age gap (I wrote reader as being in her early twenties but can be read as any age)

WC: 8.9k (I'm so sorry hahaha)

A/N: Thank you all for sticking with this series, I find it hard to write sometimes but I promise, the subsequent chapters will be shorter and coming out quicker. I love you all!! 💞💞

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Minors DNI

Chapter 7

Home Again

“Remove your hands from her or I will do it for you.” Loki’s voice was edged with something dangerous, the tip of a knife doused in poison. Y/N could feel his anger even from yards away but her own fury overpowered her fear of him and his temper. Thor faltered only a moment before his grip tightened on his sister’s shoulders, pulling her behind his bulky body in a vain attempt to shield her from the frost giant.

His glare deepened, his red eyes blazing with a barely contained fire. Adjusting the hold on the hilt of his long blade, his knuckles turn a pale blue with the force. “Let. Her. Go.” Each word is punctuated by a thundering step forward that shook the stone floor. He seemed far bigger than his usual 12 foot-self like this, with his bare chest puffed out, silvery lines of old scars and traditional markings shining in the lamplight. He would look terrifying to Y/N if she wasn’t blinded by the overwhelming feeling of betrayal.

A sour anger curled in her gut as he got closer and closer. The rest of the world faded to a white noise, her focus solely on her husband. She easily side-stepped her brother, fingers curling into fists so tight that her nails sliced through the delicate skin of her palms. Bright red blood dripped from between her knuckles.  

The grey cobblestone beneath her bare feet melted, her body radiating a heat she had never felt before. The stone sizzled as her blood made contact with the floor, leaving behind dark stains on the now white hot ground. “You lying, manipulative piece of shit.” She barely caught the falter in his step, the hitch of his breath, as if he was wounded by her words. “You are a selfish worm who doesn’t deserve the air he breathes. Was everything a lie? Did you just make up that little sob story to get me into your bed willingly?”

The oxygen ignited around her, embers burning out before sparking to life again. The air crackled unstably, like the moment before a fire rages out of control. “Are you that pathetic that you have to rely on lies and trickery to force someone to marry you? To have a slave at your every beck and call to make you feel powerful?”

“You know nothing!” Shadows curled around the god. He had stopped in his tracks, blade plastered to his muscular thigh, almost as if he was preventing himself from doing her harm. The dark metal trembled against his blue skin. 

“I know enough.” She snarled, also stopping. Wind whipped around her, sending sparks flying through the great halls. She was an inferno, waiting to blow.

They were an arms length apart and he towered over her but she refused to back down, refused to give even an inch as the feared prince glared down at her, his jaw clenched so tightly, she could see the muscles ticking. “All that talk about helping me, about teaching me. All of that, was that a lie too?” His eyes darted away, telling her all she needed to know. 

Flames so hot they were blue licked up the bare skin of her legs, singing her husband’s shirt. It flaked away from her body but the fire replaced the silk. “I did what I had to.” The air shimmered with the heat, making her facade tremble before him.

Loki studied her, daring her to make the first move. They were on the precipice of something more but for the first time, Y/N was in control. She had a choice, turn her back and run or make him burn for what he did. She thought about what she had confided in him. Of her pain and fear, and he pretended to care. “I hate you.” Her voice was calm but brittle, on the edge of breaking with even the most gentle of touches.

“You do not hate me.” He urged, his own voice becoming softer as if to cradle her own. “You could never hate me.” The flickers began to die down around her as the fight began to leave her body. She was tired and her body craved his attention, needing to be held and comforted.

But when he took a step forward, she took two back. The tears that escaped her eyes, disappearing as soon as they touched her cheeks, evaporating instantly. “I can’t believe I trusted you.”

She did not fight the hand that closed around her bicep, carefully pulling her away from him and into the embrace of her brother. “I can’t believe I-I lo-“ Her words were cut off with a sob and buried her face into Thor’s chest who had silently followed her every step, her anger burning away like ash in the wind. 

“If you know what is best for you, let us leave.” Thor spoke plainly, using one arm to lift her into him so that he could carry her, while the other held Mjölnir at the ready. For a moment, it seemed Loki would let them leave, the ruby of his eyes dulled and forlorn but then, in the blink of an eye, his sword was pressed into Thor’s sternum.

“You are mine! You have always been mine! How dare you disobey me! How dare you even think of leaving me!” But the god did not waver, his hold tightening around her as he prepared himself for battle. The leather of his armour easily gave way to the sharp tip of the blade.

“By order of Queen Frigg of Asgard, the allmother, your marriage is annulled and Princess Y/N must return to her place on Midgard.” Thor took several long strides backwards, Loki followed, his weapon at the ready. He would kill to get her back, the god could see that, but he would not give him the chance.

“You cannot take her from me!” He howled like a wild animal. And Y/N flinched.

“I was never yours, I will never be yours.” She spoke in a whisper but her husband heard her all the same. “Goodbye Loki.” As the light from the bifrost enclosed around the siblings, he lunged but a sudden wall of white flames forced him back as they burned his skin.

“No!”

The air was warm, almost biting against her freezing skin as the sun finally shone on them. The wind was a gentle breeze, shifting the fields of flowers like the waves of an ocean. But the beauty of the scene was broken by a scream.

Y/N slipped from her brother’s arms, releasing a howl from deep in her soul. The ground singed beneath her, burning with the rage and pain she felt. Thor could only watch, helpless as she crumbled before him, crawling at the dirt.

“Sister.” He called but she did not respond. Her sobs broke his heart and all he could do was kneel beside her and pull her back into his arms. She clutched onto his arm which was pressed against her chest as she leaned back against his front. His blue eyes shut, wishing he could take her pain.

By the time her chest hiccuped with quiet cries, the sun had begun its descent, casting a golden glow over the field. “I want to go home.” She whispered against the tanned skin of his forearm. Thor nodded against the side of her head and laid a quick kiss to her temple.

“Then let’s go home.” 

Tony kept three photos on his desk. The first was of him and Pepper the day he proposed, the Paris skyline silhouetted behind them as their lips met in a kiss borderline of explicit. The second was of him and Peter, both hunched over his lab bench, focusing on some invention that they had later scrapped.

The final one was a side profile of a woman. Tony had found it in the small bedroom in Y/N’s home. She was younger, not yet burdened by the world. Her smile was easy, her eyes soft. She wore a lilac sundress, a flower tucked behind her ear. 

It had been almost seven months since he had last seen her face, heard her voice. The search had been given up when Thor came back, reeking of alcohol and sadness. He had told him that he was too late, that she was already Loki’s and there was no way of getting her home. 

She was gone, married to the monster responsible for the death of more than 80 people and the almost complete destruction of New York. He dreaded even thinking of what was happening to her, what he was making her do. Everything he had tried to get her home had failed. 

Building a long range rocket to somehow reach Jotunheim. Trying to beat up a depressed Thor and forcing him to take Tony to her. Even trying to bribe Strange. All of it crashed and burned.

It was only last month, during a late night brainstorm that Pepper had convinced him to stop. “She made her choice Tony. She married him of her own free will.” It destroyed her to tell him that but he needed to hear it, he had to know it wasn’t his fault. He had broken down in her arms but he was ok, finally.

AC/DC, as usual, blasted far too loud through his home lab. His ears pounded with the high volume but he kept plotting along, his eyes focused on yet another suit design that FRIDAY had pulled up for him. Pepper was out at a charity gala that he couldn’t be bothered to attend so he could stay up as late as he wished, or rather, how late his body would allow given that the only thing in his system was a smoothie and many cups of coffee.

