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samstree · 3 years

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and the wolf was nowhere to be found (1/3)

In which Jaskier chooses to lie, until he can no longer tell the truth.

(lying spell/potion, cursed jaskier, geralt apologizes, post mountain, miscommunication, rated teen, read on AO3)

A big thanks to @wanderlust-t and @a-kind-of-merry-war for the prompt! <3

The reverse trope series: [1] [2] [3] [4]

“You are gonna run after him again, just like that? Don’t you remember what he did to you? What you went through?”

Essi leans against the doorframe, her arms crossed in front of her chest, watching as Jaskier packs a second bag.

“Come one, poppet. Geralt was having a hard time back then, and now he’s come all the way to Oxenfurt to apologize.

“So what?”

“So I’m forgiving him.”

She grumbles a few rude words regarding the witcher’s lineage.

“Hey! That’s not nice.”

“And this is way too easy! Why can’t you see a disaster waiting to happen until it hits you in the face?” Essi exclaims. “Do you know what I would have done? I would make him grovel! Give him the cold shoulder. Or…or at least play it cool for a while longer so he knows not to take you for granted again! Sorry, but I’m…not like you.”

“Um…excuse you. I am plenty cool!”

“There’s nothing cool about being utterly in love and then getting cast aside over and over again, Jaskier. You know that.”

Jaskier sighs, walks to Essi and pulls her into a tight hug, all his scattered doublets ignored.

“I’m going to be okay,” he tries to tuck her curls away from her eyes but fails.

“Are you?” When she pulls back, there’s something inscrutable in those blue eyes, the curtain of blonde hair obscuring her emotions. “When you came down from the mountain, the way you couldn’t even … I don’t know. I just need to make sure it won’t happen again.”

“It—” Jaskier opens his mouth to make an easy promise, but finds the words choking in his throat. “I, um—”

Essi squeezes him on the shoulder. “He’s apologized, profusely from what you told me, and he’s being nice now. He will certainly be nice for a while, but what happens after he wins you back? What’s preventing him from hurting you again?”

Jaskier has no answers for her, so he resorts to giving her another hug.

“At least, think about my cold shoulder tactic. Sometimes people need the reminder, just so they know what they can easily lose.”

“Essi—”

“Think about it.”

She presses a small kiss on Jaskier’s cheek and leaves him to his packing. Outside the window comes the familiar sound of Roache’s hooves, clicking against the cobblestone.

Jaskier straightens his tunic and lets out a heave. He can see Geralt is being good now, friendly even, after all these years of denying their friendship. Now, the witcher is even waiting downstairs to begin their next journey.

Essi is just being overly protective, Jaskier decides.

He winds down the stairs and finds Geralt cooing at Roach. The urge to melt in those golden amber eyes is overwhelming.

“We good?” Geralt takes Jaskier’s bags and secures them on Roach, side by side with his saddlebags.

“Good,” Jaskier lies.

---

The truth is, Jaskier has heard of this so-called “cold shoulder” tactic. He’s even contemplated it for longer than he’s willing to admit. Every time Geralt dismissed him as a friend, brushed him off, Jaskier couldn’t help but want to retaliate with equal measure.

What if he’s the one to give Geralt a time-out? What if when Geralt tells him to fuck off, he just…leaves? The same idea churned in Jaskier’s stomach for two decades, but in the end, he knows the answer—he can never bring himself to go through it. His feet would carry him back to Geralt before even taking a step away.

He was left anyway.

But now…

Jaskier can’t afford to be left again. Essi was right. He isn’t sure if he can pick himself up again. He barely managed it the first time.

Jaskier lets out an audible scoff as he comes to the realization. He’s going to do it. The cold shoulder tactic. It’s so cheesy that it feels like something only school girls would use to get attention from a crush. Keep your distance, string him along a little. That’s how you get him to notice you exist—

“Something funny?” Geralt turns on horseback, sunlight peaking through his silver hair, a curious frown between his brows. He’s towering, beautiful. He has always been the most beautiful person Jaskier knows, even if he doesn’t know it.

Jaskier strums an absent chord on his lute. “Just something Essi said.”

“Hmm.” Geralt nudges Roach forward. “I was thinking… You’ve never seen a basilisk, have you?”

“No?”

“There are rumors about a nest in the next town. Want to see it?”

A hint of smile hints at Geralt’s lips, and Jaskier’s heart almost leaps out of his throat. A basilisk hunt is one he’s been dying to watch for years, if not decades. He’s drooling with excitement just thinking about the ballad that will certainly sweep the continent off its feet.

“Of course I want—" The sentence stops in its tracks. Jaskier bites his tongue to hide the slip. “You know what, I think I’ll stay in town. This new song needs some polishing before its debut. I’m sure a big witcher such as yourself doesn’t need a bard’s moral support for a meager basilisk, right?”

Jaskier adds a wink for good measure, but Geralt is not amused. He’s staring from his vantage point, his expression inexplicable. Is it really so shocking that Jaskier will turn Geralt down this once, after all this time?

“I understand.” Geralt pauses before continuing, almost too carefully. “Perhaps I can help? Sing it for me tonight?”

“Sing it…for you?” Jaskier asks, dumbfounded. The lute in his hands suddenly feels a lot weightier than it is.

“You wanted my review for so long, Jaskier. I’m giving it to you now. I’m sure your playing will be…nice.”

Geralt looks at him with hope in his eyes, and Jaskier can’t help but let his ego grow a little. It’s unbelievable that a simple refusal is what got Geralt to finally say anything positive about his music. The tiny triumph fills his chest with unexpected giddiness.

“Maybe I will. We shall see,” he replies. His fingers strike another chord.

Jaskier feels a spring in his steps, urging him forward to the mare’s steady gait. Golden amber eyes are burning a hole into his back, but he doesn’t dare to look back lest the tiny bubble of this perfect moment break.

---

Night falls, and Jaskier scribbles down another line. The door opens and Geralt drags his feet into their shared room.

Jaskier makes no effort to get up.

Once upon a time, he would have raced across the room to greet Geralt, checked for injuries and fussed over any scrapes and cuts, all the while getting dismissed with the witcher’s grumbled words. He’d help remove those heavy armors when Geralt’s muscles ache from exhaustion and get ichor all over himself.

He will not do that tonight.

Play it cool, Essi’s words echo in his memory. Right, he’s doing things differently now.

Jaskier fixes his gaze on the notebook in his lap and listens as Geralt shuffles around the room, putting everything back in place. One by one, his armor pieces drop in the corner of the room.

“How was it?” he asks with the most nonchalant tone as if he’s just noticed the other man’s existence.

“Fine. The basilisk’s dead.”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier chooses the single hum uncharacteristically as Geralt puts his swords against the doorframe and sits down on the single chair.

He’s so still, hovering even.

“What?” Jaskier finally looks at him. Geralt, as he claimed, looks fine, with only a smudge of a black ichor sticking to his hair. A frown appears between his brows.

Adorable.

Jaskier shakes the thought quickly.

“Your new song?” Geralt prompts.

“Oh yeah. Never mind. I don’t feel like singing.”

It’s another lie. A necessary one, Jaskier tells himself.

“You,” Geralt says, raising an eyebrow, “don’t feel like singing?”

Jaskier clutches the notebook to his chest almost defensively, not sure what to do with the accusation. Is it a tragedy that Geralt knows him like the back of his hand? Or is it a shame that Jaskier is indeed buzzing with excitement to test out this song, with the most important person in his life?

“Well, I don’t.”

Jaskier keeps his chin up and scrambles off the bed to put away his books and pens. Geralt’s intent gaze is on his back again.

“Twenty years, and I’ve never known you to turn down an opportunity to sing.”

“I guess you don’t know me that well,” Jaskier bites back with a force that seems to come out of nowhere. “The bard may not want to entertain all the time, darling.”

The endearment sounds false, more like a jab. He lets out a dry chuckle and hopes to ease the tension but to no avail. Geralt’s eyes are wide with surprise. So Jaskier reaches for his bedroll as a distraction, but only serves to make the confusion deepen on Geralt’s face.

“What are you doing?”

Jaskier lays it by the fire, on the soft rug that magically seems clean enough. It should be self-explanatory, but apparently not because Geralt is still staring quizzically.

“Sleeping.”

Geralt looks at the double bed and then back at Jaskier. “On the floor?”

“Thought I’d give you the space. I know how keyed up you are after the potions.”

Jaskier can feel his heart pounding in his chest, the nervous energy buzzing as more words he doesn’t mean comes out of his mouth. He crosses his legs on the bedroll and pulls the blanket onto his lap to hide from Geralt’s scrutiny. But then, something dawns on Geralt’s face.

“Jaskier…” Geralt rubs his forehead, his face pinched. “What I said in Oxenfurt, I meant it.”

“You do?”

“You can count on me now. It won’t be like…before.”

Their gazes meet, and Jaskier bears the intensity of it with everything he has. He feels bare, seen through by the amber gold he’s missed and cursed and loved so much.

“I’m here, and I’m all here, Jaskier. Please believe in me.”

“I do.”

It’s not the truth despite how much he wants to believe it. Jaskier wonders if lying to Geralt ever becomes easier.

He doesn’t know what is not convincing him. Geralt looks so genuine, and Jaskier wants more than anything to trust him again, but the smile on his face feels too stiff.

The plan is going as Jaskier wanted. He’s showing Geralt that his friendship doesn’t come freely anymore, and the witcher needs to make more effort, meet him halfway, somehow. Then how come as the quiet night creeps in, Jaskier only finds a hollow space in his chest?

The roaring fire in the hearth warms his back, but Jaskier clutches his blanket tighter. It can’t stave off the coldness left by the lack of a witcher’s body by his side.

---

Jaskier continues with the same scheme the next day.

Ignoring Geralt is not a difficult task in the beginning. The barmaid is a beautiful thing, doe-eyed and curious, has too many questions for her own good. She keeps asking about Jaskier’s ballads, and wouldn’t quite believe any crazy stories in them.

“Is it true that the White Wolf fought a sea serpent on the Skellige Isles? Surely, those creatures only exist in legends!”

She’s getting familiar, pressed up against Jaskier on the bench, almost pushing him back into Geralt’s side—the real subject of the topic, but it’s obvious her fascination lies only in Jaskier. Her brown eyes stay on the bard alone.

“Why don’t we find somewhere more private and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“Is it a good one? It must be a heroic tale, isn’t it?”

“Heroic, of course. There’s also a twist. I won’t spoil it for you, but—” Jaskier winks, his fingers brushing past her wrist. “—it’s a love story that holds more heartbreak than you can bear.”

Her giggles are like soft wind chimes, and Jaskier guides her away from their table. He takes two steps and turns back, smacking himself on the head as if he’s only just thought of it.

“Oh, shoot! I know I promised to go the market with you, Geralt, but you see…” He gestures to the girl waiting expectantly in the near distance. There’s nothing I can do about it, he says with a shrug. “Have a good time, will you?”

Geralt is holding his tankard, his knuckles white and his face ice-cold. It’s like Jaskier is looking at one of those ice sculptures made by Oxenfurt’s art students every winter.

“You said you’d come.”

Geralt’s voice is so gentle, so full of dejection that Jaskier’s resolve almost breaks. He clears his throat and darts his eyes elsewhere. Those acting coaches back in school would have been disappointed in him for letting his emotions peak through, but Geralt doesn’t seem to notice what’s underneath this front.

“Surely you can find a new bridle for Roach by yourself,” Jaskier waves his hand in dismissal. “You are a big witcher.”

Geralt opens his mouth and closes it, before speaking again. “And the pastry shop you wanted to visit?”

Jaskier thinks of the lemon cakes he’s been itching to try and swallows the yearning in his throat. Gods, being with Geralt all day with not a care in the world, and with the best sweets on the continent. What is he doing turning all this down?

“Well,” he insists, “Better company comes before cake, my dear.”

With that, Geralt lets go of the topic. His amber eyes drop back to the half-finished ale. “Better company. I see…”

“Surely you understand, Geralt.”

“Just—” Geralt purses his lips in an attempt at a smile. “Don’t exaggerate too much.”

Jaskier should feel bad as he walks out the tavern door with a beauty on his arm, he should, but instead, a pang of anger rises in his throat. How many times did Geralt abandon him at the sight of Yennefer in the past few years? How long did he brood on top of that mountain, recounting every bad choice he’d made in his life and decided that it was all Jaskier’s doing?

For once, Jaskier doesn’t want to put Geralt first in everything, waiting for a bone thrown in his direction, and the witcher—this infuriating man—is going to act like a kicked puppy.

Horrified at this burning rage, Jaskier turns only to watch helplessly as Geralt walks down the street in the opposite direction. He’s planted to the spot, unable to chase Geralt down, and clueless as to whether this plan is doing him any favors other than the fleeting satisfaction of getting back at his friend who was at fault.

Was.

Geralt was at fault. Jaskier has forgiven him, or at least, that’s what he said at first sight of his witcher’s travel-weary face back in Oxenfurt.

And yet, he’s punishing him still.

The barmaid is still waiting for Jaskier’s stories, her cheeks still round with a timid blush and her eyes gleaming with expectations.

The colorful adventures taste stale on his tongue and she loses interest too quickly before returning to her post. His mood sours further as the day stretches on.

Jaskier ends up wandering around town without an aim in mind. The only place he’s carefully avoiding is the market, and the stable, and the smith’s shop. Anywhere he might bump into Geralt. When night draws in, a sudden downpour catches him off guard and drenches him from inside out.

Great. Just the perfect ending to the worst—well, the second worst day of Jaskier’s life.

Candles are still lit as Jaskier enters the room. He finds Geralt fast asleep already, and on the table, right next to his writing supplies, is a lemon cake.

It’s drizzled in honey and looks just as enticing as he imagined.

Jaskier picks it up and finds a lump forming in his throat, choking him with guilt. He wants to scream, to let out the frustration at all the mistakes made in the past and haunting him still. He wants to cry. It’s just…

Now, he doesn’t know if he still deserves to.

---

Okay, I know I'm being mean to Geralt here, but don't worry, I’ gonna be mean to Jaskier in the next one ;)

Also, whatever Jaskier is doing here is very unhealthy. Don't try this at home.

Tagging: @rockysstupidity @flowercrown-bard @alllthequeenshorses @mothmanismyuncle @percy-jackson-is-sexy- @constantlytiredpigeon @behonesthowsmysinging @kitcatkim3

Please feel free to tell me if you want to be removed or added to the list <3

#geraskier #geraskier fic #geralt x jaskier #jaskier being an idiot #geralt apologizes #mutual pining #miscommunication #cursed jaskier #jaskier whump #reverse trope #lying spell

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animecreator3000 · 3 years

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About the Boueibu iceberg

@delphoxqueen asked me to explain about my list for the iceberg so here it is. I might update this from time to time with links and stuff if I stumble across the original posts. This is all from what I know so feel free to add new info. Also, spoiler warning for RobiHachi and the Boueibu manga and novels. (This is like a masterpost it’s very long)

1. There’s a theory in tumblr about which decade the series is set in, using data like the friday the 13th calendar in s2 ep11. In HK we got a second number for when the next monthly Pretty Boy Contest was happening and using the one from Love it was theorized that around a decade had passed since then, which ended up being true.

2. The stage play had a few original songs and characters exclusive to it so unless you watched the full performance, you probably weren’t able to witness all of them. One of the characters is called “Robato Deniro”, as romanized in the stage play booklet I own.

3. The nurse and the cafeteria staff from the s1 mobile game appear in the background in around the first half of s2 ep3.

4. S2 had an unfinished manga that was only available online and was never released on physical format; it was centered around the defense club and sometimes the conquest club and Beppu brothers. All that’s left from what I know are the scans linked on magicalgirlsandcerulean’s blog.

5. This isn’t that obscure because it’s talked about in the anime, but I’m mentioning it because I think many people dropped it before the ova, where right at the beginning it is revealed that the alien that resucitated Mr. Tawarayama twice was, as described by Io, a “mulberry-colored naked mole rat-looking thing”, and was nicknamed “Moley-san” by Yumoto. At least in the anime, we had never heard before of who this was and it never appeared on screen nor was mentioned again.

6. In HK ep8, Karurusu promises the knights to grant a wish if they show him how earthlings spend summer. Kyoutarou reveals at the end of the episode that he wished that summer lasted one more day so he could spend it doing nothing, which prompts Ichiro to theorize that it’s the 32nd of august, and the next day is the second 1st of september.

7. The stage play was was held from march 10th to 13rd, of which the latter is Ryuu’s birthday. There’s an additional recording of a small celebration with cake focused on Ryuu and Io.

8. Atsushi mentions his older sister in the flashback at the beginning of s1 ep4, but she never appears or is mentioned again.

9. There’s a few posts on tumblr theorizing about what happened to the Hakone parents since Yumoto only says in s2 ep3 that according to Gora, “they are busy with their hot springs tour”. En mentions that it’s a bit suspicious, but it’s all the information we have from the anime. Posts talk about the parents perhaps passing away from an accident or an illness, thus the reason why Gora was so worried about Yumoto’s cold in s1 ep10, but from another post I think it’s implied in the second novel that they actually left their home when Yumoto was still a toddler.

10. It’s no secret that the surnames of the characters are all real onsens in Japan that even the seiyuus have visited, but apparently the Arima onsen has two different kinds of water, “kinsen (gold hot spring)” and “ginsen (silver hot spring)”, with different properties each, and the Kusatsu onsen water also has certain properties, both that were used to build the characters. Additionally, Ryuu’s favorite food are Sato Nishiki cherries, which are grown in the same prefecture, Yamagata, as his onsen, Zaou.

11. The press club lose relevance after s1, with only Kinosaki and Tazawa reappearing briefly in s2 ep2 to interview the Beppu twins after they arrive at the school. Tazawa doesn’t even have lines. Hireashi is mentioned by Zundar in ep11.

12. What the heck

13. Exclusively in the manga we see that Arima met Kinshiro and Atsushi when they were little and they were good friends, but when they met again as adults, Kinshiro seemingly didn’t remember Arima. Atsushi, however, stated that Kinshiro’s talent is remembering people’s faces and names, so Arima wonders if he’s just trying to distance himself from him. He also explains to Akoya that he follows Kinshiro and obeys him because as a child, he was fascinated by his radiant smile. This is never talked about in the anime.

14. Like the previous point, the anime never shows Akoya being bullied, at most just a slight dislike of his full name, but the manga shows that he was made fun of for it and how he actually hates his surname, to the point of introducing himself formally to the president and vicepresident of the student council as “Holy Angel Akoya”.

15, 16, 17, 19. Batonama lives were the livestreams done through the franchise by the defense club seiyuus on youtube and niconico. They’re all on youtube, without any kind of translation.

Love-ko is a girl with a shell bikini drawn on a piece of cardboard that was used as a girlfriend in the Batonama Love! lives, acted by the seiyuus themselves.

RobiHachi has one episode full of official Boueibu artwork and a parody of the series too, a Love-ko doll appears, and Wombat appears as well, named “The Don”. It received an english dub, so for a bit, people were excited that Wombat was going to speak in english too. Also, various mechas appear in both Boueibu and RobiHachi.

18. The director of Fairy Ranmaru (Masakazu Hishida if I’m not wrong) revealed in an interview that he was inspired by Boueibu and aimed to make a show like that.

20, 21. The website super-groupies.com has results for defense and conquest club lingerie sets, dc and VEPPer tote bags, the Beppus’ scarf rings, dc bath sets and the pumps magicalgirlsandcerulean mentioned. I’ve found the s1 Loveracelets and Caerula Adamas’ ring on different sites, the True Loveracelets on TheChara’s twitter and the Happybraces (apparently called “Hapibure”) on broccoli.co.jp but I’m not sure where exactly they were all announced and sold, so I’ll just drop that.

22, 33. Boueibu was originally pretty much a copy of Sailor Moon, I think they were all going to be called “Lackluster Moon” and that stuff and be literally Sailor Moon genderbent. They were all different from color palettes to physical features (except Yumoto’s), and Ryuu was a shota, even smaller than Yumoto. Their names were also very reminiscent of the five Sailor Senshis’. Even if they made it more original, the show is still clearly inspired by Sailor Moon (just look at Caerula Adamas lol) and Pretty Cure. It has also referenced, very blatantly, animes like Doraemon, Detective Conan, Aikatsu and even Vocaloid, when Kyoutarou tries to guess what Karurusu is saying with ““Just Google It, Asshole”?” in ep1.

23. Wombat’s real name and the name of his planet sound like gibberish to the earthlings and ends up being named after the Earth animal, but Zundar, Dadacha, Karurusu and Furanui all have original names. And I think Hireashi means “goldfish”?

24. If you google “zundar technology”, it’s actually a company in Shanghai, China. Aren’t Wombat and Zundar always talking about “advanced alien technology”?

25. Zundar and Dadacha are siblings, so are Karurusu and Furanui, and so are their father King Kamopapa and their uncle minister Wao, but neither are the same species and, except the first two, not even the same color. But they are supposedly related because they share birthmarks or something like that...

26. Everyone who’s in this fandom knows about the pixel blur and voice pitch censor from s1, but I’ve added it anyway because it’s so rare for mahou shoujo and shounen animes to explain why the heroes aren’t recognized when transformed.

27. A good while of s2 ep11 is spent discussing Zundar’s ex-wife and his problems to give child support. Naturally, he gets mad at this.

28. “Money doesn’t betray” (s1 ep6) and “The despair hidden behind your smile that comes from not being understood” (s3 ep11) are sentences that came out of nowhere and implied that the people they were said by (Io) or about (Taiju) respectively had some kind of angst going on but were never explained at all. They’re famous for just that.

29. The Beppu twins’ house in Andromeda shown in flashbacks had strange green circles that apparently are from another anime I don’t know but honestly I didn’t get it very well... It was revealed on a tweet from Takamatsu.