“Hey boss, Thor has just made a landing on Earth.” The AI pipped up. Tony sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“And why is that of any importance to me?” There was a beat of silence before the hologram before him disappeared and a video feed filled his vision. Thor was standing outside the gate, a woman held tightly in his arms. His armour looked strangely burnt, the silver metal blackened, his cape ripped.

“Is that?” Tony started, his eyes widening.

“Yes Boss, it’s Miss Y/N.” He stumbled to his feet, knocking over everything on the bench. His chest constricted with panic. She was alive, she was here. “Should I let them in, boss?” But he didn’t respond, lost in a blind haze. Tony ripped through the lab, his disbelief and returning hope driving him forward faster and faster until he was sprinting through his home, FRIDAY’s voice following close behind him.

“Y/N!” He consciously knew she couldn’t hear him but he had to call her name, to make this real. The front doors swung open before him like gates to a new world. The setting sun illuminated a pair of figures, forming a beautiful glow around their heads.

Her head lolled against the god’s shoulder and in the fading light, he saw her smile sadly at him. “Tony.” There was no grace to his movements as he collided with them, only pure relief. Her soft body fell into his embrace and he finally felt like he could breathe again.

“I’ve got you. You’ll never have to leave again.” There was movement in his peripheral vision as Thor backed away from them. Tony chanced a glance at the god who had brought her home. He looked devastated. He could only speculate about what had happened to them both for them to end up here. A sudden wetness forced his brown eyes back down to Y/N.

She was crying quietly, sobs that sounded strained like she had nothing left to give. Tony cupped the back of her head as he wrapped his other arm around her shoulders. “Keep her safe, there's work to be done.” And with that haunting message, Thor was gone. 

“Let’s get you inside and put on some human clothes.” She chuckled tearfully against his chest and Tony smiled, feeling the way her own lips curved up in that grin he knew so well.

“I really want a cheeseburger right now.” 

“Then let’s get as many greasy slabs of meat as you can stand and a milkshake too.” Her laugh became more joyous, a sound he missed so dearly. “Come on, you also have months of trash TV to catch up on. You won’t believe the shit you missed on the Real Housewives.” He helped her to her feet, noting the shirt she wore that was far too big to be her own. He resolved to burn it as soon as she took it off.

She hummed in agreement. “I miss my phone too, and coffee. Dear lord, I would kill for a coffee.” His arm wrapped around her shoulder, guiding her into the luxurious mansion, leading her away from the nightmare she had escaped.

“Now you’re speaking my language, kid. Coffee and a phone coming right up!” 

Cold water washed over her as Y/N stood in the massive shower. She was still running terribly hot, her skin blazing like a bad fever. Emotions swirled in her mind, the anxiety, fear, and sadness. But what made it worse was that every time she closed her eyes, she saw Loki.

She wished her mind showed her his terrifying anger, the evil deeds he had done but instead she watched snap shots of their life together. The way he held her protectively while they slept, his huge arms winding around her soft body to keep her pressed against his muscular chest. The rare instances where he would chuckle under his breath at one of her outbursts. Even those times where he kissed her with a passion she had never encountered before.

Her chest ached with the simultaneous feeling of complete betrayal and the relief to be home with people who loved her. But seeing her ex-boss again, eating their favourite meal together, even watching menopausal white women yelling at each other felt different. Everything was just as she left it, but she had changed fundamentally.

Her fingers brushed the slim chain of her collar which she had not had the heart to take off yet. Everything else had been stripped away and she assumed destroyed in the most violent way possible by the eccentric billionaire but the necklace remained.

Shutting off the water, she dried almost immediately, the remaining droplets evaporating into the chill air of the bathroom. A small pile of clothes were left on the counter for her, suspiciously they weren’t new but in fact from her now abandoned apartment in the Avengers Tower.

She caught her reflection in the huge mirror on the otherside of the blindingly white bathroom. She was not the girl she was before. Her innocence and trust in the world was robbed from her, replaced with an anger and cynicism that would have disgusted her younger self. Her body was now covered in scars, the branding of the torture she endured both mentally and physically. 

Y/N traced the lines of her body, now more rounded out than the last time she was on Earth but she did not feel a hatred for those extra pounds that sat on her curves. It meant that she had survived, and now, she would have the chance to live again. 

As she quickly redressed, hiding her necklace under the large plaid Tony had given her. Sadly, she glanced at her left hand. Her ring had been the first thing taken from her. 

Tony ripped it from her finger as soon as he saw it, tucking it into the pocket of his jeans with the promise that he would melt it down into nothing. She couldn’t admit to even herself that her hand felt wrong without the familiar weight of the bulky ring. 

A sudden knock on the door shook her from her thoughts. “Did you drown in there?” Tony said jokingly but she could hear the worry in his voice.

“I’m fine boss, just getting dressed.” His sigh of relief was loud enough to hear through the large door. Double checking her appearance and making sure her scars were covered, Y/N opened the door, the ripped ruins of her husband’s shirt in her arms.

As soon as Tony made eye contact with the younger woman, his shoulders slumped. “C’mon kid, let’s get you downstairs, there are some people that want to see you.” The silk was taken from her grasp with a quick yank and tucked behind his back.

Y/N’s heart rate spiked. The last time she was surrounded by people was her wedding. She had been isolated for months, only seeing Loki or his father on occasion. But still she nodded, painting a strained smile on her face to appease her mentor. He had told her of the effort and pain the whole team went through to find her again, she had to see them.

He took her arm in a friendly gesture. Y/N froze up. Suddenly her belly was filled with fear as bile rose in her throat. They marched side by side to the main sitting room where she picked up overlapping murmuring of voices. Each step brought back memories of her biological father pulling her forward to a fate she agreed to but did not want.

She heard the clack of her heels, felt the weight of the tiara on her head, heard the swoosh of the beads Frigg had given her, with each step. Her fingers curled tightly around Tony’s bicep causing him to hiss. Her eyes were wide with fear.

Logically, she knew these people would never hurt her but yet, she was still terrified. “Hey hey, we don’t have to do this now.” Tony had stopped walking only a few feet from the entryway to the large room and turned to face her.

Y/N shook her head. “It’s fine, I’m fine.” But her words were hollow.

He glanced at her skeptically. “Ok- how about if you need to tap out, say pineapple. It’s my safe word.” That made her giggle, easing the building pressure in her chest. 

“Could you get any more basic?” She teased. Taking in a deep breath, she stepped forward once more, entering a window to her past.

The Avengers looked like they had been trapped in time until she returned. There were small differences, like Bucky’s short hair and Steve’s beard but all in all, they looked just as she remembered them. It felt like a dream, an image her mind had conjured up as some sort of unconscious protection from the cruel reality she had been living in.

Her eyes locked with Wanda’s grey ones. The witch gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. This caused the others to look around, searching for the source of her shock. “Y/N!” She threw herself at said woman, enveloping her in the warmest, tightest hug Y/N had ever experienced. 

That seemed to break the others from their trance. They swarmed her like ants, each attempting to embrace her but stopped by the arms of another team member. Even as her brain was thrumming with panic, she laughed. Those feelings were shoved down as far as they would go, inevitably to be dealt with when she woke up from her nightmares.

She could barely catch individual words as they spoke over each other, eager to hear of her ordeal. There was only one that hung back. Steve looked like he was about to cry, his blue eyes shone with tears he couldn't hide as he crumpled onto the couch behind him.

Instantly, the way was cleared for Y/N. “Steve.” She whispered. He wouldn't look at her. She knew he must've been wracked with guilt, blaming himself for what happened to her like the noble and slightly foolish man he was. Y/N repeated his name, drawing closer to the soldier, her body trembling.

His broad shoulders shook with silent sobs, becoming more hysterical the closer she got. “I-I can't believe this. You're not here.” The others had gone silent, glancing at each other with looks of worry. They knew Steve had taken her disappearance hard but they didn't think it was this bad.

“I'm here. I'm home.” She fell to her knees before him, dipping her head so she could catch a glimpse of his eyes. “I'm safe.” Tentatively, he reached for her, the tips of his fingers just barely touching her full cheek. As soon as he made contact with her hot skin, something snapped in his mind.

Strong arms wrapped so tightly around her, her ribs creaked with the force. But it didn't hurt. “I've got you.” Tears soaked into her shirt from where he tucked his face against her neck. 

Y/N expected that usual warm feeling to settle on her chest from whenever Steve touched her, the butterflies in her stomach and dare she say it but the spark of arousal between her legs. And yet, as she held him more intimately than ever before, emotions flying, she felt nothing. 

Well, she did feel sad, she chose to marry Loki and put all of her friends through this. She had a fondness for Steve she knew would never dissipate but it seemed now there was an icy grip on her heart, holding all of her affections back. “Oh Stevie. I'm so sorry.”

The room grew quiet. They had all waited for this moment for so long and yet there was a wrongness to it that no one could identify. Y/N was different. Bucky clocked onto it first, seeing how dull her eyes were, how guarded her body language. She was holding back, fearful of something or someone. Or more likely, a whole room full of people.

“Let's give them some space.” He grabbed Sam by the shoulder as the younger man went to swoop in for another hug, “I'm sure we'll all get our fair share of Y/N time now that she's home.” A grateful look confirmed his suspicions. He nodded as he led the others away.

She watched them leave. He knew that look, it was the same way that he used to look at the world when he first escaped HYDRA. She was questioning if what she was seeing was really real or just some dream. Just as he turned to exit, Y/N shifted, causing her shirt to lift over her hip, exposing a small sliver of skin but it was more than enough to reveal the puckered flesh of a scar, one that looked painful and deep.

Their eyes met and it was like looking in a mirror, a broken and bloody mirror. With a silent promise to himself to check in on her later, Bucky shut the door softly behind him.

“It's just us now Stevie, you don't have to worry any more.” Her knees were getting sore from kneeling on the hardwood floor but Steve wasn't letting go anytime soon so she just resolved to sit there and wait for him to let go.

“I thought you were gone forever. And it was my fault.” He felt so small in her arms, so weak. He was crumbling before her like a sandcastle caught in the incoming tide. 

Y/N shook her head. “No Steve it isn't, I promise you that.” And no more could be said. He would insist he was at fault, and she would reassure him that it wasn't the case as more and more shame built up in her gut. So they stayed quiet, holding each other on the floor, both wishing they could turn back the clock.

“Little star, it’s time to wake up.” A smooth voice crooned. A cold hand cupped her full cheek, encouraging her to wake from the light slumber she found herself in. She smiled but quickly stamped it out, keeping her eyes firmly shut. “You cannot sleep forever, my star.”

“I’m not asleep.” Her voice was filled with laughter just waiting to bubble out.

“Oh really?” He hummed. “Then what are you? Because you look asleep to me.” His voice grew closer and she could feel his warm breath against the cup of her ear.

“I've been cursed and only you can break the spell.” Even with her eyes closed, she knew he was smiling in that wicked way he always did before he lathered her with his attention.

“And how do you propose I do that?” He asked like he didn't already know the answer. His fingers trailed down from her cheek, tracing the curve of her jaw, down the softness of her chin, then following the lines of her neck until he reached her collarbone which had been exposed by the t-shirt she wore.

Her breath hitched the lower he went, goosebumps following in his wake. “True love's kiss.” She felt him lean closer, his slim chest pressing against her left shoulder.

His lips were cold, as they usually were, but they were the softest things she ever felt. The kiss was gentle at first, merely a brush of his lips against hers but soon, he rested more of his weight on top of her, his hunger for increasing exponentially. 

But far too soon, he pulled away and her eyes fluttered open. “It's time to go, my star.” She frowned.

“But I don't want to go, I never want to leave your side.” Black hair hung over them like a curtain, shielding their faces from the rest of the world. She knew he didn't want to leave, but he had to, just like how she had to go home before her mother got too worried.

“I know my darling but one day, one day we will be together forever.” His green eyes shone with love as he looked down upon her.

“Do you promise?”

“Always.”

Y/N jolted awake, gasping for air like she had been drowning. These dreams were becoming more vivid as if she were revisiting a memory that had only occurred the day before. The boy had been a fixture of both her childhood and teen days, a comforting presence that only a first love could be.

“Little fucking star.” She growled, throwing the sheets from her body and slipping from the too soft bed Tony had provided her that she could never find rest in. Even with the air conditioning on full blast and sleeping naked, Y/N felt too hot, too uncomfortable.

She knew that her body was used to the freezing temperatures of Jotunheim and having a living ice cube sleep beside her but she didn't want to admit that out loud. It would be like admitting that she actually cared for the man that ripped her life apart and destroyed any future hope for an actually healthy relationship.

Darkness still enveloped the wooded area around the mansion, it must have been still early morning. Haphazardly, she grabbed coverup, concealing her naked body, and ventured out into the house, in search of something to occupy her mind.

It had been just over a week since Thor returned her to Earth. And to say it had been strange would be an incredible understatement. No more than three other people would be in a room with her, even movie nights and dinners were split up so she wasn't overwhelmed. Everyone walked on eggshells around her, consumed by their own guilt and frightened by what, if anything, would trigger her.

The only person that had actually treated her normally was Bucky and she supposed that was because he had gone through something similar. Well not the being forced to marry a god that tried to start a war in order to get revenge against his previous adoptive father, but the being kidnapped and experimented on part of it.

And then there was the person she had been avoiding for the six days she had been there, Steve. It was hard to look him in the eye and see that undying love he held for her while her own heart was confused and broken simultaneously.

The house was thankfully silent as Y/N walked along, mindlessly wandering as she  got lost in her own thoughts. Most of the Avengers had decided to temporarily stay with the Starks in an effort to provide some sort of normality for her. Only Clint, Bruce and Peter returned to their own homes, leaving the mansion still quite full.

“It's a bit late for a midnight snack.”

“Holy shit!” Y/N jumped at the sound of another voice interrupting her thoughts. Bucky sat at the counter, dressed in a red henley and sweatpants, his short hair still mussed from sleep, sipping a coffee that had gone cold a while ago.

He slyly smiled at her from behind his mug. “Don't scare me like that, asshole.” She grumbled but her scolding only served to make his eyes light up in amusement. Padding over to the pantry, Y/N began searching for something. She didn't know what she wanted but it was so nice to have that choice of just looking at a shelf full of food while she decided what to eat.

“You're the one stalking around a dark house in the middle of the night, I'm just having a coffee. Can't sleep?” She hummed.

“I'm thinking mac and cheese. Do you want some?” She knew she was being obvious with her avoidance of the question but hopefully the super soldier would take the hint and just drop it.

But Bucky was nothing short of persistent. With the silent steps of a weathered assassin, he cautiously approached her. “Go sit, I'll cook it for you.”

“No!” She snapped and suddenly the air in the room got ten degrees hotter. Bucky stepped back preparing for another outburst, but her shoulders fell, and so did the temperature. Her right hand cupped her cheek in a self-soothing manner. “I'm sorry. I just, I need to do this myself.”