30. Alien language mostly appeared in s2 due to the many flashbacks of Aki and Haru in Andromeda, but in Boueibu s1, it appears on the Zundar Needle before it is shot on the human. It appears a lot through RobiHachi as well, due to being a story about travelling through space. There might be an alphabetical chart somewhere, but I can’t assure it exists, I might even have dreamed it.

31. Hikaru Midorikawa as the melon monster, Kousuke Toriumi as the bishounen monster, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as the kotatsu and panda monsters and Takuya Eguchi as the remote controller monster in s1 and 2, before going on to voice the main cast in HK. Keisuke Koumoto voiced Hatchi Kita in RobiHachi as well as Akihiko in Boueibu, and the characters look similar.

A new addition is that so far Boueibu is the only anime I’ve seen where children weren’t voiced by female seiyuus, but by actual children. Personally, it’s charming and makes it so much more realistic, specifically since no women appear in the franchise at all either (not counting Protag-chan in the game).

32. Speaking of seiyuus, Can I Destroy The Earth? had a dub shown in ep11/12 (?) that made Gora the villain that wanted Earth to stay the same and not progress, against the monsters that supposedly wanted to bring good things to earthlings. Aki and Haru quickly dismissed this dub as fake. (I made a mistake in the title in the previous post btw)

34. As seen in the glossary in the Boueibu Mook (I think, but might not be the mook), Caerula Adamas’ speeches are based on an old japanese detergent commercial that went “Gold, silver, pearl, gift”.

35. In the manga there’s a short parody of the first chapter of Sailor Moon with “Pretty Boy Guardian Gakuran Akoya”. The conquest club manga was released before the anime, so I remember reading somewhere that a fake website appeared for the Gakuran Akoya manga, before turning into the conquest club manga website in the day of its release.

36. Cgi was used a few times in the anime: s2 ep10 for a short sequence of the defense club on a rollercoaster and the carousel monster, ep11 for a cenital shot of the Battle Lovers singing, and HK ep12 for the Honyalaland soldiers and the Wao mecha.

37. The toothbrush incident in s1 ep7. (It’s definitely well-known but it’s so weird lol)

38. “We hope we can see each other again someday!” Something along those lines was the last text to appear in the last episode of HK, implying a s2. We all know how that went.

#boueibu #new post bc i didn't put a readmore in the other one and it was getting too long #msorry #long post #speaking of the robihachi eng dub... sarazanmai has one too...#so many animes like those get dubs but not boueibu?! HOW UNFAIR #at least we got the funimation subs #is the game even canon??#i mean with stuff like how everyone is apparently straight in there #even yumoto who pretty much came out as gay in the anime #that's very inconsistent #i mean. it is canon but maybe it's like an au? idk #also we need gakuran akoya to be real lmao #also no prequel with gora or hk s2. WHYYYY #i think this took me four hours

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monstersandmaw · 4 years

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Male vampire x male character (nsfw) Part Four

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Sorry for taking 84yrs to post this. I thought I had shared it. Sorry. Hope you enjoy all the same.

Wordcount: 10,904 (story total: 23,704)

Heads up in this part for continued, but easing, tense familial relations, some angst/heartache (not heartbreak though), and some (consensual) blood drinking.

Part One (sfw), Part Two (nsfw), Part Three (nsfw)

Alec let out a shaky breath and crossed to the sofa, sinking down onto it as his legs finally gave out. “Vampires,” he said, hardly daring to believe the word he was uttering.

“Yes.”

“And you’re one?”

“… Yes.”

“And my family…?”

Sebastien’s voice was tight on the other end of the line as he said, “Hunts my kind. Well, those of us who aren’t registered with the ‘Guild of Hunters’ —” his tone turned acrid as he spat the words out, though he kept his voice low and quiet.

“What does that even mean? I don’t know what any of this means… And did you know about my family? I mean, before? When you started dating me?”

Sebastien took another deep breath. “Yes. I knew. And it was a long time before I fully convinced myself that you did not.”

If Sebastien had thought it was some kind of trap, that would explain his reticence at the beginning for sure.

“And were you planning on telling me any of this?” Alec snarled. God, his chest hurt so much. The deception was like Jeremy cheating on him all over again, only this time the betrayal was coming from two fronts at once: from his love life and from his family. Not that he’d had all that solid a relationship with the latter to start with. Perhaps this explained why.

“I hadn’t planned on becoming your boyfriend at all,” Sebastien snapped.

“So, what, I was just a quick diversion? A casual fuck you kept coming back for because I’m such a fucking chump? Is that it?”

“No,” Sebastien sighed. “Not at all. I fell for you. Like the horrid cliche I am, the vampire fell for the hunter, and by then I had no idea how to tell you. I’ve not been with a human before, so this is all very new to me.”

Alec ran his fingers through his dark hair to buy himself a moment. “You… You haven’t?”

“No.”

“How… How old are you?”

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

“Yes!” His phone was slippery in his fingers now from the sweat on his palm but he couldn’t bring it away from his ear long enough to put it on speaker. He needed answers.

With another cavernous sigh, Sebastien said hurriedly, “Very well. I was born in 1897 and turned on the battlefields of the Great War — World War I, that is. I was dying, and a vampire named Felicity who had been working as a field nurse turned me. My first run-in with your family was not long after I moved from France to America. They were working with the American Hunters’ Guild on a case which had nothing to do with me.” He let out a shaky breath and said, “I got in the way and I nearly died. Those were the days before the treaty, of course, and before I moved to England.”

Despite his still-spinning mind, Alec managed to croak, “What treaty?”

“Those of us who get our blood from sanctioned blood banks and do not live-feed are exempt from being hunted like animals.” He spoke like he was quoting from a law code; cold and clinical; detached.

God, the way he said it made Alec’s skin crawl. It was as if he were being permitted to exist on the grounds of good behaviour and, he supposed, that was exactly the case. Even so, Alec couldn’t help the next words that just fell out of his mouth. “So you weren’t planning on feeding from me?”

“Of course not,” Sebastien retorted but then appeared to rein himself in with yet another steadying inhale. “No. It’s been decades since I’ve fed from a human directly. I didn’t plan on starting with you.”

Alec slumped back into the sofa cushions and stared up at the ceiling of his tiny apartment. “Fuck.”

After a long silence, Sebastien’s gentle tenor sounded in his ear. “Are you alright?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been close to my family - my dad was always an arsehole, but… I can’t believe Theo’s involved in all this. He was such a sweet kid, and we were really close until…” he swallowed thickly around the rising lump in his throat.

“Until?” Sebastien prompted when he stalled again.

“I can’t believe this is all real,” he muttered. “Until he turned sixteen and started to ‘work out’ with dad. I was at uni by then, getting my fine art degree, but whenever I came home he was just… different. Harder. Sharper. More focused. Guess it makes sense now… Well, as much as… you know…” he gestured vaguely to the empty apartment with his hands, “… as much as all this can make sense. Fucking… vampires…”

After a heartbeat, Sebastien added softly, “Quite literally.”

Despite himself, Alec snorted. “So… where does this leave us?”

Now it was Sebastien’s turn to feel clearly uncomfortable. Eventually he said, “Alec, I don’t think it’s wise for me to see you currently. Not with your family being what they are.”

His heart twisted, even though he’d been half expecting it. “You still think they’d… what, stake you, or whatever it is that vampire hunters actually do to you lot?”

“There are many ways to kill a vampire,” he said flatly. “And your family knows all of them, probably more. You need to work this out with them first as well. Talk to your brother. He seems the more reasonable…”

“I can’t believe Ellie’s in on it as well. And my mother? Fuck…”

“Talk to them.”

“Will I still see you at work at least?”

The awkward silence told him all he needed to know, even before Sebastien said, “I just sent in my letter of resignation.”

“That was quick,” he hissed, stomach dropping. “You only just left.”

“Supernatural speed,” he replied bitterly. “Comes in useful for typing papers and getting out of awkward situations…”

That sparked another question in him. “Supernatural powers, huh? Can you turn into a bat too?”

“No.”

Then he thought of Sebastien’s Halloween outfit. “Wolf?”

He thought he detected a faint smirk in Sebastien’s response. “No, sadly. No shape-shifting for me. Felicity is not of any extraordinary bloodline, and thus, neither am I.”

“Right,” he grunted. “Of course. Is she… is she still around?”

“Felicity? Yes. We meet every now and again. She and her wife spend most of their time in Venice these days.”

“Her wife? She a vampire too?”

Sebastien swallowed audibly. “Yes.”

“Did Felicity turn her too? Would that make her wife your sister?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Did she know her as a human though?”

“Yes.”

After a moment of spinning thoughts, Alec asked, “Did… you turn her?”

“One doesn’t tend to turn one’s own intended. Between a sire and their turned, there can grow… tension. Not always, but it can be enough to ruin a relationship that was seemingly solid before. Something about exchanging blood changes the soul… or so we think, anyway. It was an honour to be asked to sire her.”

“Right.” Alec felt slightly sick. “Will I at least see you before you leave?”

“I think it best if we don’t. Not while your family is still… ‘investigating’ me.”

“Are you really in danger from them?”

“Quite possibly. My name is on the treaty, but…”

Something twanged painfully again in his chest, swiftly followed by the fizzle of fear through his veins. “But what?”

“But vampires and hunters are not supposed to sleep together, Alec…”

“Don’t bang the enemy? How very Romeo and Juliet,” he snorted. “Fuck. Why does every good relationship I have turn to shit?” he asked, not of Sebastien but of the universe itself. “What did I do?”

“Alec —”

“—Don’t. Don’t make it worse by apologising or something. It’s fine. We were only together a month. I’ll get over it. You’ll move on. Heck, you’ll fucking live forever, right? What’s a month to you anyway? Nothing, right?”

The bitterness in his own voice nearly choked him, and without thinking, or even saying goodbye, he just hung up and let his phone lie in his limp fingers on the sofa cushions. It lit up and rang a moment later, but he didn’t answer it. Six more times Sebastien tried before finally giving up.

Kay was an absolute blessing in the next few days.

He didn’t tell her immediately about the whole vampire thing, but after he’d calmed down enough to be able to look at Theo without immediately busting a vein in his forehead, he hashed the basics out with him, and then told her everything. Alec told her about his newly-discovered, secret family occupation which, apparently, stretched back centuries. He told her about the fact that his eldest sister and younger brother were monster hunters in their spare time, and he told her the real reason Sebastien why had vanished overnight without a trace — yes, Alec had gone to his apartment building, only to be politely informed by the doorman that Dr. Dulac was no longer in residence and did not leave so much as a forwarding address.

That, above almost everything else, shattered Alec’s hopes of seeing him again. Like thistledown in the wind, Sebastien had simply flitted away somewhere else.

She took it about as well as he had to start with, but when she saw the seriousness in his eyes, and when, three weekends later, she came to his apartment for a definitely-not-awkward dinner with Theo, she saw video footage that Theo and his father had captured from various hunts of supernatural creatures beyond only beautiful vampires. Then she believed him. Ghouls, ghosts, reanimated corpses, demons… you name it and Theo could tell you about it.

Alec spent Christmas with Kay’s family, and Theo met him for New Year drinks in the city, joined by Ellie. It wasn’t anything like the family dynamic he’d always longed for, but the new degree of openness between them went some way to mending his still bruised heart. Slowly. Gradually. Piece by tentative, honest piece. He never joined in, but Theo started to tell him a bit about what they did. It still sounded barbaric to him, but at least it was true.

He had no word from Sebastien, and the number he had saved in his phone had been disconnected.

With the arrival of spring, Alec found himself more than usually dissatisfied with his job. He was a good teacher, and he enjoyed seeing his students’ talents evolve and grow, but the ever-increasing admin ground him down, and the politics of the faculty and the university as a whole wore on him.

“Have you seen this?” Kay asked one afternoon as they shared a takeaway coffee beneath the drifting cherry blossoms. Petals spiralled down like pastel pink and white wedding confetti, and he watched with an absent smile as a terrier snapped and sprung around on his hind legs trying to catch them while his owner stood and talked with her friend nearby. “Oi!” Kay asked, digging him in the ribs.

“Hmm?”

“Have you seen this?” she asked, shoving her phone under his nose.

He blinked, refocusing his eyes, and read the article’s headline aloud. “Council offers artists the chance to win a sponsored exhibition in the town hall with this unique competition.” He blinked. “So?”

“So?” she gawped. “You can’t be serious?”

“Send me the link. I’ll forward it to my students. They might like that.” That earned him a smack upside the head, and he scowled. “What was that for?”

“Alec, you might be the dumbest smart guy I know,” she said. “I showed it to you so that you could enter it, you giant idiot.”

He blinked. “Me?”

“I saw those charcoals you did the other week of the cathedral! They were amazing!! And the abstracts too… I still want one, by the way.”

“It’s already wrapped up for your birthday,” he groused. “You really think I should do it?”

She rolled her eyes and drained the last of her coffee without gracing him with an answer. Of course she thought he should.

“When’s the deadline?”

“Next Thursday,” she said without looking at him.

Alec licked his lips and swallowed. “Will you help me pick some images to submit?”

Her answering grin was feral.

In all honesty, Alec forgot about having even entered the competition until the letter dropped through his door six weeks later announcing that, to his utter astonishment, he had been selected as the winner. Tears blurred his eyes and he sat down heavily at the tiny kitchen table. He’d never entered any of his own art into anything like this in his whole life, and the first time he does, he gets a whole fucking public exhibition out of it?

“Maybe this year won’t be so bad after all,” he murmured. “New year, new start…” His chest still ached when he thought about Sebastien, and he hoped he was doing alright, wherever he was.

Theo had been searching for him, probably by way of apology for lying to his big brother for all these years, but he’d turned up very little. Sebastien had gone to Venice first, it seemed, presumably to spend time with Felicity and her wife, but had disappeared completely after that, with only rumours flickering here and there that he was in Paris, St. Petersburg, Prague, and then potentially Florence. Maybe.

“Venice seems like a pretty sunny place for a pair of vampires to live,” Alec commented, but Theo shrugged.

“They don’t burn up immediately in sunlight, or your professor would never have been able to take a day-job at the university. They’re sensitive to it, some more than others, but it takes a full day of constant sunlight beating down for them to burn properly.” The callousness of his brother’s response shook him, even after all these months, and Theo must have seen it on his face because he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then added, “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

Alec shrugged. Yes, he wanted to say. I thought so. “I only knew him for a month or so,” was what he said carefully instead. “And even then… turned out I didn’t know him anyway.”

Theo, who had been lounging on Alec’s sofa with his legs spread and his head tipped back into the cushions while Alec made supper, asked quietly, “Did he seem… normal to you?”

“Normal?” Alec asked, not sure he’d heard his brother correctly.

“Yeah… like… did you ever suspect he wasn’t… you know…?”

“Human?”

Theo grunted and nodded his head. “Yeah. I guess.”

“No. Obviously not. Never crossed my mind. Why would it have?”

Theo scowled and turned his eyes to regard him. Alec knew that Theo looked like a younger version of himself, if maybe in better shape, and he wondered if he’d have the same steely look in his eyes if he’d been deemed ‘man enough’ to become a hunter, or whatever bullshit criteria their arsehole father had used to select which members of his family were to become soldiers and which would live normal lives.

“What?” Alec demanded.

“But you slept with him, right?”

“I’m not talking about that with you,” he said, briefly brandishing the wooden spoon at him.

Theo pulled a face. “I’m not asking about your sex life. Gross. No, I mean…”

In that moment, Alec spotted a flash of something in his brother’s blue eyes that softened him to the kid. He turned off the gas and went over to where Theo was now sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up at Alec’s approach, his face showed open vulnerability in a way he’d not seen since they were young children and Theo had got himself into trouble at school.

“What’s going on?” Alec asked, seating himself next to his little brother.

Theo bobbed his knee like a deprived caffeine addict and bit his lip. With glassy eyes, he croaked, “I keep asking myself if we did the right thing…”

“What do you mean?”

The bravado of Theo’s early twenties melted away to become a worried, frightened, guilty little boy again and he said, “I mean… if what we do is right…”

“You mean… hunting?”

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“What set this off?”

His brother quirked him a humourless smirk and said, “You always did know when something was bothering me.”

Alec remained quiet, just watching him.

“We teamed up with some hunters from Edinburgh for a ‘vamp gone rogue’ case and we finally found her yesterday. She… She’d been turning people; trying to amass some kind of small army to take over from another vampire further up north. She was insane… like, completely, sociopathically insane, but… the people she turned… they were just…” he blinked, and Alec saw with a jolt that his eyes were full of unshed tears. “They were still just people.”

He feared he already knew where this was going. Still, he asked, “What happened?”

“Father wanted to put them down. They were terrified, chained up… still on the point of lashing out…”

Bile rose in his throat. “Oh god…”

“One of the hunters said she knew of a vampire who could help rehabilitate them; help them adjust to their new lives. One of them didn’t want to live as a vampire though, so father just…”

Theo didn’t need to finish that for Alec to know that father had ended the newly-turned vampire’s life in a heartbeat. “And the rest?”

“The other three went with the hunter. I don’t know what happened, but… I trust her. It’s just… father taught me and Ellie that vampires are mindless killers when they feed… that you can’t get close to them, that all they want at the end of the day is blood no matter what they tell you… but…” he looked up at Alec. “You’ve been fucking miserable since the whole Sebastien shit-fest. I know you’ve been trying to hide it, and you’ve got the exhibition coming up next weekend, and that’s great, but… I know you’ve stopped putting yourself out there. And we did that. We fucked it all up for you. I just…” he ran his hands through his hair and sent it into wild disarray. “I just wonder if you could really have been happy with him after all.”

Alec pulled his brother close and hugged him. “I’m not going to lie,” he murmured into his brother’s dark hair. “I’m furious with father for keeping everything from me, and for making you and mum and Ellie lie to me and Angie about it as well, but… if I hadn’t seen Sebastien’s eyes go red — yeah, I thought it was just a reflection or something — and if I hadn’t seen the way he sleeps literally like the dead… I’m not sure I would have believed you anyway. I don’t forgive him for it either, but…” he sighed deeply. “I forgive you, Theo. And Ellie.”

“And mum?”

“I’m still working on that.”

Theo went slack beneath him and snaked his arms around his brother’s waist for a moment. “Thanks,” he mumbled into Alec’s shirt.

“You’re still coming to the exhibition?” Alec asked as he pulled back and went back to the stove, giving Theo a moment of privacy to pull himself together.

In truth, Alec was a little shaken too. Their relationship had been slowly patched over the intervening months, but it still wasn’t particularly close, and the matter of Sebastien had been a permanent, proverbial elephant in the room. That Theo was questioning their father’s teaching came as an immense relief to Alec though. He poured them each a glass of wine, and the two spent the rest of the evening in a quieter kind of closeness than they’d yet shared.

When the evening of the exhibition drew round, Alec was quite frankly, a bit of a mess.

“C’mon,” Theo grinned, patting the lapels of his jacket down for him and grinning up at him. “Where’s that Twayblade hunter courage, huh?”

“Must have skipped me and all gone to you,” he quipped back. “Fuck. I’m so nervous. Why am I so nervous?”

“No fucking clue,” Theo chuckled. “You’re awesome and they’re gonna fucking love you.”

“Language,” Alec said instinctively and Theo’s laughter redoubled.

“You’re a big fucking hypocrite, you know that?” Theo laughed just as Kay sidled up with three glasses of champagne awkwardly held between her hands.

“Help a girl out here, would you, boys?” she asked, proffering the glasses to them.

Alec resisted the urge to down it in one — he’d probably only choke on the bubbles anyway — and filled his lungs instead with a big gulp of air. He tried to send all his nerves into the air and then blow it out of his body in one heaving sigh to leave him calmer, but it just gave him a head rush, so he sipped the wine and turned to look around the gallery from the corner where he’d been lurking.

“What if no one shows up?” he blurted, earning him a scowl from Theo and a pout-and-eyebrow-raise combo from Kay.

He needn't have worried in the end. The marketing team had done their work, and within an hour the place was heaving and all but three of his pieces had been reserved. Scratch that. Two.

The fact that almost all of his students had turned up as well to cheer him on and trade high fives, and scrounge free alcohol and food from the canape trays, warmed him in ways he didn’t know were possible.

Overwhelmed and a little bit tearful, he stepped out of the town hall’s main exhibition space and into the small corridor that led to a fire exit and a grotty back car park beyond, letting the flush die down from his cheeks. This was what he’d really wanted right from the moment he’d graduated all those years ago; to be an artist in his own right, with people buying his work at exhibitions… It almost made him giddy to think that he had a chance to do this full time now. It seemed that Sebastien had been right when he’d said he could really make something of himself.

Ah, there was the crash in his mood that he’d been waiting for. Nothing good lasts forever, right?

Would Sebastien have been proud of him if he knew about this? Would he have been there that night, by his side? Would they even have lasted that long anyway, even without his family’s interference?

The noise in the room was gradually dying down when he gathered enough courage to step back into the echoing hall. The pale wooden floors gleamed in the low light, the white of the temporary exhibition walls almost glowing, in stark contrast to the black and grey of his charcoals. He’d chosen mostly charcoals for the show, with a few acrylic abstracts for flavour, and apparently people loved them. Every single one had a red ‘sold’ dot beneath the label now, he noted as he cast his eyes around the room.

Then his gaze snagged on someone standing with their back to him, hands clasped loosely behind them, a long, silver-blond ponytail hanging down their back. And Alec’ vision slipped sideways.

Sebastien.

It had to be him.

No one else stood with posture like that. No one else was so tall and lean and elegant and god-damned graceful, even when just standing still. And no one else stood quite as still as that.