“I know. How about I make us some hot chocolate to go with it?” Taking his chance, Bucky moved forward once more, his metal hand coming to rest on her bicep in a friendly touch.

“Y-yes thank you.” Her voice was shaky but her hands were steady, he would take that as a win. With a kiss pressed to her temple that made her release a shuddering breath, he left her to cook her mac and cheese as he started some hot chocolate. Maybe tomorrow she would open up some more.

“Hey Wanda?” The TV played a rerun of an old sitcom the witch was fond of, the volume down low so as to not wake Vis, who was somehow asleep. Her head lolled back on the couch and saw Y/N standing nervously in the doorway.

Her face was illuminated by the flashing lights of the show. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. Wanda could feel how conflicted her mind was, how lost and broken she felt. It was hard not to. Sadness oozed from the demigod like oil spilling into the ocean. “I need help.”

The testing room for Tony's suits was surprisingly empty given how many projects he was working on at once. Already, FRIDAY had a fire safety protocol in place plus a protective shield for Wanda if Y/N happened to go nuclear. “I'm sorry, what do you want me to do?” The red haired woman asked in disbelief.

“I want you to get into my head and find out how exactly my powers work. Lo- he tried to help me control them but I passed out whenever we trained. I need more control.” Her brow was set with determination. “So come on, slap my brain around a bit. It'll really help me out.”

Appalled, Wanda's mouth hung open in shock. “Y/N, that's not going to help. I think it might just make this whole thing worse.” But it seemed, she wouldn't listen to reason.

“I don't know what I'm capable of or even what could set me off. I need to find that trigger before I hurt someone. Please Wanda.” She crossed her arms over her slim chest.

But as she looked at the other woman, feeling her pain and her terror, she relented. “Fine, but I get to stop at any time for any reason. Deal?” Y/N's face lit up and Wanda was suddenly struck by the thought that she hadn't really seen her smile like this since before she disappeared.

“Thank you! Thank you!” She almost jumped for joy and Wanda watched as a huge weight was lifted from her shoulders. How heavy had this burden been and why would she want to carry it alone. Y/N scuttled off to the center of the room, stripping off the oversized long-sleeve shirt and leggings she wore, leaving her in a sports bra and panties.

Catching Wanda's curious gaze, she shrugged. “I don't want to burn up my clothes and have to walk back to my room naked.” 

“Fair.” She agreed. The scars were obvious now, standing out like tattoos against her skin. Wanda was fascinated by the morbid beauty of the largest of them. “So how do you want me to do this?” 

“Just get in there and poke around, see what sticks.” Red mist curled around her head as she steeled herself for the inevitable onslaught of emotion. 

An older man laughing through tears of sleep deprivation as he leaned against her.

Pain, knives slicing into her skin.

Blinding white and cold, the coldness of a hand as he slid a heavy ring on her finger.

Warmth as strong arms encircle her.

The taste of foreign fruit exploding on her tongue.

Tones of blue and red, lips coming closer to her own.

The sound of his amusement.

The smell of his hair.

Suddenly, all of it disappeared with a shocked gasp. Y/N shakily opened her eyes to see the devastation before her. The now previously white walls of the room were black with char, smoke curling from beneath her feet. Wanda still stood behind a protective shield but her face was coloured with terror.

“We have so much fucking work to do.” 

“It's not always nightmares.” A lone lamp in the corner of the living room was the only source of light for the pair, casting their faces in soft shadows. Bucky looked at Y/N from over his small plate of leftovers, noodles hanging from his lips as he took in what she said. “I dream of a boy I used to know sometimes.”

He quickly slurped up the rest of his food and put his plate to the side, shrugging. “I sometimes dream about Dot but they are of the damp variety if you know what I mean.” With a disgusted look on her face, Y/N slapped his arm but Bucky could see the way her mouth turned up in a shy smile.

“Shut up Barnes! I don't want to hear about your centuries old conquests!” He chuckled along with her.

“It was barely a century ago and besides who are you to judge, virgin.” He stuck his tongue out at her childishly which made her laugh even more. 

Their midnight chats had become a nightly occurrence, a colliding of two alike souls who were destined to drift apart once more like passing galaxies. She spent her days training, learning what she was truly capable of and her nights were for soothing her hurt.

Bucky was of two minds about the whole thing. He knew that he could help Y/N in a way that none of the others could but it broke his heart to see his best friend so hurt. No one knew why she had been avoiding Steve, well maybe Wanda did but there was no way she was going to say.

Steve needed to talk to her, to touch her and make sure she was real but whenever Y/N saw him, she would leave the room and isolate until it was time for her and Bucky to have their little chats. “I just keep dreaming about him. I don't remember his name or really what he looked like, but I know that he made me happy.”

She looked wistfully into the darkness as if trying to conjure him to appear before her. “It could be your mind trying to comfort itself, creating someone to deal with all the trauma you went through.”

Her brows furrowed. “But it feels so real, he felt so real.” Curling her shapely legs beneath her, Y/N leaned against the back of the couch, her eyes shifting upwards to the ceiling. This happened a lot, she would drown in her own mind, overwhelmed by the waves of emotion. 

“He might have been, a long time ago. But there is someone who is real that could help you.”

“Bucky-” Her gaze flicked down to him.

“No listen. Steve adores you and he cares for you in a way that I have never seen him care for someone before. You two need to hash out what ever the fuck has been going on.” His words carry a weight that Y/N already felt on her chest. “Let him help you.”

Taking in a deep breath, she tried to find the words to explain to him that she couldn't, when her breath caught in her throat. Emerging from the shadows, Steve loomed over the pair. Evidently, he had been working out, he donned his usual track pants and white t-shirt that was always a size too small. Sweat still glistened on his forehead, making his blond hair appear even darker.

Her head snapped to the former Winter Soldier, leveling him with a glare that sent a shot of fear down his spine. In that moment, he saw her become the goddess they all logically knew her to be, terrifying and beautiful. But her anger was controlled, measured. She knew he had told Steve to come up during their talk and he knew that she would get her revenge one way or another.

“You two need to talk. I'll see you in the morning.” Bucky began to reach out to touch her shoulder in a friendly gesture but faltered when he caught the flash of betrayal in her eyes.

Steve quickly took his place on the couch, his blue eyes boring into her soul. Guilt ignited in her veins. At first she avoided him because she was confused, her feelings were jumbled and running wild. But now, after having her brain turned into soup and put back together again by Wanda, she knew why.

“You, um you're looking a lot better.” 

“Thank you. I think I just needed some junk food and TV.” She huffed nervously. Every fibre of her body was telling her to run but she forced herself to stay, she owed him that. Reaching down, she fished her now cold cup of tea from the floor and cupped the ceramic gently between her palms. 

You're mine, little one. Heat soon flowed between her skin and the cup, quickly heating it back up. Steve looked at her in fascination as the tea began to steam. “Wow.”

She chuckled and curled into herself even more. “Pretty wild right?” He gave her that dazzling smile she knew so well, the one that made people around the country swoon when they saw it, his fake smile.

“Yeah, it's a neat trick.” She cringed at the insincere tone of his voice. Steve readjusted himself, his knees spreading wide so he could bend forward and plant his elbows onto his strong thighs. His fingers intertwined beneath his nose in a pose that screamed dominance. “So.”

“So?” He exhaled harshly through his nose.

“You've been avoiding me. No, don't try to argue, you have. I've spent days trying to figure out what I did wrong and I couldn't figure out what it was. But then, I overheard you and Wanda training.” Her heart dropped. She knew what conversation he was talking about.

“Y/N, I think we seriously need to talk about what your powers are tied to.” Confused, she glanced over at the witch and in the process, extinguished the flame floating freely before her.

“What do you mean?” She asked. Wanda sighed deeply from her place on the small bench they had dragged into the testing room. Her red hair hung heavily around her face, framing the devastating expression she was sporting. 

“Throughout everything, all your thoughts, your feelings, your fears, your hopes, they are tied to one person.” Her voice was soft like she was breaking bad news to Y/N.

“Steve?” 

“What? No. Loki you idiot!” 

Not convinced, Y/N shook her head. “No, I hate him, I want nothing to do with that piece of shit!” But her words held no conviction. Patting the spot beside her, Wanda gestured for the other woman to sit down with her.

“You say that but I have seen your mind. You may not have liked him at first, but you have grown to care for him. Your souls are intertwined like you have loved each other for decades. No matter what has happened, you do lo-”

“Shut up.” She snarled, suddenly turning on her friend. “You don't know what he did to me, what he caused. He is a monster, nothing more.” 

“I have seen him through your eyes! No matter how much you tell yourself that you despise him, it isn't true. I hate this as much as you do but it's a fact. You're in love with him.” There was a clatter from the opposite end of the room, causing both women to whip their heads around but there was nothing there.

Tentatively, Wanda faced Y/N again. “And he loves you. In some twisted, sick way, he needs you more than anything in this universe.” Fat tears streamed down her full cheeks as Wanda took her by the hands. “You need to admit that, and then we can move on.”

“Ok, fine.”

“You're avoiding me because he tricked you into falling in love with him!” The rage came swiftly like a summer storm. “He took you from us, from me! He forced you to marry him! And you're in love with him?!”

But her anger was the tsunami, not the rain. “You know what, fuck you Rogers. You don't know what I've been through and you certainly can't judge me for doing what I had to in order to survive.” 

“You need physiological help Y/N! You're obviously suffering from Stockholm Syndrome! I can help you! I can make it better!” He attempted to reach for her but she jerked away. His eyes flashed with pain at her rejection but she truly could not give less of a shit.

“Oh and what do you get out of this? You fix me and then what, I fall at your feet and offer to blow you as a thank you?” A dark pink flush spread across his cheeks and Y/N scoffed. She rose from her seat, slamming her mug of tea back down onto the coffee table in front of them. “That's what I thought. Don't speak to me again unless you're ready to actually fucking listen to me instead of pretending to be my hero. And tell Bucky that he can go fuck himself.”

Smoke rose from the empty cup, the only thing remaining was burnt tea leaves.

“I need to talk to my brother.”

“That's a weird way to say 'good morning my favourite human. Would you do me the honour of using your insanely large brains and good looks to contact my idiot brother?'” Tony didn't even bother to look up from his work as he answered but when Y/N didn't reply, he lifted his head.

She stood in the entryway to his lab, her expression that of pure hatred. He could see the heat around her, making the hardwood beneath her feet warp and curl from the flames within her. Her eyes were pure white, milky like those of a corpse. “My brother. Now.”

He had seen that look before, but it had been four years ago, looking into the eyes of a man that wanted to kill him and his entire species. How far had Loki sunk his claws into her?

“Ok ok just keep your pants on, this could take a minute.” That seemed to appease her as slowly, the colour returned to her irises almost like dye bleeding through white fabric. Her shoulders dropped and she staggered forward collapsing into a chair by his work bench. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Not really.” Came her response.

“Does it have something to do with the midnight rendezvous you've been having with the Manchurian Candidate? Or the mind melding with our wicked witch?” Y/N groaned and slipped from the chair, practically melting into the cool concrete of the floor.

“Sort of. It's mostly Steve though.” Tony glanced at her over the line of code he was writing so that Thor could be alerted. “He just- ugh I hate men!” 

“You can't have your big brother beat him up. No matter how much I dislike the Golden Boy, he's useful and the press like him, we don't need him dead.” 

Y/N sat up onto her elbows. The white streak of hair that she left out of her usual hair styles, falling perfectly over the left side of her face. “Please, I don't want to talk about it right now.”

“Riiight. Do you need your timeout room until point break gets here?” 

“Maybe a little bit.” He smiles kindly, as a father would to their child and nods his head towards the door diagonal to him.

“Go on, I'll have FRIDAY let you know when I get through to him.” With a groan, she pulled herself to her feet, staggering only once before she righted herself and slipped into the testing room. 

Tony turned back to his code but was interrupted once more as Y/N poked her head out from behind the door. “I know I don't say it enough, but thank you.”

“Go blow something up and stop bothering me.” He said dismissively but she heard the waiver of his voice.

“Whatever you say, old man.” 

The sound of small explosions soon became a white noise. The rumbling under his feet turned them numb but Tony didn't want to complain. He had seen her power, spying on her training with Wanda on occasion, only to be struck by what he had seen. 

Fire swirled around her like wind, a rainbow of reds and blue and whites. Her face was always at peace, her arms moving gracefully as she conducted an orchestra of destruction. But when she was mad, she really got mad. 

The flames became huge waves that would crash over her. Blind with rage, she would let it consume her whole until she collapsed in a heap. And today, seemed like one of those days.

Absent-mindedly, Tony switched on the fire suppression system for when the room got too hot and then returned to his work. The message had been sent out, now all he had to do was wait. 

“Where's Y/N? Did something happen? Is she ok?” The lights in the lab had brightened with the rising sun, but as usual, Tony was too absorbed in his own head to realise how much time had passed. The sudden panicked voice broke him from his thoughts.

He went to answer the frazzled god who stood in the slightly damaged doorway but found his throat was bone dry. He really needed to drink more water. So instead, he gestured vaguely to the training room and Thor took off. His huge bulk bumped into several tables, knocking a few important projects to the floor. He ignored Tony's hoarse shouts of protest in favour of almost ripping the door from its hinges to get to his sister.

But evidently, there was no need to panic. Y/N was sitting on the floor in the middle of the white room, covered in a white foam. Her expression was both one of absolute glee and extreme annoyance. “He could have just sprayed water on me and not this shit.” 

Thor's head dropped forward in relief. “That is not very dignified for a princess.”

“Suck my royal ass.” She retorted. She held her hand out and her brother wasted no time pulling her to her feet and into a tight hug.

“I'm glad you're alright, sister. Tony's message worried me.” Slowly, his arms unwound from her, letting her take a step back so their eyes could meet.

“I need to talk to you about something that none of the others would understand.” The strained tone behind her words, immediately sobered his mood.

“Very well, get cleaned up and I will take you somewhere private.” 

As it turns out, somewhere private was Thor's small cabin in Norway that had been set up for him a month after his sister's marriage. Apparently, he had gone mad with grief, falling into bad habits that put the other Avengers at risk. So they created a home for him in the wilderness where he could indulge without hurting others.

It was small, probably far too small for someone of his incredible stature, especially with all the little trinkets scattered around and framed photos on the walls. There were some generic stock photos of flowers or beaches but there were also candid shots of their friends, a gorgeous one of Jane in her lab, and a copy of the photo of Y/N that Tony had on his desk.

“I hope this is far enough away for you to be comfortable.” Thor said nervously, his anxiety spiked at what she could need from him. 

“Thor, we could have just gone to my room, but I appreciate the effort.” She chuckled as she ran her fingers over the photo of her brother very obviously drunk with his arms wrapped around Peter and an inebriated Sam. “You've got a lot of pictures here.”