He let out a ragged breath and swayed slightly, glancing around. There was no sign of Theo or Kay just then, and only one or two couples meandered admiringly around the room. And there, fixated by one piece in particular, stood Sebastien.

Inhaling for courage, Alec approached and came to an unsteady halt a few feet away from him. He didn’t look real, somehow. His beauty had always been striking, but now in the low light he seemed like a mirage, with his warm olive skin and contrastingly pale hair, that cut-glass jawline and —

— He turned and met Alec’s gaze with dark brown eyes alight and glassy.

“You’re here,” Alec breathed, at a loss for anything else.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Sebastien said, and the sound of his voice sent a wild tingling through Alec’s whole nervous system. The man — vampire — looked uncharacteristically shy, uncertain, as he half turned to face him.

“Gotta say,” Alec said, scratching the back of his head, “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

“Should I leave?”

He chewed his lower lip for a second and Sebastien’s eyes tracked the movement before he blinked and looked back at the charcoal in front of him. It was of the Lady Chapel of the cathedral; one of the most tranquil places Alec had ever been. A shaft of light lanced down from a Gothic window high on the right, scattering fractured shards of light onto the stone floor, and behind it, just barely visible as a grey, misty outline, sat the small altar.

“You’re religious?” Alec asked.

“Mm,” Sebastien nodded. “Surprising, I know, given my ‘condition’, but there you have it.”

All the smalltalk then suddenly boiled up into thick irritation inside Alec and he scowled. “Where have you been? And why now? Why come back now? What do you want?”

He must have raised his voice fractionally because the couple admiring the seascape to their left shot them slightly scandalised looks, as if he’d started swearing in a sanctuary, and he bit back the wave of anger, halting it in its tracks.

“Shall we step outside for a moment?” Sebastien asked and Alec nodded tersely.

Passing Kay and Theo who were sitting in the chairs near the drinks table, Alec cast his eyes at them and watched Theo tense visibly. Kay laid her hand on his thigh and shook her head, at which Theo nodded and sat back, eyes hard, mouth set, but at least he didn’t appear to be on the point of leaping out and staking Sebastien on the spot.

Alec mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ at them both, and followed Sebastien out on to the street.

“You’ve patched things up with your family then?” Sebastien began, standing perfectly still beside the brick wall of the Victorian building while Alec paced.

“Mostly just with Theo, but yeah. Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Honestly? I missed you. Couldn't get you out of my head. I went all over Europe, and even to Asia briefly, and nothing I did distracted me from you, from leaving you. I had to come back.”

“You could have called,” he said, instantly regretting the way it came out like a petulant teenager’s sulking.

“And what would that have achieved?” Sebastien asked evenly. “I was hundreds of miles away.”

“You could have come back sooner? Talked to me in person?”

Sebastien sighed. “I was afraid that your family would come after me. I needed to disappear.”

“Theo convinced father to let you go. As you said yourself, your name was on the treaty, and you didn’t hurt me or hypnotise me, or whatever… did you?”

“No,” he said, pale brows pinching with evident distaste.

“Could you have?”

Sebastien levelled him with a dark look. “Yes, but… that’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s a survival mechanism — to make people forget what they’ve seen — it’s not something to be used lightly.”

“Ok, but you could have, and you didn’t, so that was another reason to let you go,” he said. God he wanted to kiss him. The realisation hit him like a gut punch and he turned away. Alec ached inside and out for those lips, those hands, those eyes… “Fuck,” he whispered, barely audible. “Are you staying?”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Alec rounded on him, frustration pouring out of him again. “Don’t answer my question with one of your own. Are you staying or not?”

Sebastien remained eerily calm, but a heartbeat later Alec saw that it wasn’t serenity in his eyes but sadness. “If you want me to, I’ll stay. I want to try again, Alec. I want… I want to be with you. I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.”

“Feel? As in… present tense?”

“Yes. It hasn’t faded. Not with all the days and distance between us.”

“God, you sound like a shitty romance novel hero…” he scoffed. “I almost believe it.”

Sebastien spread his hands and said, “I am who — and what — I am. You know me, Alec, in a way that no one else ever has. I was utterly myself with you, except for the fact that I kept my nature from you. I hope you can at least understand why, if not forgive me. Everything else was genuine. I have never done that — been that open, that vulnerable — with anyone.”

“Even knowing what my family are?”

“Even then.”

Alec looked up at him and saw his own reflection in those dark, rich brown eyes. “Show me.”

Sebastien’s angelic face soured into a confused frown. “Show you what?”

“Your eyes. Your fangs. Show me what you are.”

“Now?”

He looked around. The street was empty on either side, with the only people around gathered outside a bar further up the street.

When he turned back to say yes to Sebastien, he found blood red eyes glowing in the man’s face. “Holy fuck,” he hissed. Every already-chiselled line on Sebastien’s face had sharpened somehow, his cheeks hollowing a little, perhaps to account for the additional hardware he now sported in his mouth, and his eyes seemed a touch more sunken. And they glowed as if lit from within.

Heartbeat thrumming out a wild tattoo, he stepped closer and Sebastien went utterly still. His chest ceased to rise and fall, and he didn’t even blink as Alec raised his fingers to his left cheek. “Show me.”

Sebastien swallowed and parted his lips. Angling his jaw a little to one side, he showed Alec the elongated canines, three quarters of an inch long. “Careful,” he murmured as Alec made to touch them. “Vampire venom is potent, even in small doses.”

“Does it really do what the hunters say it does?”

Sebastien’s red eyes glittered almost playfully. “I don’t know,” he smiled, seeming to relax a fraction. “What do they say it does?”

“Drives your victims wild, acts like a date rape drug, makes humans lose their will and their inhibitions…”

At that, a hardness returned to his features and his lip twitched in a lopsided snarl, like a wolf backed into a corner. “That’s certainly one take on it,” he said. “It creates a rush of euphoria. It’s supposed to make feeding a pleasant experience for all concerned. Endorphins in the blood make the taste sweeter, and the human feels no pain or fear.”

“Right. Gotta say I like that one better,” Alec said with a shaky smile. “But I’m not gonna risk it right here… And fuck me, your eyes are incredible.”

“They’re still red, hmm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes and tilting his face upwards a little more towards the cloudy night sky, he inhaled deeply. His features softened again, and Alec watched, fascinated, as the slight bumps behind his closed upper lip slid away into nothing, presumably as his canines retracted into his gums. When he opened his eyes, they were their usual, endlessly dark brown once more.

“Better?” Sebastien asked, oddly self-conscious.

“No,” he said. “Just different.”

Something prickled on the back of his neck and he turned to find a woman silhouetted against the light of street lamp halfway up the road. “Friend of yours?” he asked, tense.

“Felicity. She came with me.”

“Why? Surely you don’t need a wingman… or, you know, woman.”

With a tiny smile, Sebastien said, “You make me more vulnerable than you realise, in more ways than one. And we weren’t sure if your family would be here.”

“Or whether they’d want to flambé you…”

“Precisely.” He inclined his head and the woman did the same, turning and vanishing even as Alec blinked.

“Can you do that too?” he asked, still gawping after her.

When he turned back, he found that Sebastien had stepped in close to him - close enough that his faint, woody cologne wafted gently around them and he felt his knees wobble slightly. He’d missed this. Oh god, he’d missed this. “Mmhmm,” Sebastien hummed. “I can.”

“Kiss me,” Alec whispered. “Please…”

Sebastien didn’t need telling twice. He took Alec’s face in both his hands and crushed a passionate kiss to his lips so hard that Alec’s mind went perfectly blank for a few beautiful seconds. When he came to, he grabbed Sebastien’s narrow hips and tugged him close, making the vampire grunt as their bodies connected.

This time, he took Sebastien’s ponytail in one hand and began to pull on it gently. Sebastien yielded at the pressure and tipped his face back, exposing the entire column of his throat to Alec without resistance. The gesture left Alec stunned and breathless. In his research with Theo over the past months, he had learned that for a vampire to expose their throat to another implied absolute trust. Overwhelmed, he pressed his lips to the bare skin and felt Sebastien gasp, grabbing at his shoulders suddenly to keep himself upright.

Over and over, the vampire shuddered tangibly beneath his touch and gasped sharply again, panting. As he shifted his hips against him, Alec felt Sebastien’s growing hardness, and at the same time, Sebastien drew back, eyes screwed shut. “Stop,” he laughed. “Not here.”

“I want you,” Alec moaned, one hand on Sebastien’s chest. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I want you too,” Sebastien smiled, opening his eyes. They glowed scarlet again. “And because of that, this —” he said, gesturing to his red eyes, “— isn’t going to go away quickly this time.”

“This too?” Alec said, boldly cupping the obvious bulge in Sebastien’s smart black trousers gently with his hand and making the vampire groan.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Your place or mine?” Alec asked with a dizzy grin.

“You decide. I’m booked into a hotel one street over for the next two days,” he said. “If that affects your decision in any way.”

“Yours,” he said. “I… I’ll just…” he looked over his shoulder and caught sight of the exhibition banner dangling by the door. “I should…”

Sebastien nodded slowly. “I’ll be here.”

“You’d better be,” he snarled as he adjusted himself and prayed no one would notice. He took a few steadying breaths on the threshold of the town hall and then disappeared inside.

Kay raised her eyebrows at him when he reappeared.

“Not a word,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Your hair’s a mess,” she said conversationally. “Is it windy outside?”

“Fuck off,” he grimaced and she laughed. “Where’s Theo?”

“He left out the back way,” she said. “But he told me to tell you to enjoy yourself tonight, and that he’ll stand by whatever makes you happy.”

Unexpected tears prickled his eyes and he tugged her into a hug that was probably meant for his brother.

“You can thank us later,” she said, shoving him off her. “Go be with your Prince of Darkness…”

“I’m not sure how much he’d like you calling him that,” he said as he stepped back. “I’ll have to wrap things up here first…”

It seemed to take forever, but he finally found the events coordinator and after an interminable conversation full of congratulations, agreed to stop by the next day to take down the exhibition and sort the sales out. His heart was thudding when he stepped back outside, but he let out a huge sigh when he saw Sebastien leaning against the brick building, face tilted towards the moon that was just peeking out from behind a bank of cloud.

“It’s like one of your charcoals,” Sebastien said without tearing his eyes from the sky.

Alec crossed to him and smiled when Sebastien met his gaze, red meeting blue. Alec slid his fingers into Sebastien’s where his hand hung quietly by his side.

“Ready?” the vampire asked.

Alec nodded, and let Sebastien lead him back to his hotel.

They barely made it into the lift before Alec was kissing him, backing him into the mirrored sides of the lift with a thud before the doors had even closed. He stopped suddenly, drew back and laughed, and Sebastien — who looked like he’d just got whiplash — asked, “What?”

“Vampires do have reflections after all…”

Sebastien rolled his eyes and gave an indecorous snort-laugh. The sound was rich and warm and it filled Alec’s whole consciousness for a moment. “It’s only the antique ones with genuine silver backing that don’t show our reflections. Technology has evolved, thank goodness. Now, if you don’t mind, you were kissing me senseless…”

“Sorry,” he laughed, grabbing Sebastien’s white shirt collar and tugging him down again. They nearly didn’t get out of the lift at Sebastien’s floor, but as the doors began to close again, Sebastien slid his foot into the path of the doors and dragged Alec out.

Clothes landed in a steady line on the carpet between the door of his hotel room and Sebastien’s bed, ending with them both in only their boxer-briefs on the pristine white surface of the bed. Alec was tipped back onto the duvet and lay there staring up at Sebastien who was now no longer hiding his nature from him at all. Red eyes blazed in his face and as he opened his mouth to breath heavily, the tips of his fangs were just visible. There was no denying that he was a vampire.

“Was it like this before?” Alec asked hoarsely. “I mean… did I just not see it?”

“I had to work very hard to rein all this in,” he said, kneeling on the bed and crawling a little way up it. His own boxer briefs strained at the crotch where his erection tented the fabric, and Alec’s own black ones were stained with a little spot of wetness where his cock twitched with eager interest. “I only let it slip once or twice, but you were distracted at the time.”

Alec smirked and then moaned as Sebastien’s palm skimmed up over his groin and over his stomach. He’d always been a bit self-conscious about the softer parts of him, but Sebastien worshipped him like he was some kind of immortal god, lavishing attention on him over and over until he was shaking and gasping and sweating. “Please!” he begged after what felt like hours. “Oh god, please…”

Sebastien slid off the bed and deftly removed his own underwear before encouraging Alec to lift his hips for him and drawing his boxer-briefs down too. Before Alec could think or process what was happening, Sebastien was between his legs again and had swallowed the entire length of his cock to the back of his throat in one.

“Oh fuck,” he hissed, mind whiting out.

Sparks of pleasure shot up his spine as Sebastien worked him alternately with his mouth and his hand.

He teased him, licking the slit at the tip where pre-come beaded profusely now, teasing the delicate folds of skin until Alec thought he was going to shatter apart with want. Just before it got too much to bear, Sebastien would take him back into the wet heat of his mouth and work the underside of his cock with his tongue, swallowing occasionally and making Alec’s head spin all over again.

His balls tightened and he spread his legs wider, instinctively opening himself to Sebastien.

The vampire moaned against his cock and Alec whimpered. Pulling off him, an obscenely inviting thread of saliva and pre-come connecting them briefly, Sebastien sat up and reached for the top drawer of the bedside table. “Vampires neither catch nor transmit diseases,” he said, “But if you still wish to use protection —”

“— I haven’t been with anyone since you,” he rasped. “And I’m clean anyway…”

“As you wish,” Sebastien smiled, withdrawing an almost-new bottle of lube and sitting back down between his legs. Alec eyed it and Sebastien laughed shyly. “I opened it last night…” he admitted and Alec grinned.

That smirk shattered into an open-mouthed groan as Sebastien’s finger slid inside him and he began to prepare him. There was nothing perfunctory about it either. Sebastien took his time to work him open, his fingers fucking into him slowly, almost reverently, until he crooked them and Alec yelled as white-hot pleasure shot through him.

“Still so sensitive,” Sebastien crooned and Alec just shivered in response. His thighs were quivering too now from the effort of not bucking upwards into the empty air, his cock drooling freely over his slightly soft stomach with each futile twitch. He knew he was a wanton mess, and he couldn’t quite find it within himself to care. It seem to drive Sebastien wild anyway.

When Sebastien added a third finger, still stroking up and down his thigh with his other hand, Alec broke.

“Please, please, please,” he whimpered, out of breath and desperate. He cracked his eyes open and looked down at Sebastien to find that his red eyes had been almost eclipsed by his blown pupils. He gave a weak buck of his hips to try and encourage Sebastien to get on with it, but the vampire seemed utterly transfixed by him. He worked his fingers over Alec’s prostate gently but with absolute precision, and it was going to make Alec lose his mind altogether.

“Pleasepleaseplease, I need you, please…” he wailed as Sebastien’s mercifully short and blunt fingernail caught him just so and sent another jolt through him.

Finally the vampire moved, but as he withdrew completely, the loss almost shattered him. “Shh,” he smiled, stroking a soothing circle at Alec’s hipbone. “I’m still here…”

Alec whimpered like a wounded animal but his foggy brain accepted that the loss was only temporary, and he watched as Sebastien took his own flushed cock in his hands and slicked lube up the length of it in a couple of efficient strokes, head bowing under the attention it was receiving at last. He’d focused solely, completely, on Alec’s pleasure for all that time, and the realisation sent a fresh wave of lust rolling through Alec’s entire body.

He spread his legs, but Sebastien caught Alec under his left thigh and raised his leg easily, exposing Alec completely. Before Alec could process anything, his tip was nudging at Alec’s entrance, and then he had sunk all the way in to the hilt.

Sebastien froze then, bowed forwards over Alec like a supplicant, canines openly bared, eyes screwed shut, not even breathing.

“Sebastien… please…” Alec grunted. He’d never felt as full and whole as he had with Sebastien inside him, and yet this wasn’t enough. He’d ached for this. For months, he’d ached for it, and still it wasn’t enough. “Bast, please…”

Finally, the vampire opened his searing red eyes and began to move.

Slowly at first, he picked up his pace until Alec’s back was arching and his fingers clawed great furrows in the sheet beneath him. With each thrust, Alec saw stars at let out little fractured, broken gasps. Sebastien was quiet, almost silent, while Alec himself was unable to stop the sounds from tumbling out of him. He moaned and whimpered, gasped and cursed and begged until Sebastien yanked him further down the bed and lifted his hips a little way off the mattress entirely.

From this new angle, it was so blindingly good that Alec went alternately taut and limp with ecstasy. “I’m close,” he gasped over the slap of Sebastien’s hips meeting his skin.

The vampire snarled then; an inhuman sound that sent the hairs prickling all down Alec’s body.

“Come for me,” Alec begged in a whisper, opening his eyes and watching as Sebastien chased his release with a ferocity he’d never shown before. He wasn’t careless with his strength, but he was certainly forceful. Had Alec wanted to grunt ‘stop’, he knew the vampire would halt, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he watched the flawless perfection of this man above him. “God you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Come for me, Bast…”

And at the sound of his name, uttered in little more than an abbreviated wheeze, Sebastien went still, hips spasming as his spine arched back like a bow at full draw, mouth open, head thrown back, fangs bared, eyes rammed shut, a sheen of sweat covering his perfect, bronze chest, his silver hair falling around him like a veil.

The sight of him like that wrenched Alec’s orgasm from him with such sudden force that he almost blacked out, and he clenched around Sebastien’s still-twitching cock as he spilled all over himself. Vaguely, he felt Sebastien trying to withdraw, but he grunted, “Don't… not yet… please… I… unngghh…” Unable to finish the sentence as the last shock waves fluttered through him, Alec went limp against the bed, breathing hard, his blood roaring in his ears.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Sebastien did finally move, but eventually he slid his softening cock out of him and Alec grunted at the cool slide of the vampire’s release down his thigh. He was too spent and exhausted to care about the mess though, and as Sebastien collapsed onto the bed beside him, he cracked one eye open.

Sebastien lay on his left side with his cheek pillowed on his bicep, facing Alec with his eyes closed, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. Tentatively, clumsily in the daze of his recent, mind-blowing orgasm, Alec reached out and touched the delicate skin on the inside of his arm. Sebastien jolted like he’d received an electric shock, and opened his eyes. They still burned bright red, but the rest of his face seemed a little softer somehow.

“You alright?” Alec asked.

Sebastien nodded.

“Been a while too, huh?” Alec grinned, flopping back down to stare at the ceiling where little points of light still sparkled across his vision every now and again.

“Not since that last night with you,” he said, words slurred with exhaustion. “Unless you count my rather pathetic climax alone last night, which I certainly don’t.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head but didn’t speak again. The vampire lay perfectly still — perfectly undead — and perfectly vulnerable beside him without even a sheet to cover him. His cock now lay soft across the top of his right thigh, still drooling a little and making a mess on his olive skin. Not half as much mess as Alec was currently sporting over his torso, he mused with another smile.

With Sebastien showing no sign of stirring, Alec rolled carefully off the bed and headed on shaky legs to the shower. When he returned, Sebastien hadn’t moved, and he slid in beside him, drawing the sheets up around them and lying there to stare at him in the dimness of the unlit room, processing everything. Sebastien was back, and apparently wanted to stay. He could hardly believe how well that day had gone.

Waking the next morning with a cool, lean body pressed against him, Alec sighed, relieved that it hadn’t all been some kind of fever dream brought on by the stress of the exhibition.

The fact that the man next to him was an undead vampire who didn’t breathe in his sleep was a bit unnerving, and the way he had his cheek now resting on Alec’s collarbone and his nose pressed against his neck should also probably have been a bit of a warning, but Alec couldn’t bring himself to move, except to place a soft kiss on his forehead.

Suddenly, as if surfacing from boundless depths, Sebastien’s body heaved and he drew in a great, sucking, rasping inhale through his mouth. His lips brushed against Alec’s pulse and Sebastien began breathing heavily there for a moment.

“That will never not be weird,” Alec murmured.

“Apologies,” Sebastien muttered, trying to roll away. He paused, freezing, and then whispered, “I fell asleep…” as if that was something miraculous.

“Yeah, you passed out almost as soon as we both finished,” he snickered.

Sebastien turned his big, dark, doe eyes on Alec and said, “No, you don’t understand. Vampires don’t just shut down like that the way humans do. We only sleep somewhere we know is secure and safe…”

“Oh,” Alec said significantly as the realisation plunged through him. He tucked his arm under Sebastien’s head and tugged him closer so that their bodies were once again flush with one another. “I’m glad you felt safe…”

Sebastien sighed, trailing his fingertips across Alec’s chest in absent circles. His cock twitched too, and Alec shot him a look.

With a bashful smile, Sebastien said, “I can’t help that I find you attractive, Alec…”

“Wasn't complaining,” he grinned.

It was a long time before they rolled off each other that morning, with the sun well up and the sheets damp with sweat and tangled around their ankles. Vampires, it seemed, had a longer refractory period than humans, but Sebastien also came so big when he did that Alec wasn’t surprised. He gave everything to Alec when he came that Alec could quite happily lie there all day just staring at him as he came down afterwards.

The room was chilly, however, and when Sebastien seemed to have dozed off again around ten o’clock, he headed to clean up. Again.

As the steam billowed around him, he tipped his head back into the stream of searing water and nearly yelped as the shower door opened and let in a rush of cold air as Sebastien stepped into the stall as well. Cool hands found his waist and then strong fingers kneaded his arse appreciatively before Sebastien kissed and nibbled up his shoulder and traps to his neck. Instinctively, Alec tilted his head to one side and Sebastien moaned, pressing open-mouthed kisses there over and over as the hot water coursed around his lips.

The sensation must have been too much for him because he pulled back sharply with a hiss and Alec turned to face him, water still streaming down around them. Sebastien stood frozen, eyes red, staring at Alec’s neck. “I shouldn’t…” he began. “That was stupid of me… I…”

“What happens to the treaty if the human is willing?” Alec found himself asking. He’d thought about it a lot before drifting off the previous night. If Sebastien had wanted to drink from him, to feed on him, what would happen to the tenuous peace between hunters and vampires like him.

“Don’t,” Sebastien said through gritted teeth. His canines were elongated, Alec noted.

“What happens?”

“The only way it’s permitted is if the human agrees by written contract to become the vampire’s source.”

“‘Source’?” he asked. “That sounds like an official title.”

“It is,” Sebastien said, relaxing a fraction and putting his hands back on Alec’s hips. His cock stirred with interest and Sebastien smiled. He leaned back in, as if proving to both of them that he could do this, and kissed down Alec’s neck again from the junction of his jaw all the way to his collarbones. He ground his hips against Alec and they both began to harden again.

Alec’s hand went to Sebastien’s cock and he started to stroke him gently, knowing he was still sensitive from their last round. Sebastien let out a ragged exhale, the cool breath making Alec shiver slightly in the heat of the water.

“So…” Alec pressed gently, thumbing across the top of Sebastien’s flushed cock.

“Hmm?” he asked, a little stunned.

“What is a source?”

“A human becoming a vampire’s source means that the vampire drinks only from that human. It’s… an ancient - ah - custom,” he said, gripping Alec’s shoulders as Alec upped the speed and adjusted his grip to tighten just a little around his now fully hard cock. “Rarely used today, but still… nngh…”

“Mmm?” Alec grinned, loving that the vampire’s thoughts were unravelling under his touch. “Go on.”

“You’re a menace,” he laughed breathily, nipping playfully at his neck and then kissing him hard. Alec’s back suddenly hit the icy tiles behind him and he yelped, rearing into Sebastien who wasn’t all that much warmer, though the heat of the water was raising his body temperature from the ambient temperature of the room.

“So if…” Alec began, somewhat distracted as Sebastien’s kisses continued and the vampire raked his fingers through Alec’s wet hair, scraping luxuriantly across his scalp hard enough to make him break off and groan. “If… if I wanted to become your…”

“Don’t,” Sebastien whispered. “Not yet. Not so soon after… all this time.”

The subtext was clear. Let’s see if this is going to last before I risk my life with the hunters guild and your family, shall we?

“Fair enough. Nothing to say I can’t suck you off now though, right?”

“Nothing at all,” he whispered and then immediately cursed as Alec sank to his knees and did just that.

It was only as he was handing in his own letter of resignation that the truth really sank in for Alec. He’d gone from post-grad assistant in the department to a full lecturer, where he’d stayed for six years, and now he was moving a little way out of the city, and moving in with his boyfriend of a year. A vampire, nonetheless. His life had gone from miserable to wonderful in that relatively short time.

Sebastien met him at the edge of campus after he’d handed the letter personally to the head of department. Standing under the verdant cherry trees, Sebastien looked like a vision. He wore tight, dark jeans and a loose shirt, half untucked, with his long hair tied back in a loose plait, fly-aways wisping around his head like mist. Alec walked straight up to him as the vampire opened his arms, flung his own arms around Sebastien’s neck, and hugged him.

“All done?” Sebastien asked without pulling back.

He nodded and popped back down from his toes. They were both tall men, but Sebastien had a few inches on him still. With a slightly doe-eyed expression, Sebastien smiled and kissed him gently. “I love you,” he said softly between kisses.

“Come on, you big sap,” Alec said. “I’ve got to be out of my apartment at four.”

“Such a romantic,” Sebastien sighed melodramatically.

With Sebastien’s supernatural strength, loading up the little van they’d hired for his stuff didn’t take long, and after giving his keys back to the landlord and signing the final bits and bobs, they were on the road.

The old farmhouse had been a find of Sebastien’s, and it needed some work. “Well, what else am I going to do on long, impossibly sunny summer days while you’re running your own business from the little art studio at the bottom of the garden?” Sebastien had laughed when they’d first viewed it, the back of his hand pressed to his forehead in a terribly ‘put upon’ gesture. “I might as well spruce the place up.”

“It needs more than a light ‘sprucing up’,” Alec had said, brows raised at the rotten wooden beam and the tired 1950’s kitchen. “And don’t tell me you made your wealth flipping houses back in the day.”

“Would you rather I told you I robbed the Bank of England and they still haven’t noticed?” he replied archly before planting a kiss squarely on Alec’s scratchy, stubble-darkened cheek.

With a scowl, Alec had shot him a look. “I honestly don’t know whether that’s a lie or not…”

“It’s a lie,” Sebastien snorted. “I can’t believe you think I’m a criminal.”

“You’re a vampire,” he’d retorted. “You could probably have just walked in there and demanded a small fortune in gold ingots and they wouldn’t have objected…”

“Please. I do have some scruples. And besides, I only use my charms on poor, miserable artists to get into their pants…”

“And their hearts too, apparently,” he’d scoffed as they’d left the dilapidated house with Sebastien’s hand in Alec’s back pocket, fingers firmly cupped around his arse.

It took another six months for the work to be completed, and even with Sebastien’s not inconsiderable talents in the DIY and home improvement departments, they still had to call in a team of builders to fix the pointing in one wall and to sort out a few other structural issues. But by the end of the work, the farmhouse was quite frankly the most stunning place Alec could ever have dreamed of living. Exposed oak beams and a fireplace big enough to park a tractor in were only half of the best features of the place.

One clear, frosty evening in late October, the pair sat outside on the recently finished patio, a small cast iron fire-pit crackling away and sending sparks and heat twisting up into the night sky, a glass of wine each in one hand and their free hand clasped around the other’s.

“Bastien…?” Alec said, not taking his eyes from the mother-of-pearl points of light in the sky above.

“Mmm?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about… about becoming your source.” He didn’t miss the sharp inhale from his partner, nor the way Sebastien went completely still in the wooden chair beside him. He also didn’t say anything. “I’d… I’d like to ask how often you’d need to feed from me, and… what the repercussions would be for me as the human…”

Still Sebastien didn’t speak for a long time, and Alec worried he’d spoilt the serenity of their evening with the sensitive question. Finally, the vampire cleared his throat and Alec realised with a jolt that he was near tears.

“Bast?”

At the sound of the pet-name, Sebastien blinked rapidly and two mirroring tears tracked down his cheeks in perfect synchrony. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it,” he said in a hoarse croak. “I didn’t want to bring it up again.”

“You should have done, silly,” Alec groused, and he was met with a watery smile that didn’t meet his eyes at all.

“Well, to answer your questions,” he said, trying to sound unaffected even if he clearly was. “Every three months is safe enough, so long as you take an iron supplement. If you don’t, you might feel a little more tired right afterwards. We generally take slightly less than a person would give at a blood donation, if that helps put it into context.”

Alec turned and frowned at him.

“What?”

“You’ve gone all clinical,” he said, shuffling a little and setting his wine glass down on the edge of the stone fire pit. “Do you not want this anymore?”

Sebastien swallowed thickly and looked away. In the ochre and copper flicker of the flames before them, his suddenly red eyes seemed to glow like coals. “More than you know…” he rasped.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before turning back to face Alec with glassy eyes. “I’m frightened.”

Alec’s scowl deepened and he rose from his chair to straddle and sink down into Sebastien’s lap. Settled in his new position, he kissed Bast’s lips and stroked his loose, white-blond hair out of his eyes. “Of what?”

“Losing control. It’s been… decades since… If I hurt you, Alec… it would break me.”

“How about we start small? Just a taste?”

Sebastien looked so young then in the firelight. He suddenly looked like the twenty year old man he had been when he’d been conscripted into the army and sent out to battle to die, only to be turned at the eleventh hour by a nurse in a field hospital who’d seen something special in him. Thank god she had, Alec mused.

Alec leaned back a little and brought his index finger slowly to Sebastien’s lips. The vampire swallowed, red gaze drifting down to watch its approach before looking back at Alec’s face, searching, questioning, doubting.

Alec nodded and slid his fingertip a few millimetres into Sebastien’s mouth. The vampire inhaled, closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth properly. Alec brought the pad of his fingertip to the underside of his right canine, and pressed.

After a moment, the pressure gave way and a prick of pain like a needle pierced his skin. A bead of blood welled there instantly and he withdrew to let it swell. Sebastien clearly smelled the blood because his pupils dilated and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Easy,” Alec said. “It’s only a drop.” And with that, he turned his finger over and held it above the tip of Sebastien’s tongue.

Paralysed in a heartbeat of terror, Sebastien sat rigid, frozen, wide eyed, but Alec lowered his finger to meet the slight roughness of his tongue, and Sebastien’s eyes rolled. He moaned and let his tongue play across the tiny pinprick wound, fingers digging into Alec’s hips. The tiny wound had already stopped bleeding, but he sucked gently, drawing a little taste more. Then he released Alec and stared at him, a look of stunned awe on his beautiful face.

“How was that?” Alec asked, briefly thumbing a fond arc across Sebastien’s cheekbone before dropping his hand.

“Manageable,” Sebastien murmured.

“Ok, I have to ask, do I taste good?”

The tense spell that encapsulated both of them broke and Sebastien cracked a smile, fangs and all. “Yes,” he rasped.

“So… I can become your source?”

“If you wish it, yes. You can withdraw the honour at any time. I won’t hold you to it.”

“Good to know,” he said, only half laughing. A moment later, he said, “When… When do you want to start… you know… properly. Formally?”

Sebastien’s eyes had drifted to the rabbiting pulse in his neck.

“Now?” he asked. “It’s only been a few weeks since you went to the blood bank though…”

“That’s…” he said, hands finding Alec’s waist and holding him gently. “That probably works in my favour this time. Are you sure you want this?”

“To be ‘yours’ on your terms as well as mine? Of course,” he smiled, and watched as another tear rolled down his perfect olive cheek. He tilted his head to one side, feeling a little sheepish, and said in barely a whisper, “Whenever you like.”

“Really? Now?” Sebastien hissed, chest suddenly heaving. “Just like that?”

Alec laughed quietly. “It’s not as if we’ve just met. I know you, Bast. I trust you. I wouldn’t offer this to just any old vampire, you know?”

Unable to stop the smile from twisting his lips, Sebastien finally relented with a nod. “Alright. But not here. You’re going to want to be more comfortable.”

“But I’m already comfortable here,” he whined playfully, wiggling his hips in Sebastien’s lap, eliciting a deep, rumbling groan.

With a roll of his red eyes, Sebastien sighed. “Stubborn arse,” he grumbled without sting.

“You love my arse.”

“Yes, you’re right. I do,” he said.

Tenderly he ran his thumb down the line of Alec’s carotid and inhaled deeply. “I love you,” he whispered. And then he leaned close. He took his time kissing Alec’s neck until he was gasping and rocking his hips against Sebastien.

“Please…”

“Last chance,” Sebastien said against the skin of his throat.

Alec shook his head. “I want this. I’m yours.”

So the vampire sank his fangs into the artery. After the initial surprise and sting, Alec’s whole body lit up as the venom hit his bloodstream, and he bucked into Sebastien who held him still with what should have been frightening ease. There was no fear behind the gesture, only longing and love and sweet, aching, rolling, unending pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” Alec moaned, going limp in his arms as Sebastien began to feed, withdrawing his fangs to draw more deeply on him while he held him easily in his arms. The vampire moaned, lips locked against his skin so as not to spill anything. The motion of his throat suddenly fascinated Alec as he swallowed down his own life-force, but before he could raise his hand to touch fingertips to his Adam’s apple, pleasure exploded in his mind and he forgot everything.

When he came back to himself, he was inside, lying on their bed, with a small, soft dressing over his neck, and Sebastien sitting quietly on the bed beside him, staring down at him and holding his hand. As he blinked his eyes, he frowned. “What…?”

“It’s intense the first time,” Sebastien murmured fondly. “I did say you’d want to be somewhere more comfortable.”

“ S’perfect,” he slurred. “Fuck me…” he added, more curse than command.

“Maybe later, hmm?” Sebastien smiled. There was a flush to his cheeks that Alec had never seen before, and a brightness to his eyes.

“C’mere,” Alec said, patting the bed beside him. With Sebastien lying silently next to him, Alec rolled over and hooked one leg over Bast’s thigh. “Love you,” he mumbled, sinking into a deep and exhausted sleep, even as Sebastien’s hand came up to cradle his head.

The vampire smiled, kissing his forehead. “I love you too.”

___

Hope you've enjoyed this 23,700k story! Looking forward to your comments as always. Don’t forget to let me know if you did enjoy it by leaving a like and/or reblogging it!

#vampire #exophilia #male vampire #male vampire x human #male vampire x male human #vampire x human

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sickficsforthesoul · 3 years

Note

Here is a second prompt!

Epileptic Suga having a seizure for the first time in front of the first years, maybe in a tougher situation to handle like a bus ride 👀

-Lu

This one took me a little while, but it's done now, so enjoy! As mentioned in a prior post, this fic is part of the Setter Health Conditions (SHC) universe, so it might be referenced in other fics taking place in the universe. (Fun fact, this fic was originally titled "Into the Sugaverse" before I edited the title to be less cryptic.)

That One Bus Trip

Epileptic Suga with caretaker Daichi

Word count: 3447 words

Daichi was stressed. That wasn’t a new thing, though. With three siblings and two very busy parents, Daichi’s life was near-constant chaos. Though right now, the current cause of Daichi’s stress was sitting right next to him. Suga was curled up against Daichi on the bus seat. They were driving home from a weekend training camp in Tokyo. It was only early evening, but Suga looked quite sleepy leaning against Daichi’s arm.

“Are you okay, Suga?” Daichi asked quietly. They were seated near the back of the bus to keep an eye on everyone. The first years sat in the row in front of Daichi and Suga, and Daichi didn’t want to broadcast Suga’s private business to them (or anyone else on the bus, for that matter).

“Yeah,” Suga groaned as he shifted against Daichi’s arm. “Just feeling kind of off, ya know?”

Daichi’s eyes widened in alarm. “What kind of “off,” Suga? Like off off?”

“Off off,” Suga agreed, pressing the side of his face into Daichi’s club jacket.

“Do you want me to get someone?” Daichi muttered urgently.

This wasn’t good. Feeling off off was how Suga liked to refer to having an aura, and an aura meant a seizure was coming soon. And to make matters worse, they were on a bus, hours away from home. If Suga had a seizure now, it would be chaos. Everyone would panic because only Daich, Asahi, and Mr. Takeda knew about Suga’s epilepsy (Daichi wasn’t sure if Coach Ukai knew, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Suga never mentioned his condition. Suga was very shy about sharing his epilepsy with others. It had taken Daichi and Asahi cornering a first year Suga in the locker room after a particularly long practice to get Suga to tell them anything, and they were some of Suga’s closest friends.)

“No,” Suga murmured. “I have my medication. I’ll take it, so hopefully, things won’t get too bad.”

Suga leaned forward and rummaged through the bag at his feet, producing a medicine bottle seconds later. Daichi grabbed a water bottle from his own bag and presented it to Suga, who took it gratefully. Suga shook out one pill from the bottle and swallowed it down with a gulp of water. He handed the bottle back to Daichi and bent down to his bag again.

Daichi turned to his bag to distract himself from all the possible futures flashing through his mind. Even though Suga had taken his medication, that didn’t guarantee nothing would happen. Similar to migraine prevention medication, Suga’s medicine only worked some of the time. Daichi was praying to every deity in existence that it would work this time because he hated Suga seizing in any circumstance, but especially on a bus with their loud, emotional teammates. Suga didn’t seem too panicked on the surface, but Daichi was keenly aware of the setter’s clenched hands and furrowed brow. Suga was worried too, but he was far too prideful to ever tell anyone directly.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Daichi ordered, voice low to keep their conversation discreet.

“Okay,” Suga yawned, “I think I’m gonna take a nap. This medicine always makes me drowsy.”

“Alright,” Daichi nodded slightly. “Just try to stay calm. Getting worked up will only make everything worse.”

“I know, Daichi,” Suga huffed good-naturedly. “I’ve been dealing with this for years. I think I know how to take care of myself.”

Daich chuckled and patted Suga’s head with his free hand. “I know, I know. But I’m still worried, you know. I’m your best friend and your captain. I think I have the right to worry about you sometimes.”

“You’re such a dad, Daichi,” Suga snickered mischievously. “Dad... Daichi… Oh! Dadchi! From now on, I’m gonna call you Dadchi.”

Daichi sighed wearily. “How can you be so responsible one minute and then so childish the next?”

“It’s a gift,” Suga smiled goofily. Then a yawn escaped his mouth, and he blinked slowly.

“Take a nap, Suga,” Daichi said, slipping off his jacket to drape over the setter. “You’re tired, and it’ll make you feel better.”

Suga hummed in agreement, leaning against Daichi’s side and snuggling under the jacket. He sighed contently and closed his eyes. Within minutes, Suga was sleeping comfortably against Daichi’s shoulder. Daichi smiled at the sight, silently resigning himself to being Suga’s pillow for the rest of the bus ride. They still had over three hours left until they reached Karasuno High School, so Daichi was hoping Suga would be able to take a good, long nap until they arrived.

With Suga sleeping soundly, Daichi could finally relax. He gazed out the window at the setting sun, admiring the beautiful colors as the sun disappeared from the sky. Suga’s body was warm, Daichi noticed. Not feverish, but warm enough to keep Daichi’s body pleasantly warm as well. The bus was also fairly quiet. Most of their teammates were either reading or playing video games (even Kageyama was attempting to work a DS after Hinata’s incessant nagging). After two days of grueling training, Daichi’s body was begging for a break, and between the warmth and quiet murmurings of his teammates, Daichi felt himself nodding off too. His head drooped against Suga’s, and Daichi was asleep almost instantly.

When Daichi awoke, he noticed light flashing through the very dark bus. Lifting his head drowsily, Daichi quickly found the light source. Someone (probably Tanaka or Noya) had brought a portable DVD player onto the bus, and everyone (minus Suga, Daichi, and Asahi, who had donned an eyemask and fell asleep sometime after Daichi had) was gathered around it watching a movie of some sort.

Daichi yawned and pulled out his phone. He sent a quick text to Ennoshita asking about what movie they were watching. Ennoshita replied with the title (“Into the Spider-Verse,” apparently) along with what he’d missed so far. The movie was only a third of the way done, so Daichi hadn’t missed too much. Suga was still sleeping soundly, so Daichi didn’t dare move. He couldn’t see the movie, but that was fine so long as Suga was asleep and calm.

Suga continued to sleep for another half hour at least while Daichi ignored the DVD player in favor of looking at his phone. During that time, Ennoshita texted frequent updates on the movie, summarizing the plot, characters, and visuals with stunning clarity. Daichi would occasionally see some bright flashes of light, but he was too focused on his phone to register the problem the lights might pose. Daichi was snickering at the reveal of Doctor Octavius when Suga stirred next to him.

“You’re up, huh?” Daichi murmured to a drowsy Suga.

“Yeah…” Suga yawned, eyes still shut.

“Are you feeling better?” Daichi asked gently.

“A little, yeah,” Suga hummed, shifting to a sitting position and cracking open his eyes.

“That’s good, at least,” Daichi smiled, reaching over to grab his jacket from Suga’s lap.

“I guess,” Suga sighed, his brown eyes still half-lidded with exhaustion. “What’s going on?”

“We’re watching a movie. Into the Spider-Verse, apparently.” Daichi lifted his phone to show Suga the screen. “Ennoshita’s been keeping me updated. He’s actually pretty good at it too.”

Suga grabbed the phone and scrolled to the beginning of Ennoshita’s recent texts. He took a moment to read before handing the phone back to Daichi. “You’re right. He is pretty good. Is the movie still on?”

“Yes,” Daichi nodded, “The DVD player’s in the aisle. We can watch it if we move over a little.”

“Let’s watch it,” Suga replied. “It’s not like we have anything better to do right now.”

“Okay,” Daichi agreed easily, sliding over into the aisle to watch the movie. Suga moved too, taking Daichi’s now-vacant seat.

They settled down to watch the movie without much trouble. The occasional bright flash made Suga wince and turn away for a moment, but the instances were infrequent, so Daichi didn’t think much of them. Suga seemed to be enjoying the movie too. He laughed at the jokes and fawned over the action sequences. Daichi wasn’t surprised. He’d known about Suga’s nerdy side for a while now.

To be fair, Daichi was also enjoying the movie. The soundtrack and animation were very well done, and Daichi was always a sucker for action movies. Perhaps that was why Daichi forgot about the danger the movie could pose to Suga. Daichi was so absorbed in the movie that he failed to notice Suga’s furrowed brows and rapidly paling face. The final straw for Suga’s fragile health was the collider scene. The frantic, aggressive flashes of light sent Suga’s body headfirst into an epileptic episode.

At first, Daichi thought Suga was just shivering. Small trembles wracked Suga’s frame, but when the trembles grew stronger and more sporadic, Daichi became concerned. Turning away from the DVD player, he squinted through the dark at his best friend, and what Daichi saw was horrible. Suga’s body spasmed erratically while Suga’s eyes were blown wide with panic and distress. Tears slipped down Suga’s cheeks as a soft whine escaped his mouth. Suga’s eyes settled on Daichi, silently begging for help.

Daichi was panicking, but Suga needed him, so he had to focus. Daichi quickly wrapped his jacket around Suga’s head and neck, creating a cushion to protect the vulnerable areas during Suga’s thrashing. Then he carefully scooted Suga’s body farther into the seat, so he wouldn’t fall off and hit something against the bus floor. With Suga in a secure position, there was nothing left to do now but time the seizure and wait for it to end. Daichi hated this part the most because he was powerless to help his best friend.