“Yes! Cameras are such a magnificent invention, certainly better than sitting for portraits for hours on end as a child.” Y/N glanced back at her brother from over her shoulder.

“Do you have any portraits here? I bet you were such a cute kid.” He visibly lit up. With ginger steps, he scooted around her and walked further into the cabin.

He disappeared into what she presumed was the bedroom at the back of the house. There was a brief moment of silence and then a crash, followed by some truly explicit curses. Thor soon emerged with a small box in one hand and a red splotch on his forehead which he was currently rubbing with his free palm.

“I stole these from mother but I guess she knew because she gave me more.” He squeezed into one of the small kitchen chairs. Y/N had the distinct thought that he looked like an adult trying to sit in a child's seat. He laid the box down in front of him and carefully lifted the ornate lid, letting Y/N catch a brief glimpse of the collection of papers inside.

Without needing to be told, she sat opposite him, elbows on the table, hands folded beneath her soft jaw in waiting. The first he pulled out was a simple sketch of Frigg. She looked far younger than Y/N remembered her. She was gazing out a window, wind blowing through her loose hair. “She's beautiful.” 

“Indeed, our mother is a handsome woman.” He simply commented and moved on quickly. The next was of him as a baby, she could tell because of the shock of blond hair atop his head and huge blue eyes. He was being held by his mother as Odin stood proudly next to them, his armour gleaming even through the medium of paints. 

Many photos followed after, showing his slow progression of growing up, but as he was in the middle of a story about the first time he held a sword (at the ripe old age of three), Y/N froze, her entire body going stock still. “Who is this?”

Thor stood beside another boy, his arm wrapped around his shoulders. He was taller than the other but they looked to be similar in age, around their mid teens. He was smiling broadly while the boy under his arm kept a straight face. His black hair was slicked back, away from his face, highlighting the high cheek bones that would emerge with puberty and his shocking green eyes. It was the boy from her dreams.

Before Thor could answer, she flipped the small portrait over to read the inscription left in the corner of the canvas, written in Frigg's hand. Thor and my little star.

“Oh, I didn't realise that was in here.” He was avoiding the question.

“I-I've been dreaming about this boy. I knew him a long time ago, before my mother died.” 

“Are you positive that it's the same boy in your dreams?” He implored, his jaw set and brow furrowed.

“Of course I am! I've been seeing him almost every night and whenever Wanda got into my head.” The air seemed to freeze with tension, and then shattered as a sudden epiphany came over the older god.

“Sister, it seems you have known Loki for far longer than any of us have realised.” Her gaze dropped back down to the image in her hands, focusing on the boy as her fingers unconsciously reached for the necklace hidden beneath her shirt.

“What in the actual fuck?”

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[chains-of-destiny]

Hello!! Okay so ROs reaction to MC being asked out in front of them..? (crushing stage vs. relationship stage)

I might have asked this before if I have ignore me lol I'm on a ask trip again and this is one of my fav questions 💜

Hope you are doing well!!!

Hey! Sorry for not answering sooner, I spent some time pondering how to best summarize their reaction, but I just couldn't describe them in simple terms, so I decided to make short scenes for them to give a general idea. This was a nice breath of fresh air as I was focused on the main story for so long, so thank you for this ask!

As always, keep in mind that everything is subject to change, but I think the basic foundations are set in stone already. These scenes are unpolished and may have more than a few mistakes in there (and ignore my frequent switches between past and present tenses, sometimes I myself don't understand what I'm doing :D).

Oh yeah, and thanks. I'm doing good, just eager to wrap up the first part of Chapter 2!

Elaine:

-Crushing

Elaine sat alone in the corner of the tavern, nursing a mug of ale and brooding over her thoughts. The raucous laughter and clinking of mugs filled the air, but it was nothing more than a dull hum in her ears. Her attention was on the stranger who had just approached the MC with a blatant disregard for her presence. Her piercing eyes followed every movement, every gesture as if she could will the stranger to disappear with the intensity of her gaze alone. Elaine felt an unfamiliar pang, a sensation that twisted in the pit of her stomach. She bit her lower lip, her thoughts swirling in a tumultuous mix of confusion, irritation, and a hint of something she refused to acknowledge. 'Why do I care?' The question lingered, uninvited, as she eyed the stranger standing too close to the MC. 'Why should it bother me if the MC entertained the company of a stranger?' The stranger leaned in closer, a coy smile playing on their lips as they whispered something into the MC's ear. Elaine could see the genuine surprise flicker across the MC's face as they hesitated. The world seemed to slow down as she held her breath, her heart pounding in her chest. The air seemed thick with unspoken tension, her grip on her mug tightening. Elaine's eyes never left the MC, a mix of confusion and irritation flickering in their depths. 'Just say no. Say no and let this be over, so I can go back to being happily irritated by your presence.' The MC's refusal released a subtle sigh from Elaine, a relief she couldn't comprehend. But the confusion persisted. 'Why does it matter to me?' She couldn't understand why she felt an inexplicable tension, but the urge to lash out was stronger than ever. With a frustrated huff, Elaine's hand slammed down on the wooden table, causing her mug to rattle and spill a few drops of ale. The sharp sound caught the attention of the MC, who turned to look at Elaine with surprise written all over their face. The stranger, too, glanced in her direction before quickly retreating to the other side of the tavern. "You have an uncanny talent for attracting fools, it seems," Elaine spat out, her voice dripping with venom like poison from a snake's fangs. Yeah, this is good, this is better. "Try not to attract any more stray dogs, or I might have to put them down myself."

-Relationship

Elaine's body tenses as the stranger asks the question, her eyes narrowing into sharp slits. Without missing a beat, she steps in closer to the MC, her fingers delicately intertwining with theirs. The touch is both reassuring and playful. With a mischievous glint in her eye, she echoes the stranger's question, her voice laced with a challenging undertone. "So, what do you say, MC?" she teases with a sly smile. Her confidence radiates through her every word as she leans in even closer, breath warm against MC's ear as she adds, "I do believe they're waiting for an answer."

Renna

-Crushing

Renna stands casually by the MC's side, observing them talking to a stranger who interrupted her storytelling. The stranger seems quite interested, judging by the way they lean in eagerly and the genuine smile on their face. Suddenly, the stranger extends their hand towards the MC, a shy smile playing on their lips "W-would you care to accompany me to the festival this evening?" their voice trembles slightly, their cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink. Renna raises an eyebrow, amusement dancing in her eyes. Without missing a beat, she slings an arm around the MC, grinning at the stranger. "Sorry, love, but we're on a tight schedule. Next time, maybe," she says smoothly, pulling the MC a little closer. Every inch makes Renna's heart beat a little faster as if trying to keep pace with the excitement coursing through her veins. 'Damn, I must be imagining things,' Renna thought to herself, trying to ignore the fluttering butterflies in her stomach. The stranger quickly withdraws their hand, disappointment flashing across their face. "O-Of course! No problem at all. Maybe another time, then." they stutter before giving a small nod and walking away, shoulders slumped. Renna's grin widens as she watches the stranger walk away, their dejection evident in each slow, reluctant step. Renna's arm remains draped over the MC's shoulder, her fingers absentmindedly tracing delicate patterns on the fabric of their cloak. She tilts her head to look at the MC, playfully poking them on the cheek. "Looks like you've got admirers." Renna teases, "Just be careful, I might get jealous."