Their teammates slowly started to notice that something was wrong. Suga’s breathing was irregular and audible over the movie to the people sitting near Daichi and Suga. Ennoshita sent him a text a minute later to make sure everything was okay. Daich responded with a cryptic text that told Ennoshita something was wrong but didn’t specify what. Naturally, Ennoshita sent more texts, each becoming more and more worried, though he thankfully had the sense to keep his inquiries in texts instead of voicing them aloud.

Suga’s trembles finally slowed, and Daichi checked the clock on his phone. The seizure had lasted for just over two minutes. While not ideal, the seizure was still under five minutes. Seizures lasting longer than five minutes tended to be the most dangerous ones, so at least Suga avoided that.

Now that the seizure was over, Daichi needed to get Suga help. So Daichi got to his feet and walked down the bus aisle. Most of his teammates grumbled in annoyance, but Daichi caught the worried gazes of Ennoshita and his seatmate Kinoshita. He gave them a small smile, hoping to convey that things were getting better, but the duo still looked worried. Daichi continued on his trek and finally reached the front of the bus. Thankfully, Coach Ukai was driving while Mr. Takeda was helping Coach Ukai navigate from the front bus seat.

“Mr. Takeda?” Daichi leaned towards the club advisor, keeping his voice low.

“Daichi?!” Mr. Takeda yelped in surprise, but he quickly fell silent once he saw Daichi’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Suga had an… episode,” Daichi whispered to the club advisor.

“An episode?” Mr. Takeda blinked in confusion. “What kind of episo- Oh!” Mr. Takeda lowered his voice out of courtesy to Suga and his privacy. “Suga had an epileptic episode?”

“Yeah,” Daichi sighed tiredly. “His seizure lasted for a little more than two minutes. He’s resting now, but we should take him to a hospital to get checked out.”

“Of course!” Mr. Takeda nearly shouted again. “I’ll let Coach know right away! Do you need any help with Suga?”

“I don’t think so,” Daichi shook his head. “I just might need help getting him off the bus when we get to the hospital.”

“Alright. I’ll find the nearest hospital and tell Coach to get us there as soon as possible. Can you keep Suga comfortable until we arrive?” Mr. Takeda asked.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Daichi replied firmly.

“I’m sure you will,” Mr. Takeda agreed before he moved to the driver’s seat to let Coach Ukai know about the change of plans.

Daichi returned to his seat swiftly, anxious from leaving Suga alone for so long. Suga was still lying across their seats, but he was conscious and relatively alert because he turned his head when Daichi got back to their seats. Daichi sat in the aisle to keep an eye on Suga, rubbing the setter’s ankle soothingly. Daichi and Suga stayed like that until the bus pulled into a hospital parking lot.

Cries of confusion and irritation broke out until Mr. Takeda silenced them with an uncharacteristically stern stare. “Move out of the aisles, everyone. The paramedics need to use them.”

Everyone obeyed immediately, but looks of confusion were etched on most of their teammates’ faces. Two paramedics boarded their bus, with Mr. Takeda directing them back to Suga and Daichi’s seats. Daichi moved out of their way, helping them pull Suga into the larger paramedic’s arms. Suga remained limp in the paramedic’s hold, though his eyes darted over to Daichi as the paramedics carried him away. Daichi waved reassuringly, and Suga flashed him a brief smile before his eyes fell shut. That caused the paramedics to panic and rush off the bus. Daichi watched them place Suga on a waiting stretcher from the bus window, and then his best friend disappears into the large white building with the paramedics.

They weren’t allowed to see Suga for the next few hours. Their teammates’ confusion had morphed into shock and despair once they realized that something was wrong with Suga. The first and second years badgered Daichi and Asahi relentlessly until they finally caved, informing the team of Suga’s epilepsy. Daichi also explained why Suga was currently in the hospital, and Tanaka looked guiltier by the second. Daichi reached out a hand and rubbed the spiker’s shoulder, explaining that it wasn’t Tanaka’s fault. He didn’t know about Suga’s epilepsy until a few minutes ago, so there was no way for him to know how dangerous the movie would be for his vice-captain to watch. Tanaka still moped in his hospital chair until they were finally allowed to see Suga.

It was very early morning when a nurse approached their group with information about Suga. She pulled Mr. Takeda and Coach Ukai away for a few minutes to inform them of Suga’s condition. With Suga’s parents out of the country for work, they were acting as Suga’s legal guardians while he was in the hospital. Daichi waited with the team until the two adults returned to their group.

“Suga will be fine, everyone,” Mr. Takeda smiled exhaustedly. The events of the night had taken a visible toll on him. “He was just dehydrated and exhausted. He’s on an IV right now to get some fluids and nutrients into his system, but he’ll be okay after getting some rest.”

“He’ll be released soon,” Coach Ukai continued gruffly. “They’re just waiting until his IV is done. We should be out of here in an hour or so.”

“Can we see him?!” Nishinoya and Hinata asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Mr. Takeda laughed at their antics, “but you have to be quiet, ok? Suga might be asleep, and we shouldn’t wake him if he is.”

“Yes sir!” The duo nodded before dashing down the hallway.

“Wait!” Mr. Takeda let out a panicked cry. “You don’t even know Suga’s room number!”

Mr. Takeda chased after the two, and soon the entire team was running down the hospital hallway to Suga’s room. Mr. Takeda directed them to take two flights of stairs and a long corridor to reach Suga’s room. Unsurprisingly, Hinata and Nishinoya were the first to the door, with Kageyama and Tanaka not far behind. Mr. Takeda caught up with them, forcing them to wait until everyone had gathered to open the door. Daichi pushed his way to the front of the group, citing his captain status. Suga was his best friend, and he was going invoke his captain rights if it let him see Suga faster.

Mr. Takeda opened the door, and the Karasuno VBC filed into the room silently. Daichi stared at Suga as he entered. Suga was awake and sitting up in his bed. He looked exhausted, but his face had color, and he looked much better than he had hours ago. Suga watched them all carefully, offering them a wave. The IV in his elbow bounced in time with Suga’s wave. Once everyone was settled into the room, Suga gave them a warm Suga-Smile™.

“Hey, guys,” Suga said with exhausted but genuine enthusiasm. “What’s up?”

“SUGA!!!!” Hinata, Nishinoya, and Tanaka yelled, launching themselves at Suga.

They piled themselves on top of a shocked Suga, but he was quick to pull the trio into a warm hug.

“You scared us, Suga,” Daichi said quietly as he sat on the side of Suga’s bed.

“Sorry. I should have told someone earlier,” Suga sighed, snuggling into the cuddlepile on his lap.

“It’s not your fault, Suga,” Asahi hummed from the other side of Suga’s bed. “You can’t control your epilepsy.”

“I guess so… But I still feel bad for scaring you guys like that,” Suga confessed, eyes full of guilt.

“It’s okay, Suga,” Hinata chirped from the cuddle pile. “We’re just glad that you’re okay!”

“Thanks, Hinata,” Suga laughed into the blocker’s red hair.

“Hinata’s right,” Ennoshita chimed in. “I just wished you’d told us about your epilepsy earlier.”

“I know I should have, and I’m really sorry.” Suga bowed his head in apology. “I just hate talking about it. Daichi and Asahi basically had to kidnap me to get me to tell them about it.”

“Is that true, Daichi?” Nishinoya asked excitedly.

“I guess so…” Daichi laughed awkwardly. “In our defense, Suga was very stubborn. That was the only way we got Suga to talk to us instead of changing the topic.”

“Was I really that bad?” Suga cocked his head to the side.

“You were,” Asahi nodded solemnly. “I didn’t think we’d ever get you to tell us anything.”

“You’re always so negative, Asahi.” Suga poked the ace’s arm lightly. “It’s that negativity goatee, I swear.”

“My goatee has nothing to do with it!” Asahi whined sadly.

Suga giggled lightly at his friends, and Suga’s laugh was always infectious. The cuddle pile trio was giggling too, and then Daichi and Asahi joined in as well. Soon, the entire team was laughing, even Mr. Takeda and Coach Ukai. The previous events were long and stressful, so now everyone was finally relaxing a little.

The team chatted amongst themselves quietly until a nurse entered the room to check Suga’s IV. She declared that it was done and swiftly removed the needle from Suga’s elbow before the setter could even process what was happening. The nurse left the room for a moment and returned with a wheelchair for Suga to sit in. Hinata, Nishinoya, and Tanaka clambered off Suga’s lap, so Daichi and Asahi could help Suga into the wheelchair. They wheeled Suga out to the bus and got him situated on a bus seat near the front, so the adults could keep an eye on him. Daichi also sat beside Suga to help him if need be.

Everyone boarded the bus, and they were on their way back to Miyagi. Suga leaned his head on Daichi’s shoulder, eyes heavy with sleep.

“Daichi,” he yawned heavily. “Thanks for everything today.”

Daichi smiled tiredly at his best friend. “Sure. I’m always here for you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” Suga hummed happily. “I’m glad you’re such a good friend.”

“Thanks, Suga.” Daichi yawned as well. “You’re a pretty good friend too.”

“You’re still better,” Suga teased lightly before a big yawn escaped his mouth.

“And you’re still exhausted. Get some rest. I’ll wake you up when we get back,” Daichi said softly.

“Thanks, Daichi,” Suga murmured as his eyes slipped shut.

“Any time, Suga,” Daichi whispered as he felt his eyes grow heavier by the second. He leaned his head on top of Suga’s. The adults would wake them when they got to the school, Daichi reasoned before his eyes shut completely. Karasuno’s captain was asleep in a matter of seconds, taking a well-deserved nap after the chaos of the past few hours. The bus wouldn’t arrive for a few hours, and Daichi was content to nap with his best friend as the bus rolled on through the night.

#sickiesoul writes #reply #sickfic #epilepsy #epileptic seizures #seizure #haikyuu!!#haikyu!! whump #haikyu whump #haikyuu whump #sugawara koushi #daichi sawamura #setter health conditions universe #shc universe #shc #setter health conditions #anime whump

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sorry-i-ship-drarry · 3 years

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33. Cruise to alberobello

Prompt used - tasting the others smile | this is Definitely not how I expected to write it or how I thought it would've turned out, but I do hope you like it or it'd be a waste | immensely inspired by call me by your name | today's post I'd like to dedicate to @littlebodybigheartttt for putting a smile on my face |

Harry recites a story to the wizard travellers in hopes to impress the boy behind the bar

Fanart taken down because of confidentiality.

Fanart credit - @upthehillart

" I've got one " harry raised his forefinger to grab the attention of the fellow mates on the table

" so a few years ago, I had just started my auror training, probably like 2 months in, I got a call from my boss saying harry I need you in my office right now, I've got a job for you. And that 18 year old me so excited to get a job much before than any of my pals, I ran to the office as soon as possible and when I reached my boss guess what he said, harry I need you to go and fetch me these specific files from so and so person. I was shook for a moment that he called me all the way just to fetch some files from other country which possibly anyone could've done for him but I agreed to go nonetheless. The intercountry apparation was banned for a time there so I flew there. I was transported to a small town on South italy, I thought typical place, typical people but when I reached there, the place was goddamn symmetrical, yes not tall and High or pretty place, symmetrical. Everything so conical and guess what I found out, in a population of 11,000 only a 100 wizards and witches " harry paused to take a sip from his champagne glass, a couple of other people joining along over the table to listen to his intriguing story.

" and then blah blah, got boring fetching those files and such so I hit a bar. A muggle bar as I believe. There I was drinking my beer like quite a gentlemen and then there comes a girl, sat down beside me without asking and take my beer and I look at her like excuse me, miss but I think you've taken my drink, but she just shrugs and drink further so I ordered another for me. And then she goes, you see that couple over sitting by the door, I can bet that they are happily married and will definitely divorce the next year. I ask her how do you know and she goes I just know and then the next thing I know a bartender goes to them and says honeymoon special. I was shook but said it's just a simple coincidence but then she tells about 5 more people and only one of them she got wrong. I kept on saying maybe it's a coincidence, or Maybe she knew but then she proved me she didn't. And then we got to talking like I had never talked to anyone. You know the kind of energy where you just hit it off with someone, she was that person, Only she was the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes upon, like a Sin city just walking like every normal person but she had no idea how beautiful she was, like a beautiful summer day " and harry stopped eager to see some reaction

" then what ?"

" then we talked. I thought she was all just Beauty but I had never met anyone like her. She talked of things only one could've thought of. So we were talking on the matter of love and she goes it's all complicated and then I ask her to elaborate. So she does, she says the complication in love lies only in its complexity, and then she goes like we often mistake love to be like a summer breeze that is there one day that takes you away and you enjoy it while it lasts but love, actually is like a dagger, it can pierce right through you, leave you bleeding if you get too close but if the dagger points them, you let yourself them fall over it, you stab them just like you do when it points you. So I ask her what does she think of soulmates or the marriage that lasts forever and she smiles at me and went soulmate is a consolation for a weak hearted that there exists love for you which would be devoid of your insecurities. And I frown, I said that what if it's a perfect relationship, and then she says, there can never be a perfect relationship because if it exists, then the love isn't real and I get confused " harry notices the table filling in more, the bartender giving him a small smile, happy for his victory.

" and she says, my love, love is not a summer breeze, love is like a pandora box fill with paradoxical substances. It's a cold breeze that leads you to the Amazon forest, wide and unforeseen opportunities and problems available, but as you go deeper in the forest you realise for every problem there exist a solution. It's like falling on the dagger and bleeding but you should be intoxicated with the love of the dagger, so you will never die. I was amazed, she said so much reality in those few words. Then I ask her so what about people who say love is magical ? And she goes, doesn't magic exist, but if I were I to say, they find themselves ethereal when they fell over that dagger, the dagger in there you see is poisoned just like every other, yet a few realises and few doesn't and the one who doesn't says love is magical. Then out of curiosity I ask her when the clock hit exactly 12, do you believe in love ? She smiles at me very elegantly, the one she hadn't pull off the entire night, and she says I my friend, am the said dagger "

" seems as if we're there aren't we ?" Someone Whispered across the table.

Harry looked at them, gave them a small smile impressively and begin again " I ask her one last question, do you believe in soulmate ? And she shook her head and got off the stool and kisses her beau. I was rendered speechless, and then she says so long my friend and starts exiting the bar, I felt to myself that if I didn't follow her, I'd be damned, so I followed, Just a few steps away and then call out to her, she turns around and I ask her name and she replies with, my name is what there is in one, but only who fail to love doesn't have and then she says, this is Alex by the way, my soulmate. I turn to my side thinking of what possibly her name could've been and then when I raise my head, she has gone. Not like walked away gone, she had disappeared, with her beau and I stood there yet amazed. And then the next day I go to the bar again and ask about the girl to that bartender I was talking to and he goes, sir I do not know who was with you, all know is you came alone and went home alone. I didn't linger on much, and I called this the cruise to alberobello " and harry stops suddenly finishing off the rest of his champagne. He raises his eyes to meet the boy behind the bar, smiling wickedly at him.

" wha- what happened then ? Did you ever get to know her name ? Was any of it even real?" Someone asks in morbid curiosity.

"I always assumed her name to be Alma, meaning soul, with no other meaning and to this day the cruise to alberobello remains one of my most mysterious epiphanies " Harry chuckled. Groaning everyone dropped the story, intrigued by the story themselves.

It was half past 12 when the bar started emptying out, reaching its closing time and harry made himself comfortable over the bar stool.

" quite a story tonight " the boy with freckled eyes says wiping off the glasses with a dry cloth.

" I did. Travellers always seeks stories as such. Something they've never heard before, and leave them wondering " Harry chuckled finishing off his drink and pushing off the cup towards the boy..

" i must admit, I myself am very intrigued by the story" the boy smiles at harry. Harry looks at him warily smiling, he felt proud.

" I get off in 10 minutes, walk with me ?" He asked as he started taking of his apron

" I wouldn't do anything otherwise " Harry replied and exited the front door, the open sign changing to closed by a wand less magic and harry follows to the back door, waiting for Draco like he always does.

Exactly 10 minutes later, draco exits wearing a light Denim jacket over his black shirt and pants.

" shall we ?" He asked as he pushed his hands down his pocket.

They walk home talking about Harry's story, how it seemed almost unreal, however, they both Would've been doomed fools to not admit that the night had an enigmatic aura to it.

Just as they reached Draco's door, he pushes his hands in his pockets tip toeing waiting for Draco to safely reach inside.

" well that's me then " Draco said as he turned around after opening the door.

" I'll see you later then " Harry awkwardly replied.

" okay " Draco smiled

" okay "

Harry smiled and started tumbling back his home until he turned just in time to tell Draco one last thing.

" hey, Draco "

" yeah ?"

" you know my cruise to alberobello ?"

" yeah ? What about it ? "

Harry smiled biting his lip

" you are my cruise to alberobello "

And with that Harry vanished in thin air, letting the curiosity killing Draco's cat. Everything Harry had said, Draco used to put it down on little notes and keep it away in a box , a small gesture Remind Draco of Harry if he were to ever be gone but this left him shook. The truth about his cruise to alberobello, was that if the epiphany was even real or not, Harry didn't answer that. The mystery of the story lied within the fact how anyone could've ever remembered something from ages ago, it seemed unreal but harry was a man of many words, anything but a man who would forget. And this Draco knew because of his simple rememberance of bringing him a dairy free product when draco had told him very discreetly that he was lactose intolerant.

Draco tired to sleep it away but the restlessness buried in every nerve of him that forced him to stay awake until he couldn't bear anymore and disapparted to Harry's place.

" Draco, what are you doing here ? It's almost 2 " Harry frowned as he allowed Draco to walk into his own little Land of wonder he called home.

" you asked me on the way back if I believed your story to be real ? Here's what I think, the cruise to alberobello is infact an envisage of an interaction you assumed you had with the girl named Alma who sat next to you on the bar stool with her beau Alex, who you irrevocably found to be like dagger who would pierce you open if you fell for her but you couldn't bring yourself to even try to talk to her, so you imagined all of it. But when you met me, that girl named Alma became me, and I became your cruise you'd want to go on with but are too Afraid of admitting. Correct me if I'm wrong " Draco explained in a breath still standing in the hallway.

Harry frowns before he crossed his arms and smiled " I'm impressed "

" tell me if I'm wrong ?"

" what if you are ?"

" then you would lie because you only said what you said because you knew I'd be the only one who would understand the story "

Harry remained in shock, frowning" I'm thoroughly shook how beautifully right you are "

Draco huffs out air in relief " well harry James potter, then I am asking you to be my cruise to alberobello ? Will you be ?"

" Tomorrow night, 8 pm, Alberta palace ?"

" I'll be there " Draco replied.

" good night then Draco " Harry chuckled.

" Good night" Draco replied and was only About to disapparate when Harry interjected

" one last thing" and with that Harry kissed Draco's lip. There must've been something weird in the air because they both broke out laughing while kissing each other.

" took you this long ?" Draco smiled, his lips still pressed against Harry's and his arms wrapped around his torso.

" I was waiting for you to be impressed with at least one of my stories. I'm not just Beauty you know " Harry mumbled

" well you finally succeeded " and with that Harry softly traced Draco's lips with his own. It must've been so ethereal to be in the moment that draco couldn't stop smiling, and harry was drunk on Draco, and in Prosperity couldn't stop tasting Draco's smile, it could've been kissing but it felt otherwise, Harry was happy anyway.

And next night onwards,he didn't need more stories to attract the boy behind the bar.

This might be considered as a very late submission for @drarrymicrofic " cruise "

Requests open | Master list to all prompts now available

Day 32- reasons to not love Draco malfoy by Harry potter PT.1+PT.2 | Day 34- bath with me

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korissideblog · 3 years

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soooo alot of people really liked my Takao Talking ideas, so i decided to make a fake little fan transcript <3

this is really really short, but it's my first time really going into philosophy without a prompt, so maybe I'll get better as time goes on <3

{hiya!!! I’m @spaceACE✩! (=^-ω-^=)~ }

{I luv luv luv Takao Talking!!! And while Taka has CCs on his videos, I just thought it would be fun to do a transcript for some of my fav videos!!! (=´∇｀=)~ }

{soooo here it is!!! ฅ/ᐠ ‧̫‧ ᐟ\ฅ please like, comment, and enjoy!!!!

(๑✪ᆺ✪๑)~ }

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

aki put my camera up really high and now i have to turn it on and off with a broom handle. let’s talk about optimism in the bad times.

[Takao looks directly up at the camera, the camera being at a very very high angle. Takao is a fit, tallish person with lightly tanned skin, curly brown hair, and shiny yellow eyes. He has two sets of horns, one set that holds closely to his skull and goes up at the very end, and another set that does straight out, again going up at the very end. She is wearing a simple black choker, an oversized white t-shirt that says “Of Course I Cum Fast; I Have Fish To Catch!” With an outline of a bass jumping out of a body of water on it, and black biker shorts, as well as black slides. He is holding a broom in his right hand.]

Takao: Ah, alright. I think it’s on now.

Takao: so! I was supposed to be posting a video that had my buddy Aki in it, but apparently someone was “being a nuisance” and someone else would “rather look at me than a camera lens” or whatever.

Takao: he was just being pissy and he put my camera up really high. And hey, that was cool when we were hanging out, sure. We made lunch together and ate it. It was a fun time all around. Problems arise when he leaves my place, and “forgets” to give me my camera back. I have to turn it on and off with this. [Takao swings the broom around a bit]

Takao: So if this video goes out, it means I’ve either grown a few inches, or I’ve invested in a step ladder. Both of these events are equally possible.

Takao: And if this video doesn’t go out, then you know what happened. Except that you don’t know, because this video obviously won’t be out. You guys are smart. Out of all my friends, I’m sure you could guess which one would fuck up my recordings.

Takao: anywho! Since I'm here, forced to keep my chin up, let’s talk about optimism in the bad times.

[Takao drags a settee into frame with a great amount of struggle. Cut to him carrying a small end table over and putting it next to the settee. Cut to him placing a plate of sliced apples on the table, as well as a glass of (sparkling?) water]

Takao: [lounging across the settee] it was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who believed that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He based most of his ideas off of the assumed existence of capital ‘g’ God, so that isn’t exactly the most popular idea about optimism that’s currently going around, but it’s what I'm gonna use for today’s video.

Takao: If we live in the best of all possible worlds, how can one explain the mass suffering that we face? One could possibly say that without knowing suffering we wouldn’t know joy, I personally agree with that, but one could also say that suffering is a consequence of the joy that we have. If there is no joy without suffering, then there is no suffering without joy.

Takao: I’ve personally gone through suffering, in many parts of my life, but I’ve also experienced joy. And given the ability to start it all over again, i think i would still suffer unnecessarily in order to be joyful unnecessarily.

Takao: But optimism in the bad times is different. It’s going through suffering and somehow finding something to appreciate, it’s, cutting your finger with a knife, but being alright with it because you can wear your buddy’s merch now. [Takao holds up his hand, and on it is a bandage. It’s a bit blurry, but it looks similar to merchandise that is currently out for pro hero Smokestack]

Takao: it’s not finding joy in suffering, that’s masochism, it’s joy in spite of suffering.

Takao: But I'm sure all of us know how hard it can be to find joy while suffering, so we kinda can skip over that part sometimes. I didn’t find joy in the fact that I could see my reflection in the knife that cut me, but I did find joy in the healing aspect. My suffering was mostly over by the time I got the bandage, but I still put it on because I needed something good to come out of the experience. I was working on healing myself, and that’s where I found joy. [Takao takes one of the apple slices and eats it. She lifts the glass of water, but pauses before he drinks it]

Takao: and hey, I wouldn’t have had the same joy if this bandage wasn’t my buddy’s merch. Maybe I wouldn’t have even put it on! Maybe there’s a timeline where I never met Jetsam, but I still got the same cut, and it got infected and I lost my finger. [Takao takes a sip of the water, and puts it back down] Obviously this is an exaggerated example, but you get my point. There’s a timeline where I didn’t make the friends I have today, and I suffered more because of it.

Takao: It’s hard being your own therapist. [Jiji, an old black cat, walks into frame] That’s why your therapist exists. Humans are social creatures, and will always suffer from loneliness. [Jiji paces in front of the settee till Takao picks him up and puts him on her lap] no matter how uncomfortable it can make us, we need other people. Other people may not be able to stop our suffering, but they can help us get through it, and help us heal afterwards.

Takao: [looking into the lens of the camera] I originally made this channel when I was… you know I was kinda messed up

Takao: Real sick in the head.

Takao: But you know what?

Takao: Van Gogh painted the Starry Night while in drug rehab

Takao: So maybe I’m onto something here

Takao: Maybe good things don’t come from bad things,

Takao: …

Takao; Maybe good things come from healing after bad things.

[The frame fades to black]

[A quick cut back to Takao as he holds the broom, trying and failing to reach the camera without standing up from his settee]

[A quick and startling cut to Takao’s feet as she quickly walks to another room]

[Takao is now wearing different shoes, black boots, and is closing her front door. The dull click of her boots is heard softly]

[Cut to more walking, this time down a sidewalk. The click of his boots more pronounced now]

[Takao’s feet sway side to side as he sits on a subway]

[Takao records a woman in a tight pink dress. The woman is attractive, tall and blonde, but the camera is focused on her bag, large and a matching shade of pink. Out of the bag pops out a tan chihuahua with a pink spiked collar. The subway speaker talks indistinctly]

[More walking down a sidewalk, but at a quickened pace]

[Takao points the camera at a mirror in an elevator, his head is not shown, posing cutely with her leg up and a peace sign]

[More walking down a hallway as Takao finds a door]

[Takao flips through a strangely large ring of keys. Once he finds one with ‘BC’ crudely carved into it, she sticks it into the lock and turns it]

[He opens the door and walks into a living room. A man sitting on a couch looks up. This man is Aki Hiroharu. Hiroharu seems to be watching the news while eating something out of a bowl. Hiroharu looks shocked to see Takao, and may be about to speak, but immediately stops as he goes to cover his face with his arm]

[The camera shakes as Takao throws a step ladder at Hiroharu]

Takao: BITCH ASS-

[There’s a short few shots of the two fighting, clearly playfully, but neither seem willing to lose]

[Someone puts the camera down gently, walking back to the couch and resting their legs onto the open stepladder. The person is a fusion of Haruhiro and Takao, commonly known as Akito by fans. Akito continues to eat as they watch the news.]

[End]

#wow this is alot shorter than it looked on the google doc #slowly feeling less and less confident about this #aito takao #aki hiroharu #bnha oc comeback #Takao Talking #Kori stories

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blu-archer · 3 years

Text

Disaster Day

There are probably going to be grammar mistakes, because I can’t proof read to save my life... But hopefully it’s not hectic

Anyway, this was requested.. I kind of got carried away a bit, but I hope it’s close to what you may have wanted!!

Word count: 6691

SNZ - Allergies

‘Sickie’: Jungkook

Caretaker: VHope

like [mild] inducing I guess... it’s meant to be cute and like, familiar..?

Hybrid Universe

*Awkward Peace Signs*

uhh yeah, thank you for support and please enjoy it..<3

****

Jungkook was exhausted.

To be fair, his day had been jam-packed full of lectures and dance activities, so it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise – if only that was the initial cause of his problems. No, despite his day of hard work his fatigue plagued him less due to the events of his schedule and more specifically to the day. His annual disaster day.

It had started when Park Areum had pranced up to one of his best friends in the food court that morning. Giving a shy smile before unloading a gift bag of chocolates and whipping a small bouquet of various bright flowers out from behind her back as she whispered a soft ‘happy valentines’. Jungkook had to force the urge to groan, not wanting to appear rude while Jaehyun politely accepted the gifts, shooting an apologetic glance towards the hybrid. And from there it had only gotten worse.

It was rather unfair. Jungkook loved flowers, they were beautiful, and they smelt sweet and pretty, but the love was clearly not mutual. It hadn’t taken him long before the incessant itch clung to his sinuses, making paying attention to his classes increasingly difficult. All around him students traded cards and flowers with mirth, and he wanted to go home. Yugyeom had given him some of his own allergy medication, upping the dosage, but it was never truly effective for Jungkook. His hybrid genes just burnt off anything in his system before any real progress could be made. So, he was left to suffer.

It was hard to believe his day had taken such a turn for the worst, it had started off so well too. 6am he had been nudged awake by soft prodding and strokes along his sides. This had caused him to twist and muffle his giggles into Taehyung’s bare chest - only to realise that he had trapped himself in the infamous ‘iron cuddle grip’ and had left himself vulnerable to the hands rousing him from sleep. Hoseok hadn’t hesitated to continue, letting Jungkook’s whines and squirms be responsible for waking up Taehyung, and even if the witch had pouted and been grumpy for the first half an hour, it had quickly dissolved into teasing and discussion about whatever usual whacked dream Tae had had during the night. They had eaten breakfast together and shared kisses in the shower and had even gone as far to drop him off at school together to give him final kisses and promises for the day ahead.

Yet now he sat miserably in his drawing class, catching a sharp flurry of sneezes into his palm, and trying his best to sink into the shadows and away from everyone’s lingering gazes.

It wasn’t like he could help it. The frequency of the attacks were becoming more apparent with each passing moment and being in an enclosed theatre wasn’t helping. The girl next to him offered a sympathetic look before digging out some tissues for him, gesturing to a smudge of charcoal on his face as well.

Jungkook didn’t even care how desperate he appeared when he excused himself to the bathrooms to blow his nose. His head was beginning the ache and no amount of sniffling could help his running nose. There was a lengthy moment in the bathrooms just dedicated to splashing water on his face before staring blurrily at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were tinged red and his nose had taken on such a bright hue that if he walked home someone would probably grab him to shoot a cold commercial. Looking closely – and this very well may have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that he could see a fine layer pollen sticking to his black ears. It was probably there. With how tight his chest was feeling, there had to have been something on him.

He coughed and blew his nose once more, contemplating if it would help if he just blocked his nostrils with the tissues from the rest of the session. He would look like a fool, but it could help… then again, with how sensitive his nose was currently it would probably just make it worse.

A big part of him wondered what Tae and Hobi were doing, they weren’t allergic to flowers like he was so they were often able to still enjoy the day without having to worry too much about how they were going to feel at the end of it.

Hoseok had probably been spoiled by his classes and other staff members. Even before they’d started dating, Jungkook could see how much he appreciated the small little love notes or being gifted with a flower or a surprise date, or just being able to flaunt a relationship and be emerged in a bubble of emotions that left people staring longingly. He was able to do and get all of those things now, perhaps not all from Jungkook, but he got everything he deserved. Valentine’s day was always a big day from Hobi, probably because he never really cared about it before – especially back when he had still not to come out. And Jungkook was glad that he got spoilt now, he loved that people loved his boyfriend, and he especially loved how after being showered in complements and affection all day, the dancer came home and reached out in preference to his boyfriends.

With regards to his witch, the events shouldn’t be that much different. Taehyung was probably hiding behind some shelves, going through spell books. Or playfully flirting with Namjoon and Yoongi again. Or knocking off the love attempts of his small following of ‘fans’ that often came to the shop to swoon over him – much to Yoongi’s annoyance. Jungkook could never actually tell how Tae’s day would go. It seemed that every day was a day that someone expressed their ‘love’ for him, that hadn’t changed from when they had been teenagers.

Sinking to the tiled floor, he brought out his phone, frowning at the new crack in the screen from when he’d dropped it early that day. His ears drooped low, almost hiding his face as he stared down at their group chat.

Tae had posted an image about an hour ago of him fanning away faux tears while holding up three red roses dramatically, claiming that someone had -Unsurprisingly - confessed their undying love to him. He could see Yoongi over his boyfriends plaid shoulder entirely unamused at his apprentices actions. No doubt Tae had been lectured or had been subjected to a mouthful of tired, witty complaints after taking the photo.

Jungkook smiled at the quick replies beneath it.

From: ~♥Sunshine☼~

“Hope they have life insurance.”

From: ~♥Tae♥~

“Hobi... You can’t kill them….”

From: ~♥Sunshine☼~

“Don’t need to. Poor heart must have given out in defeat after you told them about your two super protective boyfriends.”

From: ~♥Tae♥~

“Two super protective, lovable and sinfully attractive boyfriends. And yes. I think a part of it did, and again when Yoongi interrupted them after they propositioned for a number swap…. but on an upside. I got to boast about you both again!! Highlight of my working hours.”

After some more mild threats, Hobi mentioned some other points of his day – mostly speaking about the dare Jimin had been put up too, crashing into the staff room that morning wearing a bright pink and white cupid outfit with wings and a halo, throwing around confetti and giving him sunflowers, and then all of the cute cupids throughout the separate grades coming to hand out things or sing to designated students.

There were some time gaps in the conversations after that, between the sections where either of them were too busy too answer, but they seemed to be having fun as they switched to teasing each other. Both had left prompts or questions for Jungkook more than once, always willing to drag the youngest into their banter. Although his absence wasn’t uncharacteristic, his eyes still lingered on the softly toned question that Tae had slid out barely fifteen minutes before, asking whether Jungkook was busy and what he had been up too…

Not feeling up to making excuses, Jungkook tapped into his camera and took a quick, slightly blurry selca – not even bothering to double check it before he sent it through the chat. He looked terrible, and he would still look terrible if he checked it anyway. He breathed heavily from his mouth as he wiped his nose, only to increase the sensitive tingles that pulsed through him. Jungkook could feel his eyes burn with irritated tears and they itched. God he wanted to rub at them, and his ears, they always got this way when he was around flowers for too long, but he knew it was a bad idea. University was not the place to let his allergies and instincts completely control his actions.

He lifted his phone lazily to see new messages had come through.

From: ~♥Sunshine☼~

“Oh Bun…”

From: ~♥Tae♥~

“Are you okay?”

“Allergies?”

“Is it bad there?”

“Can you breathe fine? Should I come fetch you?”

From: ~♥Sunshine☼~

“I think you should leave early… Tae, ask Yoongi to borrow his car..”

“and maybe bring something menthol.”

“I’m fine mostly… Just really sneezy. And my chest is a little tight but it’s not that bad, probably frojnm” –

Jungkook sneezed openly into his lap, blinking in a daze before realising he had accidentally sent the message.

“from exposure.”***

From: ~♥Tae♥~

“I’m going to leave now, should I come fetch you from a specific building? Or wait outside?”

There was a small part of Jungkook that felt bad for being an inconvenience, but mostly he was satisfied that he was going to go home. Even if that meant that Tae missed out on some of the usual adoring customers being even more adoring towards him, Jungkook will get to shower and nap and just exist in peace for a bit. And that sounded great.

“outside. I’ll leave now.”

From: ~♥Sunshine☼~

“love you Jungkook. I’ll be home as soon as I can!”

From: ~♥Tae♥~

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, maximum.”

He didn’t waste any more time. Discarding his used tissues, Jungkook shuffled back to his classroom. He coughed into his fist as soon as the door to the theatre had closed behind him, locking him inside with his demons. Thankfully he didn’t have to explain much to his lecturer. They had taken one look at him and just waved him away sympathetically, telling him to feel better and to try get some work done later if possible. Given the all clear, he had practically sprinted out of the room after grabbing his supplies.

The sun beamed down on him, almost brutally. His black wardrobe wasn’t helping much in that regard, but he walked hastily through the bustling courtyard to find the shading parking area just outside the security gates. A campus guard gave him a brief wave as he passed, eyes softening a little at the state of the shy, yet charismatic hybrid that he had come to know. Jungkook held his wrist to his nose as he ventured further away from the small crowds of people. He found an old bench that was situated under one of the many large Korean oak trees, that’s shadows were cast over his skin mimicking that of a cool breeze. It wasn’t the most comfortable seat, but it served his purpose. After getting as comfortable as he could on the frail wood, he tried once more to clear his nose. It was a hopeless attempt of trying to rid himself of symptoms, one that had obviously failed and had left him sinking back into the old harsh wood of the bench with closed eyes. He couldn’t smell the usually musky, earthy scent that clung to this area and he wasn’t willing to send himself into a fit by looking up at the dappled light shining through the leaves over head – although he could probably recall each and every possible shade that it could be right then. He’d tried to paint the various lighting on the leaves many times, year-round. The view was usually one he’d never want to miss, but the day had taken every last bit of energy he had and trying to appreciate it right this second just wasn’t going to be possible.

“Kook?”

Jungkook opened his eyes to see Taehyung peering out of the driver window of Yoongi’s much loved Jeep. Had ten minutes passed already? It hadn’t seemed like it… Jungkook blinked slowly at the vehicle a few steps in front of him, reached to rub subconsciously at his eyes. Taehyung looked just has beautiful as he had that morning, his pinched brows more prominent by the red bandana that exposed his forehead. He had parked the car at a slant so that he could pull off easily, not caring about the irked glances security was sending his way for taking up more than one parking.

Realising a bit belatedly that this was his lift, Jungkook sniffed and grabbed his things, shuffling tiredly to the passenger door. He vaguely heard Tae say something else as he hopped into the seat and tossed his things to the back, but he wasn’t really paying attention. A warm hand brushed through his hair, down his arm and then settled on his own fist. Jungkook closed his eyes once more and rested his head against the glass as Tae started driving, his hand being intertwined into a tight grasp that lay between the both of them as he drifted languidly to the sound of tires on tarmac and Tae’s gentle humming.

“How is he?” Hoseok asked as Taehyung grabbed two of the three grocery bags the elder had been carrying inside, both moving too quickly put them onto the kitchen counter before starting to pack things away.

Hoseok had wanted to come home straight after work but had opted to going shopping in order to at least make something up for later if Jungkook was up for it – he was able to grab a few things for his boyfriends as well. They usually didn’t get things for each other when it came to these types of holidays, but he couldn’t help himself.

Taehyung shrugged. “He was really tired, so I had to wake him up a few times before he could shower, then he just kind of went to bed. I barely got a full sentence out of him.”

Hoseok sighed heavily. It wasn’t as worrying as the first few times he’d seen Jungkook get allergy attacks, he’d learnt that the hybrid tended to get stuck in his head and what he was feeling. Most of the time Jungkook didn’t even realise that he was going quiet, but Hoseok wished that he would at least let them help more.

“He probably just needs some time for the worst of it to calm down, I bought some scented lotions for later. If he wants it. Some dark chocolate too.”

“Should we make a soup or something?” Tae pondered. They usually stuck to warm foods when it came to allergies and colds, especially with Jungkook who was prone to rhinitis.

“I was thinking about making a curry, or ordering one in if Jungkook needed us, but if he’s still asleep we can start making it now. The spices would help a bit.” Hoseok pursed his lips as he looked over what was yet to be packed away, his hands resting on his hips.

He startled a bit when he felt Taehyung wrap his arms around him from behind, resting his head into the crook of Hoseok’s neck as he engulfed the dancer into a fierce yet tender hug. Taehyung laid a kiss just below Hobi’s ear, smiling against the elders skin before sighing happily and relaxing onto his boyfriends sturdy frame.

“Why don’t you go shower so long? You’ve also had a long day… I’ll start cutting everything for you, I’ve gotten better - you’ve taught me well.” Tae said softly, his chest warming as Hoseok leant back as fluidly as he had leant on the dancer. “Then we can set up for a nice night in. Kookie didn’t even bother to set up a nest earlier, so I think it would be nice if we tried to do something like that for him. Then he can be comfortable enough to decide if he wants help or not…”

Hobi chuckled. “A little eager?”

“What can I say? He’s adorable… and I wasn’t the one that bought scented lotions and chocolate.”

“Touché.” Hoseok stepped out from the embrace with a grin, not wanting to inform the witch that he’d gotten those specifically because he knew the other two enjoyed it. He didn’t typically get the same reactions from it as they did, but he loved the care involved. Thinking about what the night entailed got his body buzzed with warm sparks as the expensive gift bag that he’d smuggled inside using his duffle bag came to mind. He couldn’t wait to for his boyfriends to see what he’d gotten them. “I’ll go shower, hopefully Kook is feeling better later… Be careful with that knife!”

It wasn’t long before both Taehyung and Hoseok had finished with their preparations. Their meal was simmering away, filling the apartment with rich spicy aroma’s, and they had transformed their lounge into what they hoped was an appropriate nest of sorts. Carrying a mattress from one of their guest rooms had been a little difficult to do quietly, but Tae had peeked in on Jungkook to see that he was still uncovered, lying diagonally across their bed, smothering his snores into a pillow. After that, collecting a variety of blankets, pillows, plushies and majority of the soft scarves and sweaters that they had, had been a piece of cake. Hobi had made sure to dedicate a small table to the lotions and tissues, while another stayed mostly bare for their food and drinks later, the only thing adorning it was the chocolates Hobi had bought alongside a small herbal arrangement that Tae had gone and grabbed from Hoseok’s little garden on the ground floor, adding a few roses that he had easily twined up from wire.

Overall, it looked cute. It had even been fun to make.

They curled up on their soft creation while Taehyung set up a line-up of movies, listening to Hobi’s suggestions intently – not caring that half of his ideas were going to leave them crying if they watched them.

If its what Hobi wanted, it’s what he was going to get.

It was just before six when Jungkook stumbled into the room. His nose was still red and a bit swollen, and his fist rubbed at his one ear with annoyance. The bunny hybrid had paused, his brows pitched into a tight frown as he took in the set up before him, then sniffled and collapsed onto Taehyung where he sat amongst the blankets.

He had woken up feeling a bit more refreshed, that tightness in his chest had disappeared, but he was still bothered by that itchy feeling in his sinuses and congestion.

“How’re you feeling, Bun?” Hoseok asked as he joined them from the kitchen. His hand tangling up into Jungkook’s hair before scratching slowly at the base of his ear.

The hybrid blinked as a buzzed sensation did a lap through his body, leaving him rubbing a finger under his nose harshly. He could feel Taehyung pulling him back so that he’d be resting against the witches chest, Tae’s large hands rubbed ticklish circles into his sides that left him twitching in the elders lap.

“Bun?”

“’m fine..” Jungkook answered, focusing his slitted gaze on Hoseok’s face hovering before him. “Just…meh.”

Hobi hummed lowly. He dragged his nail along the length of Jungkook’s ear, sending shivers to course through his body. Hoseok did it again – slower – grinning as he watched as Tae flushed lightly and bit at his lip while Jungkook squirmed harder against the witches lap.

“What’s bothering you Kook? Should we help?” Hoseok asked softly.

“We made some food for us, too.” Taehyung added, a smidge deeper than usual. “We were going to wake you, but then we wouldn’t have been able to surprise you…”

Jungkook smothered a yawn into his fist, resting his head back onto Tae’s shoulder as he glanced around. The smile that spread across his lips wouldn’t stop growing as he caught sight of everything that they’d put into their attempt at nesting. They’d actually done well, almost an exact copy of what he would have done. His gaze landed on a set of lotions and the itch in his nose only seemed to increase at the thought of opening one of them.

“Food sounds great.” He said, scrunching up his nose. “I didn’t really feel like eating earlier.”