-Relationship

Renna doesn't wait for the MC to respond before she interjects with a playful smirk. "Impressed, are you?" she teases, her arm snaking around the MC's waist. "Well, keep dreaming. This one's all mine." She shoots the stranger a challenging look, her eyes glinting with amusement. The stranger stammers out an apology and quickly retreats. Renna chuckles triumphantly, her grip on the MC tightening slightly as they continue on their way. Another victory to add to her collection.

Iris

-Crushing

Iris blinks, her usually calm eyes widening in surprise as a stranger suddenly barges into their conversation uninvited. She had been in the middle of telling the MC about an exciting tidbit she heard from a friend, but now her words trailed off, forgotten, as the stranger's unexpected presence stole all the attention. "Um," Iris stammered, her cheeks flushing with a delicate shade of pink as she nervously fidgeted with the hem of her dress. She desperately tried to get their attention, but all her efforts went unnoticed as the stranger continued talking, their voice drowning out any attempt she made to speak. This blatant disregard for her presence was rude and infuriating. It was supposed to be her moment to share something interesting with the MC, but now she felt like an afterthought. "Excuse me," Iris loudly interjected, her gaze unwavering and her brows furrowed in annoyance. She tried her best to look intimidating. Her father once told her that animals can make themselves look bigger by puffing up their fur or feathers. Maybe humans can do the same. So she puffed out her chest and stood a little taller than her petite frame allowed. The stranger's eyes finally flickered to Iris, acknowledging her existence. 'Don't look away, don't look away. Just hold your ground, Iris. You're strong.' She repeated like a mantra in her head as every muscle in her body tensed up. Despite her fear, Iris mustered up every ounce of courage she had and cleared her throat. "We were having a conversation!" The stranger snorted and glanced back at the MC, a smirk playing on their lips. "I will return later then," they said nonchalantly, their eyes lingering on the MC. "when you're not so busy." "Good!" Her voice came out stronger than she expected, bolstered by the rush of adrenaline pumping through her veins. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, trying to contain the irritation bubbling within her as the stranger disappeared into the crowd. "Did you see that? They completely ignored me, like I wasn't even here! How can someone be so rude and arrogant at the same time? It's infuriating!" Her lips formed a pout as she vented her frustration into the open air. But then reality hit her like a wave crashing against the shore. 'No, no, no. I was the rude one all along. I interrupted their conversation without a second thought, demanding attention and making a scene like a child throwing a tantrum.' Her cheeks burned with shame at how foolish and selfish she had been. 'What will the MC think of me now?' Iris's stomach twisted with guilt as she replayed the scene in her mind. She hadn't meant to be rude, she never intended to hurt anyone's feelings. But it didn't matter now. She had to make this right and apologize urgently. She couldn't let things end like this. "I-I'm sorry," Iris stammered, her voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't want to cause any trouble or anything." "I have to make it right. I will apologize to them as soon as possible," she blurted out, her words coming out in a rush. Iris's anxiety began to churn in her stomach, tying knots tighter and tighter. "I will be back in but a minute." The MC said something to her, but she was already running through the crowd, clutching the ends of her dress tightly to keep from tripping. Iris rushed after the stranger, her petite figure struggling to keep up with their brisk pace. "Wait! Please, wait!" she called out, her voice laden with genuine remorse. But the crowd seemed to swallow their figure, and the stranger vanished into the sea of faces. 'Oh no, what have I done?'

-Relationship

Iris blinked in surprise as she watched the scene unfold before her. The MC was standing just a few feet away, engaged in conversation with someone she didn't recognize. She felt a pang of curiosity as she strained her ears, trying to catch snippets of what was being said. Her mother told her that it's not polite to listen in on other people's conversations, but Iris simply couldn't help it. Besides, her beloved wouldn't hide anything from her, so it's okay. Right? Her heart sank when she heard the words that made her stomach churn. It felt like someone had knocked the air out of her lungs. She could see the surprise written all over the MC's face as well, and it only added to Iris's anxiety. Iris desperately wanted to intervene, but it wouldn't be right for her to barge in. It would be really inconsiderate of her, not to mention disrespectful. She knew she needed to trust the Mc to handle the situation on their own. But that didn't stop her from feeling a knot of worry twist in her chest. 'What if the MC says yes? They wouldn't do that to me...would they?' Her hands clenched into tight fists, knuckles turning white as she fought the urge to run over and interrupt the conversation. 'No, stop Iris, calm down. Mc is a good person, they have always been so kind and understanding to you. They wouldn't do something to intentionally hurt you.' She is absolutely sure of that. ... ... ... ...But- The stranger's expression suddenly shifted, revealing a flash of disappointment across their features. With a gentle smile and a nod, they turned to leave. Iris couldn't stand it any longer, her body aching with the need to finally do something, to move. Her heart raced in her chest as she rushed over to the MC's side, steps quick and eager. "Hey there, MC!" Iris exclaimed, trying to keep her voice light and casual despite the frantic thoughts racing through her mind. "I've been looking for you everywhere. I mean, I didn't exactly think you'd be here, but... um... hi!" She reached out for MC's hand, feeling their fingers slide easily into hers, fitting like puzzle pieces. Her gaze met theirs, filled with hopeful uncertainty, and she couldn't help but smile, her own worry dissipating in the warmth of their touch.

Zenon

Although I would like to make a scene for him, too, I think he wouldn't intervene like the others did. In the crushing state, he would probably deem his affection a lost cause at the first sign of someone approaching the MC, and all he would do is hope that the MC didn't accept the offer. In a relationship, he would trust the MC enough to let them handle the situation without intervention, and he would probably rush to the MC's side immediately after, just like Iris did. Still, he would be much more subtle in figuring out what has happened.

Barnabas

-Crushing

Barnabas's blood boiled like a pot left to simmer too long, threatening to burst from his veins. The sound of voices and laughter filled the room, but he could only see MC standing there, talking to another person before him. He is not an idiot, neither is he humble enough to lie. A lot of people threw themselves at him before. He knew the signs, and he knew the game. The way the stranger smiled, the way their eyes sparkled when they talked to the MC—it was clear they were interested. And it drove Barnabas insane. Before he knew it, he was already moving towards MC, unable to focus on anything else. He probably bumped into some people on his way, but he didn't care. They didn't matter to him. They were insignificant, just obstacles in his path. As Barnabas reached them, his lips stretched into a painfully wide grin that twitched slightly at the edges as he fought to contain his simmering anger. "My friend!" He casually slung an arm around the intruder as if they were old friends. He had never seen that person in his life, but he didn't care. "Uh... hey," they greeted cautiously, clearly taken aback by Barnabas's sudden intrusion. "I was just searching for you," Barnabas continued, his voice dripping with false sweetness. "Isn't it a coincidence that I found you here?" "Have we...have we met before?" the intruder questioned, their eyes darting nervously between Barnabas and MC. Barnabas chuckled, "No, no, we haven't, but I saw the way you were talking to my friend here, so I thought: 'Why don't I introduce myself?'" He tightened his grip around the intruder's shoulder, his arm slowly moving to wrap around their neck. His fingers curled tightly against the soft flesh, applying just enough pressure to make them uncomfortable. "I believe that I'm a man of mercy," Barnabas said in a low, dangerous tone. "So I will tell you this once." He begins steadily applying pressure to the intruder's neck, making it harder for them to breathe. Their eyes widened in panic, their hands instinctively clawing at Barnabas's arm in a feeble attempt to free themselves. "If I ever catch you talking to my friend again," Barnabas's voice, while smooth like silk, held a hint of twisted amusement, "I won't be so merciful next time. Understand?" The intruder gasped for breath, nodding frantically as their face turned a shade of crimson. Barnabas chuckled, letting his hold stay there for a little bit for added effect. After a moment, he released his grip with a flourish, stepping back with a satisfied smirk. The intruder stumbled backward, clutching their throat as they gasped for air. He could see them searching for a way out like their life depended on it, probably because it did. Stupid pig. Barnabas should have snapped his neck on the spot, but that would be too much of a mess. Besides, the Mc might not appreciate such a thing, and for some reason, Barnabas cared about that. He couldn't explain why he felt the need to keep Mc happy, but there was something about them that amused him. Their antics were strange but not entirely unpleasant. No, this punishment would do just fine - a lesson in obedience and respect that this intruder sorely needed to learn. They quickly turned tail and fled, stumbling over their feet in their scramble to escape Barnabas. "Bye!" Barnabas called out cheerfully, a wide grin spreading across his face as he waved at the intruder's retreating figure. He turned his face to the Mc, his grin still wide. "It's so great when we all understand each other, nay MC?"

-Relationship

Barnabas glanced across the room, his eyes narrowing as he watched the scene unfold. The faintest hint of a scowl tugged at the corners of his lips, but he quickly smothered it, maintaining his composed facade. He had always known that the MC was desirable; their personality and beauty were impossible to ignore. He himself had fallen under their spell too much already to be able to escape it. But seeing someone dare to ask them out in his presence as if they were oblivious to the fact that the MC was already taken ignited something that was hard to suppress. 'No, not now, Barnabas. The Mc surely wouldn't want you to make a scene.' After all, he trusted the Mc, didn't he? He will not intervene. He will let the Mc deal with the situation on their own. ...Ah, who does he think he is kidding? His eyes bore into the back of the unsuspecting intruder, his mind already spinning with wicked thoughts of retribution as he began walking towards them. The sheer audacity of thinking they could steal the MC away right in front of him. Didn't this imbecile realize whose territory they were so brazenly encroaching on? Barnabas smirked, a sinister glimmer dancing in his eyes as he closed the distance between himself and the intruder. But as his eyes locked with his beloved's, a surge of warmth and longing flooded through him, weakening his resolve. Only for a split second, though. His hands moved like snakes to wrap around the MC's waist as he approached from behind, pulling them close against his chest. "Got you," he purred, his voice low. "Who is your friend?" he asked, his tone dangerously sweet. The intruder turned to face Barnabas, caught off guard by his sudden appearance. A nervous chuckle escaped their lips as they stumbled over their words. "Uh, h-hey, I was just going." "No, no need to rush off," Barnabas said, a strange blend of affection and menace underlying his words. "I insist, I'm Barnabas," he said, extending his hand towards the intruder. The intruder hesitated for a moment before reluctantly accepting the handshake. "Uuuh, a strong grip you have," Barnabas remarked, maintaining eye contact with them. "Did you consider joining the army? I'm quite well-connected, you see. I could make sure you're well taken care of." The intruder's eyes widened, confusion and fear flickering across their face. "Uh, no, thank you," they stammered, trying to pull their hand away from Barnabas' firm grip. Barnabas kept his grip steady for a moment longer, savoring the feeling before finally loosening his hold. "Too bad," he replied with a hint of disappointment, "because I insist on taking care of those close to me." Barnabas gazed at the Mc with warm affection in his eyes, gently taking their hand and intertwining their fingers with his. "Was there something you needed to discuss with my MC?" "No, no, it's nothing important," the intruder muttered, hastily backing away. "I'll just... leave you two to it." With a nervous smile, they made their way towards the exit, clearly relieved to be out of Barnabas' presence. As soon as the intruder was out of earshot, Barnabas turned his full attention back to the MC, a warm smile spreading across his face. "I think that went well enough."

[the-witchhunter]

DP x DC: To Become Liminal

I’ve just been thinking about liminality a lot lately. It’s very much a thing that if I write something with Liminality, it’s probably going to be about liminality and how it affects a specific character, or at least that being a major theme

I don’t like being loosy goosy with liminality personally, it’s very much a less is more situation for me, it’s rare, it’s weird, and it’s hard to become is how I like to treat it. so bare with me everything after this is based on those sensibilities 

Ectoplasm is dangerous. It’s the stuff Ghosts are made of but it’s also some kind of radioactive substance. That’s why even weak ghosts can be picked up by EMF readers and can make the lights flicker. It’s a type of radiation and it’s not safe for humans to be around in anything larger than what a couple of ghosts give off. Too much at once will kill you, and even too much over time could do that.

To become liminal is to incorporate ectoplasm into yourself, for your body to find a balance or die trying. Ectoplasm is already poisoning you, and if properly treated you might be fine with minimal complications after. The real issue is when it’s untreated and your body starts incorporating the thing that’s trying to kill you. 

And the process is painful, incredibly painful.

Fever, headaches, muscle aches as your muscles corrode and try to rebuild themselves, nausea and vomiting as your digestive track morphs, stomach pain and internal bleeding as the ectoplasm eats it’s way through your stomach lining. It hurts as your body is constantly trying to break itself down and rebuild for day, weeks, even months. Think of Vlad in the hospital and how long he was there, even after the proto portal did the majority of the work and launched him past liminal into the start of being a halfa

and then, when the pain stops, your body is different, YOU are different. You’re no longer the same, you don’t feel the same, think the same, or even dream the same. Your dreams are more vivid and disturbing, you have strange cravings and urges, urges your new body wants but you find distressing

Jazz grew up in a house of ecto scientists, The stuff had always been around, but her parents acted like it wasn’t something to worry about. Sure, sometimes the food in the house made her feel sick and she’d end up vomiting, but food poisoning is normal every so often, The fevers were just her getting a cold or the flue, totally normal. But then the portal opened and that tipped her over the precipice. In some ways she was lucky. If she hadn’t been exposed so ling, the amount that flooded the house after the portal would have been enough to kill most people in a week. Her parents were fine because of their protective gear, but Jazz would have died. Neither her parents or Danny noticed the three days she spent in bed, covered in sweat and in pain. she felt like she was dying. She was

Jason died and didn’t come back right. Even after he clawed his way out of his grave, he was more of a zombie than a person. Then Talia had found him and taken him in. The Lazarus pits could work wonders, heal the dying, replenish vitality and youth, truly a thing of wonder. Unless you were alive and healthy. The pits destroy the living and healthy Jason was living when he went in those pits, and the only thing wrong with him was his mind. The Pits brought him back, but it wasn’t right. He spent weeks barely awake, barely able to eat anything, and everything hurt. It hurt like the crowbar had hurt. He dimly remembers Ra’s wondering if Jason had been a failure and if it would be a mercy to end him there. Then Jason got better, but he was different. His body moved different, he had cravings he just couldn’t understand, some of which horrified him.  And the Rage. The rage was beyond what was normal. This wasn’t the pit madness others had spoken of. That would go away or leave him a gibbering mess. He had his mind, but the rage was still there. Something had permanently changed

Jazz had just moved into the apartment across from Jason. Something about her was different. It was familiar yet alien in a way that intrigued and frightened him. Jazz seemed to have similar feeling about him.

Just two people who are more alike than they know and are struggling with the way that similarity had changed them. Maybe they find a sense in community in each other, they finally aren’t alone, Maybe they find comfort in each other. Finally, someone who understands what it was like to go through that, that knows what the dreams are like, what the cravings and impulses are like

could it be romantic? Certainly. 

I just think there’s some really interesting things to be done with liminality in regards to examining a character and how this could affect relationships, romantic or otherwise