Without a moments’ pause Hoseok was heading back to the kitchen, followed closely by Tae who had gently nudged Jungkook to curl into the blankets beside him rather than on him so that he could help. They had dished up hastily, putting a hefty amount of the curry and rice mixture on the hybrids plate before carrying it out. Tae had made sure to grab a few bottles of flavoured milk before he returned to the room, where Hoseok and Jungkook were lighting up two of his large, sturdy scentless candles. With a soft smile he flicked his wrist towards the switch on the wall as he sat beside Jungkook, letting the room fall to darkness before the candles flame settled into a stable glow. They moved the candles up on either side of the tv screen and away from any possible accident range.

The meal had been a simple setting of silence, the trio all paying attention to either their food or the film that was playing just loud enough to not disturb the neighbours. Jungkook had sat through half the meal with tissues grasped in his hand, wiping at his nose every few minutes as the spices and heat opened up his sinuses. The itch had still not left, but had taken a bit of a backseat momentarily, which Jungkook didn’t know if he was thankful or annoyed about.

This definitely wasn’t exactly how he had planned for this day to go, it never was, but his boyfriends had somehow found an alternative to still have a good time. A part of him knew, the part that kept glancing back to those meticulously arranged lotions, that it would feel good to sneeze now, unlike earlier when the rest of his symptoms were problematic. Yet he didn’t want to ruin the soft mood that had been created. Not to mention asking them to help him with his nose was probably not very high on the romance list. Just one normal Valentines. That’s his aim. Just one. Surely it was possible…

So, he bit down on his lip and tried his best to ignore that lingering tickle, sipping on some milk, and letting the chocolate melt over his tongue.

They had just started the second film -another cute romcom that Hoseok had been hung up about- when Jungkook felt that tickle become apparent once more. Consuming him so far that he hadn’t realised that he had audibly hitched until he felt Tae’s soft, concerned strokes along his back. Defeated, Jungkook raised his hands to hover in front of his face, letting his breath shake and build – only to rapidly blink in confusion as the urge left him disappointed and sniffling. He frowned, then shrugged sheepishly at his boyfriends who had both turned to watch him. Hesitantly, they returned their focus to the movie, Hoseok had shuffled a bit closer to hug into Jungkook’s side while he watched so that he could hide his smile into the hybrids shirt each time something cute or embarrassing happened on the screen. Which Jungkook usually encouraged, but now Hoseok would give him a quick sideways glance each time he felt the youngers breath stutter – and he was almost certain that Taehyung had been aware of it as well after he moved the open box of tissues closer. After the fifth empty promise Jungkook didn’t care that it was blatantly obvious what he needed, he just wanted to be able to sneeze.

He sat up straight, causing Hobi to be pushed off of him, and rubbed at his nose as he glanced up to the ceiling. His breathing built shakily but once again, nothing happened. He let out a frustrated moan and pressed both hands to the base of his ears, rubbing hard to try and force some sort of result out of him.

“Jungkook?” Hoseok prodded, pulling one of the hybrids hands away from his ears. “What’s wrong?”

“I ne-h’hih-ed to sne-ehh..hh’heh…”

And then he saw through teary eyes, the soft tissue held before him.

“Let us help then, yeah?” Tae said deeply. It wasn’t like Jungkook was going to decline that offer.

Taehyung wrapped an arm over Jungkook’s shoulders to get more comfortable and then gently placed his tissue-armoured hand over the hybrid’s twitching red nose. Jungkook stiffened as his breathing faltered further by just having the enclosed warmth from Tae’s palm, both arms falling to his lap. An urgent whine crept from his throat as he felt the pressure of the witches fingers on the sinuses either side of his nose. His mouth had fallen open with soft, panting breaths and he could feel Tae’s arm tightening around him as he gently massaged in silence.

A tight ball of heat had settled in Jungkook’s stomach, gradually working its way into his chest as he was left a physical mess and Taehyung pulled away to switch to a new tissue, deciding that the old one had become useless. Jungkook had been about to complain when he felt a long cooling breath directly hit his nose from the left. His eyes had snapped shut and he had pitched forward so quickly that Taehyung had barely made it time to catch the wet fit of sneezes that had allergic tears trickling down Jungkook’s cheeks.

Huhe’TSHhh!! ..Hehh’ETCHhew! Eh’TSHhiew!...... … Heh’ehhhshheww … Heh’eehhhTCHsheww!!

Instinctively Jungkook had reached up to cover, trapping Tae’s hand in place as he snapped forward with another triple – half stifled as he squished into the steady palm.

“Bless.” Hoseok pressed a hand to the nape of Jungkook’s neck. “Better?”

Jungkook sniffled as Taehyung pulled away, only to have Hoseok press another tissue to his nose.

“Blow for me.”

A flush spread across Jungkook’s cheeks at the request but he did as was asked, taking a deep breath before blowing out with wet muffled burst. Hoseok didn’t flinch away and wiped at the hybrids nose once he’d finished.

Jungkook glanced away to see Taehyung slip a piece of chocolate into his mouth, then the witch met his gaze through dark, heavy lashes.

“Better?” He repeated Hobi’s question.

Mostly. The itch wasn’t completely gone, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to brush it aside anymore.

His mouth fell open to begin his explanation only to be met with chocolate flavoured lips. For the first time since that morning Jungkook was able to fully catch the witches scent. A wave of familiarity doused him, urging him into further contentment. He sniffed and leant closer as Tae had gone to move away, pressing his lips to the column of his neck as he breathed in the woodsy scent once more. A rumble vibrated through Taehyung’s throat as he laughed, pulling Jungkook into him as he rolled back into the nest playfully.

“You seem better.” Hoseok murmured with amusement.

“I-“ Jungkook looked up to see Hobi also reaching for the chocolate. “Thank you…It still… its fuzzy.”

“You want us to keep helping you, Kookie?”

Slowly, Jungkook nodded. A heat spread up his neck as Taehyung grinned at him, almost like he’d been waiting for Jungkook to ask all night.

“Can you lean back into me Bun?”

The question was practically rhetorical, Jungkook wasn’t going to be going against anything they asked of him at this point. He glanced over Tae’s shoulder and the elder’s grin slid into a lazy smirk.

“Tilt up.”

Their movie played on in the background, barely being heard over the pounding in Jungkook’s ears paired with his heavy breaths. Hobi held him gently and rubbed his cheek against the tender part of Jungkook’s neck, only increasing his pants a light trickle of pleasure bled through him. Taehyung took his time, dabbing a small section of his wrist with one of the bottles Jungkook had so keenly peered at before twisting a tissue up, ready to get to work. The hybrids nose twitched as he caught the sweet, fruity scent – at first only becoming slightly irritated until Taehyung moved closer. The candlelight hit the elder like a heavenly glow, an angel descending towards him with expression of something fallen rather than graced. He wondered what Hoseok would look like next to him – he wondered what Taehyung saw when he looked at them. From the depth of his gaze, Jungkook could only assume that it was something just as mesmerising as his view…

His senses burned.

Jungkook gasped and felt his eyes flutter shut as Taehyung moved to sit on his lap, his legs overlapping Hobi’s on either side of Jungkook. The witch reached up and pulled lightly at one of his ears and Jungkook moaned as he sniffed deeply, earning himself a lungful of the intoxicatingly sweet scent that had him pitch forward with a sharp ‘H’ehh’nngxch’. A finger settled below his chin and he met Taehyung’s burning eyes and tilted his head back obediently, his breath hitching against the scented wrist of the witch as he carefully inserted the tissue. The tickle that had permanently settled at the back of his nose reared into a dominant existence as Taehyung moved the ‘tool’ around in a calculated manner, while Hoseok took to laying soft kisses along his neck and ears.

Hoseok murmured soft words as he rubbed his thumbs into Jungkook’s lower back, asking how he was or if he wanted more. The bunny couldn’t even formulate a full sentence without his breath stuttering off. God, if he knew this was how his day would have ended he probably wouldn’t have been so annoyed about it in the beginning.

Tae angled the tissue to reach slightly further in, biting his lip as Jungkook slackened beneath him, but still resulted in nothing more than desperate hitching.

“Angel…” Tae whispered deeply as he pushed the bottle of lotion that he’d opened towards Hobi. “Maybe we should work together on this…”

Hoseok kissed Jungkook’s neck a final time before he emptied some of the oil onto his palm behind the hybrids back. Taehyung returned his attention to Jungkook, dragging the tip of his forefinger lightly around the rims of the hybrids nose before returning the tissue to the next nostril.

Nghh hh hih… … huh.huh ..huh hhh… mmghhm..

Jungkook was going to die of frustration. Truly and entirely. Taehyung was teasing him now. The witch could very easily help him alone. He knew exactly what to do and where to go, and yet he wished to tempt and torture it out of Jungkook. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but damnit… now?

Jungkook gasped as heat scorched his blood. Taehyung had to rest a hand on his shoulder to steady him from slipped forward as Hoseok slipped his hands beneath the bunnies shirt. The dancers fingers glided over his skin like a sculptor, fluidly glazing his skin with the cold lotion. His nose quivered and his chest heaved. Immediately he was crumbling into a sniffling mess, Taehyung had even taken a moment to stop his tempting – although that may have been a new type of torture, letting Jungkook’s breath build. Somewhat desperate, Jungkook reached up to paw at the bridge of his nose only to have Hoseok grab a hold of his wrist, pulling it to join his own trailing the hybrids clenched stomach.

“Poor Kookie.” Taehyung brushed his hand through the youngers hair, tugging it lightly before petting down the length of Jungkook’s ear. “Why can’t you sneeze… hmm?”

“T-hih- teassahh ..snf snf..ah huh hh...”

Almost pitying, Taehyung settled his hand on Jungkook’s cheek, and the hybrids nostrils flared. A single finger ran down the bridge of Jungkook’s nose and his chest burst with an aching heat.

Huh iih eh ehh ehH’HESHI’uh! HEH’ITDZshhh! …Huh.. hh..nmmnmm snf. SNf. … eh ehh’hh ..h he heH…. heh’NGGXTshhheww! H’NGCHh’shuh… snnf

Jungkook panted and sniffled thickly, refusing to open his eyes to see the mess he’d probably made on Taehyung’s arm that had yet to move. One of Hoseok’s hand found its way up Jungkook’s spine, steadily sending chills through his body until the dancer slipped out and massaged at Jungkook’s ears. The bunny snapped forward into another bout of desperate breathy sneezes as his fur became slicked back and oiled as well.

“There you go..” Taehyung murmured lowly as he brought a tissue to the hybrids nose, catching the wet expulsions with a gently grasp – giving soft, prodding massages whenever the younger stuttered off shakily.

Between Taehyung’s pestering and Hoseok’s support and wayward gestures, Jungkook was pretty fucking blissed.

“You good?” Taehyung asked, pulling the younger into his embrace once Hoseok had excused himself to the bathroom.

“Mmmm. Stuffy… but good.” Jungkook ran his wrist under his nose, only to prompt a congested sneeze into his lap twice more.

Even after the lengthy shower that they’d had, Jungkook still couldn’t breathe out of his nose but it wasn’t exactly surprising. Taehyung had continued his teasing for almost an hour before deciding he’d done a decent job of satisfying what Jungkook needed. It had been great, Jungkook couldn’t remember the last time Taehyung had played this way, the last couple times that he’d asked for help had been simple and somewhat time restrained. And having both his boyfriends at his disposal had been the topping of it all.

He closed his eyes and lent his head back onto Tae’s chest while the elder started to hum a soft tune that had a gradually serenity flooding into Jungkook’s body, almost encouraging the bunny to slip into sleep. He had been teetering on the edge of darkness when he heard the sound of Hoseok’s light footsteps re-enter the room.

“Oh… is he asleep?”

“No,” Taehyung answered just as softly as Hobi had asked. “Not yet anyway..”

“Okay… Okay, I have to do something.” Hoseok said, oddly serious.

Jungkook forced his eyes open again to see the usually spriteful dancer shuffling awkwardly in the dim candlelight, his thick jacket grasped tightly in his hands. Jungkook tried to swallow his yawn, failing to a second one, before clearing his throat with a light cough.

“You’re … leaving?” Jungkook frowned, his ears drooping low at the mere thought of not having both of his boyfriends near him.

“No!” Hoseok moved to his knees directly in front of the pair. His jacket falling to the ground with a thud. “I need to do something with you two.. or say something rather… and I hope you.. I don’t know.. like it? I guess?”

“Okay then..” Taehyung set his chin lazily on top of Jungkook’s head, giving Hobi a small reassuring smile. “I’m pretty sure we agreed no gifts, but if you need too…”

“I do.” Hoseok licked his lips, taking a shaky breath. For a moment the only sound in the room was Jungkook’s soft sniffles that he tried to muffle into his sleeve. Another breath, deeper and steadier this time. “I love you… both of you, so much I can’t even comprehend it. How did I end up at this point? The closeted human kid ending up in a relationship as comfortable and loving as this with not one, but two heart throbbingly precious men whose souls are probably the most kind and fearless and open that I will ever meet… I got so lucky.. I can’t imagine not seeing you every day, or not waking up to a full bed, or not watching you two bicker over food, or kissing you after a long day, or hearing your completely bizarre daily adventures – especially you Tae, I want to know every time you accidentally set something on fire or make potions combust in their jars –“

“it was two times!”

“My point being,” Hoseok laughed. “That I want to be in your lives for the rest of mine. I know I probably could have planned this better, but I suppose everything about us was a bit spontaneous…” he reached into the inner pockets of his jacket and retrieved two velvet boxes in each fist. “I know you both would do this differently, given the obvious differences, but I felt like this was the right time for me… we don’t need to like do anything straight away or anything I just-“

Jungkook reached out to touch Hoseok’s leg, halting the mans speech. “You’re rambling Sunshine.”

Hoseok bit at his bottom lip as he saw the faint confusion tinted in the bunnies furrowed brows and pursed lips, yet Taehyung was beaming with glistening eyes, his gaze never leaving Hoseok’s face.

“I- uh… here.” He handed the emerald box to Taehyung, who seemed to be trying not to shed any surprised tears, then pushed the crimson box into Jungkook’s palm. The hybrid’s confused expression rapidly turning into one of awe. “It’s not a unique sigil, or a mating mark, but this is the only way I can make a physical bond. I’ve thought about this for so long and I just…..I… yeah.. ..m-marry me?”

“Ma-Marry?” Jungkook blinked widely, while Taehyung squeezed the hybrid tightly with a huge boxy grin.

“As if we’d ever say no to you?” Taehyung giggled, the candlelight doing a good job at hiding the flush that had crept to his cheeks.

“Marry?” Jungkook repeated, almost hollowly.

Hoseok swallowed hard at the what could be about to happen. God, had this been a mistake? “You don’t need to say yes Bun, I just.. this is something I needed to ask. I just wanted us.. I just want to be bound to you more than just words. I want people to see that you’re mine, but it’s okay if you don’t want to.”

Taehyung peered down at the bunny questionably then opened his box. The ring was a thick simple band of white, laced with gold intricate designs of engraved roses and small rose quartz embedded in a circle throughout the centre. He didn’t stop the tears from falling then. Just nodded while biting down on his lip. Jungkook turned to see the ring, then looked down at his own box with his mouth agape.

“You.. You want to marry me?” Jungkook spoke softly. “I just spent the last hour and a half sneezing myself into the next plain of reality, and you choose now to ask this?” The hybrid gave a choked laugh, opening his box to see a black ring that was identical to Tae’s in design. Simple and yet so beautiful. “Oh my god Jung Hoseok. You have the worst timing. I love you so much.”

Hoseok sucked in a tight breath and shifted to sit beside the pair. “Is that a yes?”

Jungkook started laughing again, sniffling back his tears. “Are you going to put these on us?”

Hobi grinned so widely it hurt. His blood danced and his heart screamed as both of his boyfriends leant into him, letting him slide their rings on.

“Ohhh this is going to start a riot at work.” Taehyung teased happily. The giddiness in his voice only increasing as time passed.

“Good those girls can finally leave you alone.” Hobi kissed Tae’s shoulder as he intertwined his fingers with Jungkook’s. the ring pleasantly cool against his skin.

“To think I wasn’t looking forward to this day.” Jungkook mumbled, leaning back into both of his boyfriends arms.. “Best Disaster Day of my life

#sneeze #sneeze kink?#bts sickfic #bts fanfic #witch taehyung #human hoseok #bunny hybrid jungkook #allergies #valentines #poly #established relationship #requested #I tried #alternate universe #magic exists #proposal?#its meant to be cute #anyway enjoy

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tsauergrass · 4 years

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A while ago, @scaredpotta asked me for a prompt from the prompt list I reblogged. I’ve been working on it for the past few days and now I’ve finished, but then I discovered that they’ve de-activated their account :( I am so sad and so sorry that I’m late. I’m still going to post it and, @scaredpotta, even though I know you won’t see this, I hope you’re having a wonderful day wherever you are.

29. Slowly, the words dripping from your tongue like honey

***

“60 dollars,” Draco says. “What can I get?”

Harry ruffles through the buckets of flowers in the cooler. “What are you looking for?”

“Something special. It is a note.”

Harry pauses. For days Draco has visited his flower shop, but not once has he ordered anything with a message. Usually it is four different shades of purple, or something classically romantic, or something simple but elegant, fragrant—hyacinths, roses, lily-of-the-valleys. Dahlias, accompanied with white-button poms and greens.

Harry turns to face him. Draco looks away, flushed, shifting back and forth on his feet.

“Well,” Harry asks, “What is it you want to say?”

“Let’s elope.”

Harry blushes crimson. Silly, because Draco is not saying the words to him—but to his lover, for whom he has come and visited Harry’s shop for days on end, arriving early to avoid the morning rush and bring them the flowers before the day starts. The flowers are always the freshest, the leaves still wet with dew, and Harry picks the best of them for Draco because Draco’s lover deserves the best. Because Draco deserves the best.

And it is harder and harder to fool himself every day, to tell himself that they’ve had history, that Draco already belongs to someone else—to watch Draco come in every day with a faint smile, the bell tinkling as he greets Harry good morning with two cups of coffee. His hair is soft in the morning light, white-gold amidst the exuberant flowers as he looks around—Harry wrapping his bouquet, trying to steal a glance or two—footsteps slow, bending as he sniffs at the buckets of flowers from the lower shelves. A laugh escapes and Harry pretends it is a cough when Draco turns, narrowing his eyes.

But there is no malice. There is only banter, witty and fast and sending a rush down Harry’s spine.

“Well,” Harry says, turning around. His face burns in the cool, moist air of the cooler. “The cleomes just came in today. I’ll pair them with some baby’s-breaths, if you’d like.”

“That would be prefect.”

And this is new, too—for Harry to hear the smile in Draco’s voice, a secret victory at every one of them, knowing they are there because of him. He picks out the cleomes with the most vibrant purples, the ones with their petals spread the fullest—cuts off the excess leaves, the motion familiar with ease. Spreads out the wrapping paper on the working table, smooths its edges.

“So,” he coughs, “you’re leaving.”

Draco pauses his sniffing at a hanging pot of petunias and looks at him.

“Yes.”

“When?��

“Tomorrow,” he says. “Or so I hope. I am going to ask them today, whether they will come with me.”

“Oh.” Harry focuses on cutting the paper so he doesn’t have to meet Draco’s eyes. “So the bouquet. It’s a question.”

“It is.”

“Well, it’s not like you need to ask,” Harry laughs, dry, “of course they’ll come with you.”

“How do you know?”

Briefly, Harry lifts his gaze. Draco has tilted his head. Against the sunlight, Harry cannot quite make out his face, but it seems like his cheeks have flushed—a tinge of pink in the shadows.

“Well,” Harry looks back down again, swallowing, “it’s you. Who wouldn’t want to go with you?”

Silence. A while later, Harry raises his head. Draco is watching him still, his head tilted.

Harry finishes the bouquet in silence. Wraps it carefully, makes a couple last adjustments so the cleomes are shown to their fullest, the baby’s-breaths a lovely white. He hands the bouquet to Draco. “Sixty dollars.”

Draco takes the bouquet.

The last bouquet Harry would ever make for him. He wants to say goodbye, in a way however small: a hug, a handshake, a squeeze on the shoulder. Some proof that all these mornings weren’t nothing, hadn’t simply existed in his half-baked dreams—that Draco had enjoyed them, too, had enjoyed his little shop and the flowers and, perhaps, his company.

He might never see Draco again.

“Are you busy?” Draco asks.

Harry blinks.

“Do you have anything to do this moment?”

Harry blinks again. “I’m working.”

“Right,” Draco rolls his eyes, “and this is your shop. You are your own boss. Are you busy at the moment?”

“Well…I mean, no—”

“Great,” Draco says, turning to walk towards the door, “there’s something I need to show you. Just to get an opinion. Very convenient, won’t take long, my flat is a five-minute walk from here so we won’t even need to Apparate—”

“Wait, what—” Harry struggles to untie his apron as he stumbles over the register, “Draco, wait—”

“We can chat on our way. Have I told you about this person I’ve been buying flowers for? An idiot, let me tell you. An absolute idiot.”

The walk was brisk, the morning air crisp. Harry cannot keep up with Draco’s long legs. Draco walks rapidly, as though he has an appointment, the heels of his shoes clicking against the pavement as he rattles on without losing his breath. Harry stumbles along, bumps into Draco when he turns a corner—and there they were, in front of the doors of Draco’s flat.

“I haven’t tidied it,” Draco says, working the keys, flushed. “But I don’t think you need to close your eyes—”

A loud clack. The doors open.

Harry toes off his shoes and, gingerly, follows Draco past the parlor. The air smells of a soft fragrance, smells faintly of something familiar…

He stops, shocked, at the edge of the living room.

Vases and vases full of flowers. Familiar arrangements, all having come from his hands: the hydrangeas, the gerberas, the lilacs. The hyacinths draping from a tall vase, the dahlias in full bloom in a small pot on the windowsill. The roses, sitting in a tiny vase on the coffee table beside the armchair, a brimming array of red.

Beside him, Draco has flushed down his neck.

“But I don’t…” Harry trails off, looking at the room full of flowers again. “I don’t—”

“I preserved them. I learned the cooling charms.”

“But—”

“Harry James Potter. I buy you coffee every morning.”

Harry stares incredulously at him. “Friends buy each other coffee!”

“Oh my god,” Draco says, and kisses him.

Harry startles at it—then sinks into it, his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth falling open. Draco kisses him slowly, deeply, his hands coming around Harry’s waist—helpless, helpless in the heat of Harry’s mouth, wanting to pull away but unable to—Harry’s arms coming around his, pulling him close. He tastes like the coffee they’d had this morning, faintly bitter and sweet with too much sugar. The coffee Draco had bought for both of them.

Draco’s breath is cool on his lips. Harry hadn’t even noticed them parting, his eyes still shut, their mouths still close. He could feel Draco’s lips. He wanted to lean back in.

“What do you say?” Draco murmurs. Something rustles between them; Harry looks down, and there is the bouquet of cleomes he’d wrapped this morning, a lovely purple.

Draco laughs, breathless. “Elope with me?”

Three years later

They still come back every year. On the same day, to the same cliffs; they walk along the same rocky path near the ocean, laughing as they pull each other on, the waves crashing into the rocks and bursting into sprays, into the salty air.

At the bottom of the cliffs blooms a field of wild sea thrifts.

Harry can see it, now, from the balcony of their tiny hotel room: a hint of pink from behind the rocks, appearing and disappearing behind the relentless waves. It is barely visible in the dusk. The sky is darkening, into the color of a ripened plum.

Draco sneaks an arm around his waist, pulls him close. Harry leans into his touch. Noses at the hollow of Draco’s throat, the soft skin, the intimate warmth.

Murmurs, “What are you looking at?”

Draco hums. “Take a guess.”

“I don’t need to.”

Draco laughs. “Why did you ask, then?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Draco laughs again and turns Harry around. Three years later Harry still does not tire of it, watching Draco smile, the lines at the corner of his eyes crinkling as his cheeks fold—his face blossoming into the happiness. His pale eyes glint in the dusk. In the quietness of the moments before night there is only the sea, waves crashing ashore and breaking into thin foams.

Slowly, gently, in a low voice, Draco says, “I love you.”

The words glow warm and golden in the dark. Leaning in, Harry catches his lips; they are soft and sweet, just as three years ago when they first kissed.

On the nightstand by the bed, the vase of cleomes blooms in the young night.

#hp #harry potter #draco malfoy #drarry #fanfic #my fic #flowershop au #my first!

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yletylyf · 3 years

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Holiday fluff day 12!

A month of prompts from HP De-stress December; read the posts tagged with hp de-stress december starting from Day 1 at the bottom of the page. These drabbles take place after the end of my long Severus Snape/Tom Riddle fic, The Secret of the Philosopher’s Stone.

December 12: Diagon Alley

"There's a new textbook out on Defense Against the Dark Arts," Tom told Severus at breakfast on Saturday. "Published by one of Dumbledore's little stooges. The professor who took over your post at Hogwarts."

"Hestia Jones," Severus supplied, although Tom probably knew that and had avoided saying it out of stubbornness. "She published her own textbook? Good for her."

Severus had always wanted to publish his own textbook—not in Dark Arts, he had little to say there that wouldn't get him into trouble publishing under his real name—but in Potions. The existing textbooks were pathetic. Severus had not had any time since becoming a professor at age twenty-one, multitasking as a spy on Dumbledore for Voldemort, then kidnapping an orphaned child and devoting all his time outside work to raising the child.

Perhaps now was the time. God only knew the British magical world desperately needed a better Potions text. Andromeda had been pestering Severus to share some of his methods and recipes.

"I think I'll head to the bookstore and get a copy," Tom said.

"So that you can ridicule it?" Severus guessed.

"Perhaps it'll have something worthwhile to say," Tom demurred.

Severus laughed. "Perhaps," he agreed. "Want me to come with you?"

"Sure, that would be nice.”

They finished breakfast; Severus washed the dishes; and the two dressed warmly in wizarding robes and cloaks for the trip to Diagon Alley. They Apparated to the Leaky Cauldron, and headed through the gate to the shopping district.

"I know it's for security reasons," Tom grumbled as Severus tapped the correct brick in the courtyard, "but you'd think they would have permitted Apparition directly into Diagon Alley by now."

"Maybe if someone hadn't started a war and issued threats to blow this whole place up," Severus teased. "You are why we can't have nice things, Tom."

"It was decades ago," Tom protested. "Why isn't everyone over it?"

Severus did not dignify that with a reply. He tucked his arm into Tom's, and they set off for the bookstore.

Diagon Alley was crowded on this Saturday morning, with only two shopping weekends left before Christmas. Shoppers chatted excitedly with each other about their purchasers, owls and cats hooted and shrieked, and everything was a riot of sound and color.

Tom had some innate way of parting a crowd, which mysteriously melted in his path. Severus and Tom made it to the bookstore without being elbowed or having to dodge anyone. The bookstore was relatively quiet, an oasis of calm.

Tom and Severus browsed new releases for a while without finding Hestia Jones's book.

"Professor Snape!" came an almost too-cheerful voice to the side. "Can I help you find something?"

Severus turned and found himself greeting a former student. "Miss Granger," Severus said, very civilly, and shook her hand. "I didn't realize you worked here."

"Yes!" she said, still a little too cheerful. She was wearing a shop uniform and had her bushy hair pulled back in a neat, smooth bun, which is why Severus almost hadn't recognized her at first. "Someday I'd like to start my own shop, a small eclectic affair that offers whatever I think is neat at the time, but you have to start somewhere in life, don't you?"

"Indeed," Severus said, although he was a bit baffled. The talk in the Hogwarts's staffroom had always been that Hermione Granger was one of the brightest students in her generation, and would go on to do something that changed the world.

"Oh, have you met my partner?" Severus continued, as Tom was standing there staring at Hermione—a bit too intensely to be polite. "This is Corvin Gaunt."

Hermione held out her hand. Tom let it sit there for a second, then took it. He was busy staring at the side of her head, which was missing an ear—something normally concealed by her hair, but made very obvious by her current style.

"It's nice to meet you," Hermione said, ignoring Tom's staring. Severus figured she was used to it. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Have you?" Tom asked, frowning slightly.

"Miss Granger and Roger are close friends," Severus reminded Tom. "They were in the same year at Hogwarts."

"Hmm," Tom said.

"You're also the person Dumbledore accused of being You-Know-Who," Hermione said, her tone still incongruously cheerful.

That got Tom to smile. He would never not find this story endlessly amusing. "True," Tom agreed. "And I assure you, he still thinks so."

"He's very eccentric," Hermione said diplomatically. "Brilliant, but perhaps out of touch with reality in some aspects."

Tom grinned. "Indeed."

"Anyway," Severus said, before Tom could say something that revealed he found the story a little more amusing than was appropriate, "we were looking for Hestia Jones's new Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. Out of curiosity to see what her curriculum is like."

"Oh," Hermione said. "It's shelved with the Hogwarts textbooks, not under new releases. This way."

Hermione guided them to the proper section, asked Severus to say hi to Roger for her if Severus saw him soon, and then returned to the front of the shop.

"What happened to her ear?" was the first thing Tom demanded when she was out of hearing.

Severus sent Tom a rather cool look, realizing he was feeling slightly protective of Hermione.

"She was attacked by your troll on Halloween her first year at Hogwarts," Severus reminded Tom. "You know this, you used it against Dumbledore to have him removed as headmaster."

"Ah," Tom said, looking slightly uncomfortable. "That."

The troll that Quirrell—while being possessed by Voldemort—had unleashed on the school as a distraction on Halloween in 1991. It had attacked Hermione in a girls’ bathroom and no one had known she was there or come to her rescue. She had been badly injured and missed a lot of school.

"Yes," Severus agreed, picking up a copy of Hestia Jones's book. "She almost died. The Healers were able to fix most of her injuries, but they never found her ear to reattach it."

"Why doesn't anyone make her a new ear?" Tom demanded.

"You can't just make a new ear," Severus protested. "There are prosthetics, but Muggles are actually better at those than magic."

"I could make her an ear," Tom mused. "I ought to offer."

Severus wasn't sure what to say to that. He headed to the front of the store to pay.

"Even you can't just make new body parts, surely?"

"Of course I can," Tom said. "I'm quite good at it."

Severus just shook his head. That was magic Severus had never heard of, but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Tom was capable of performing magic no one else had ever heard of.

"Er, well, sit on that thought for a while," Severus advised. "We should think about it before offering something like that out of the blue."

"Perhaps," Tom said, but he didn't sound convinced.

Severus completed his transaction, then took Tom's hand in his as they walked out of the store together.

"I'm glad you're feeling a bit of remorse for the troll," Severus said, and meant it. Tom showing regret for wrongdoing was very welcome to Severus. "But Hermione's all right. She was a top student and I like her bookstore idea. Let's have her and Roger over for tea sometime and get to know Hermione better."

"Fine," Tom said, resigned to the idea of intruders on their peaceful life at their little cottage.

#my fic #sniddle #Severus Snape/Tom Riddle #hp de-stress december #holiday fluff #drabble

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bbrandy2002 · 4 years

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Fool’s Rush In

Part 3

I’m participating in @wackydrabbles prompt #52: Sure, alcohol solves most problems, but in this particular case, I don't think it will help (It is highlighted in bold).

Series Premise: With two weeks until Liam is to marry Madeleine, the guys throw him a bachelor party in Vegas. After a drunken night, he finds himself with way more than he bargained for.

You can find the previous chapters here.

MC did not exist in Liam’s social season. OC Riley Brooks lives in Las Vegas.

Pairing: Liam x OC

Book: The Royal Romance

A/N: This is an 18 plus series. There is mention of an STD, so if that is a trigger … might not want to read.

A/N: Thanks to @burnsoslow and @choiceskatie for snippet reading. And Burnsy and @jessiembruno for suggestions.

Word Count: 1752

Permanent Tags: @emceesynonymroll @romanticatheart-posts @burnsoslow @dcbbw @ao719 @jessiembruno @hopefulmoonobject @texaskitten30 @drakesensworld @janezillow @merridithsmiscellany-blog @mskaneko @loveellamae @queenjilian @sirbeepsalot @pedudley @caroldxnvxrs @jovialyouthmusic @forthebrokenheartedthings @desireepow-1986 @bebepac @kingliam2019 @lovablegranny @cordoniaqueensworld @amandablink @blueaster-blog1 @liamxs-world @choiceskatie @iaminlovewithtrr @hopelessromanticmonie @charlotteg234

Series Tags: @princessleac1 @cordonia-continued @sanchita012 @shz256 @cordonia-gothqueen @narrytheworld @graceful-leah @mom2000aggie @queenwalton @tinkie1973 @muchkoolermk

*I only tag those who ask for it. Let me know if you want added or removed.

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Standing in the bathroom of the hotel's penthouse they shared with friends, Maxwell broke the news to a stunned Drake about his ... unfortunate condition.

"What're you gonna do about them, Drake?"

Frustrated, Drake ran a hand down his face, wanting to be anywhere but with Maxwell at that precise moment. "I don't know, Maxwell," he spat. "This is my first crabbing!"

"Maybe we can have a doctor look at them. Get some ... I don't know ... kind of comb or poison or something."

He pulled his pants back up and groaned. "I just need a drink."

Maxwell followed Drake out of the bathroom, keeping a good distance from his friend. "Sure, alcohol solves most problems, but in this particular case, I don't think it will help."

Liam and Leo sat on the sofa watching the Instagram posting of the wedding ceremony as the duo walked by.

A disgruntled Liam stood and gestured to the laptop on the coffee table. "Maxwell! Why the hell did you post this? Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Drake was already out the door headed for the hotel bar. Maxwell never broke stride as he trailed. "No time to talk, Li. Got an STD emergency."

The door slammed with a jarring thud. Liam turned back to Leo with a confused look. "What was that?"

"Sounds like the Drakester didn't wrap it up," Leo chuckled while sippng on a capri-sun, while never taking his attention away from the screen. "Oh! Oh!" He waved his younger brother over with excitement. "This is the part where you sang, Moves Like Jagger, to Riley during the ceremony."

They both listened in as Liam's garbled voice reverberated from the speakers watching the King grind fervently against his bride. "Take me by the tongue, and I'll know you. Kiss me 'til you're drunk, and I'll show you all the moves like Liam. I've got the moves like Liam. I've got the moooOoooOooOooves like Liam."

Liam's hands flew in the air out of bewilderment. "I don't even know that fucking song!"

Leo slurped through his little yellow straw then replied, "I think you do. Videos don't lie, Liam."

A haste knock interrupted their viewing; Liam answered the door, surprised to see Riley.

The frantic woman held her phone up to his face. "Do you want to explain why I'm all over the internet with you, Elvis, and this … this monkey? Also, it says we got married?"

Leo bolted from the sofa. "Hey! That monkey has a name, you know.”

"Not now, Leo," Liam grumbled.

Riley leaned to get a better look at the sandy-haired blond who was approaching the door. "Who are you?"

Stepping in front of his brother with a hand extended, he flashed his signature grin. "I'm Leo, your new brother-in-law. But only by half because my mom left me. Then I got a new mommy: Liam's mom -- then she died. Then we both got another new mom. Wait … is Regina still alive? Oh my god! Tell me we still have a mom, Liam!"

"Leo! Get the hell out of here!"

He huffed. "Fine. I'll go make a sandwich. You want one sis?"

Riley shook her head.

Liam gave her an apologetic look. "I'm so sorry about him. Please come in." He stepped aside and offered her a seat on the sofa.

She couldn't help but notice the laptop on the table paused on their abrupt ceremony. It was apparent to her that Liam was trying desperately to get his own answers.

Liam pushed the laptop aside and sat across from her on the table; his elbows rested on his thighs as he sat forward. He let out a heavy exhale. "I suppose we have a lot to talk about."

"Yes, we do. What is all of this? And you're a King? Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I am. It's a small country in the Mediterranean -- Cordonia. And I couldn't tell you because my head guard wouldn't allow me to come on this trip without him unless I remained discreet about my identity."

Riley regarded him thoughtfully. "I suppose that makes sense."

Leo handed her a Capri-Sun with the straw already pushed in. She took it hesitantly and thanked him. "I guess I just need to know how we ended up married to one another last night?"

Liam's remorseful eyes idled up to his brother, who was now standing next to him, eating a turkey and Frito's sandwich. "According to my brother here, whose heart is bigger than his brain, I called him and asked him to marry us."

Leo shook his head. "That's true, Riley. It's all Liam's fault."

Liam rolled his eyes. "Leo, why don't you go check on Drake and Max."

"Fuck that! Drake ain't got nothing I wanna be checking on right now."

"No, stay," Riley pleaded. "You seem to be the only one who knows what happened last night. Can you tell me everything, please?"

Leo gave Liam an arrogant smirk before falling back onto the sofa beside Riley.

"I'll tell you everything, but you two have to promise to name your firstborn after it's Uncle Leo."

Liam dropped his head into his hands. "Leo, dammit."

Leo nudged Riley in the side and leaned into her. "Your husband's an asshole. Probably inherited from our daddy. If he ever makes you drink from a wine goblet, you should probably run."

Riley patted his knee like a child and spoke softly, assuming at this point he was a mental case. "Leo, sweetie, can you just tell me what happened last night, please."

"Well, as I told Liam, I was getting my prostate milked from hot Nurse Trisha at the bank. I just needed change for a twenty, but they said I had to make a deposit first. They even give you porn in this private room. So she's two fingers deep when I get a call from Liam, who was as drunk as Cooter Brown at a church picnic and said he needed me to come down to that Graceland Chapel because he was getting married. So after I sputtered in the little cup, I left in such a hurry I didn't get my change, but I called Drake and Max and told them they had to meet us at the chapel."

Riley cocked her head. "Why was a monkey there?"

"Oh, that's Mongo, the ring bearer. And if you pulled on his nipples, he'd hump your legs and give you a quick reach around. The coolest fucking monkey I ever knew."

Riley snapped a wide-eyed stare at Liam, who just shrugged at her and said, "I ... I've got nothing."

Leo bit into his sandwich. The crunch from the mound of Fritos could be heard in the casino fifty-one stories below. "You know, Liam --" He smacked his lips a few times. "Now that you're married to sis, you don't have to marry Maddie. You can have the wife and Queen you've always wanted. And judging by the noises I heard coming from your room last night, she makes you very happy."

Riley chuckled, slightly embarrassed, while Liam stood and walked to the wet bar for a drink and some distance.

"Leo, I appreciate the thought," he said while pouring a tumbler of scotch. "But Riley and I are just strangers who had a good time, but made a huge mistake." Liam took a sip of his drink and walked back to the sofa. "Don't worry about anything, Riley. I will take care of the annulment in Cordonia and here in the states."

She smiled. "I would appreciate that. Thank you."

Leo tossed his sandwich on the table. "No! Liam, man, this is your chance to be free. You came to Vegas and hit the jackpot. And maybe you two kids are strangers now, but there's no reason why you couldn't get to know each other and fall madly in love. You already know you'll never love Mads. And then at the end of the day, I'd be the big sexy cupid who made it all possible."

It surprised Liam that his brother's suggestion tempted him... and that Leo actually made a coherent suggestion. He sighed. "I don't think so, Leo."

Riley looked between the two men, who seemed to have a stare down over the logic of this idea. She liked Liam; he was the handsome, mysterious guy that she had always dreamed of meeting. She took a long drink of her juice and sat it on the table. "I think I will go, now. Is there anything you need from me, Liam, to quicken the annulment?"

"If you could write your contact information down in case my lawyer has questions, that would be great. I'll be sure you receive copies of everything as soon as possible."

Riley pulled a notepad and a pen from her purse as Leo walked over to Liam to debate further. "Don't do this little brother. Don't you do it. We can't afford to lose another member of our family. First it was daddy, then Regina, now Riley. I can't take it, Liam."

Liam placed a hand on Leo's shoulder. "It's done, Leo. And ... Regina is alive. You just spoke to her yesterday."

Leo's head dropped back with a heavy sigh of relief. "Oh, thank god."

"Here ya go, Liam." Riley stood and handed the paper to him and grabbed her purse from the sofa.

Leo clutched both of her shoulders and shook them. "Please, Riley, don't go. Don’t leave my brother an orphan. You're the Queen of Cordonia now. Think of the people!"

Riley snorted from just the thought. "I know nothing about being a queen. I doubt I would have anything to offer your little country."

"Liam could teach you! Hell, I can teach you, too. I'm the smartest one in the family. You'll be bossing people around in no time."

"That's very kind of you, but I think I like my little life just fine here in Vegas, bossing kids around the classroom all day." She patted his arm endearingly and walked past him toward the door.

Liam stood there, watching her walk away while the words of his brother replayed heavily through his mind. Nothing made sense; he was sad that she was leaving, knowing that it was completely irrational to feel that way. Leo was right, though: this was his chance to be free, and even if it didn't work out in the end, it could buy him time to find the one he would love and have the family he always wanted.

He turned away and walked back to the wet bar to pour another drink; he wouldn't be selfish and ask this complete stranger to give up her life for him.

With his back turned, he closed his eyes when he heard Riley speak her goodbyes and opened the door.

A familiar voice rang out that shook him to his core, and he whipped around to see his current wife stopped at the door by his future one.

"Oh, you must be the one who thinks she can steal my crown."

#Fools Rush In #king liam #choices liam x mc #liam x riley #liam x mc #the royal romance #prince leo #choices fanfiction #trr #bbrandy2002 #wackydrabbles

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typewriterghcst · 4 years

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Title: A Very Small Wish Fandom: The Cat Returns Characters: Baron, Muta, Toto, Haru, plus some OCs Rating: PGish maybe?? Summary: A pleading request from a parent whose daughter has been cursed by a resentful witch is nothing truly out of the ordinary for the Cat Bureau— in fact, it might be so common so as to be routine— so why does something feel inherently off about this particular one? Notes: Fourth chapter of seven of a Secret Santa gift for @deedee-sunflowers. As mentioned on ao3, I split up the fourth chapter, so consider this something of an intermission! And I’m sorry it took me all the way until the fourth chapter to finally get to the ‘witch’ part of the prompt rip I also had neglected to apologize before now for the lack of romance. I hope that’s not a deal breaker orz I tend to gravitate toward gen, and that held true for this story, unfortunately, aha

Ch. 4: Grandmother

By the time the errant inhabitants of the Sown Forest are put back where they belong, a few mishaps aside, and the Bureau and Haru make their way back to Vanya’s spot, any disquiet he’d been on the verge of verbalizing is long gone. He greets them with an expected cheeriness, almost shyly giving Baron’s hat back to him.

...Were he not seemingly incapable of such an emotion, that is. In truth, he is dangerously close to instead offering the Creation a remarkably potent example of ‘bedroom eyes’ as he hands the accessory over.

Perhaps in a polite attempt to distract from such a reaction, Baron asks, “Which direction is the— ah, what did you call them? The Top-Top? Will it take us long to reach our destination?”

“If we go, we will reach it,” Vanya responds nonchalantly.

Well, it doesn’t take long at all for that answer to rankle Muta’s nerves enough for him to protest.

“...Yanno, you’re pretty mouthy for something that’s about a foot tall.”

“Let’s not idle,” Baron cuts in as politely as he’s able, giving Muta a discerning look where Vanya can not see. “Time is against us, and, as previously detailed, we ought to shave off as much unnecessary labor as we possibly can in our endeavors. Mr. Vanya,” he starts, turning to the fox, “This is your home, and you know the ins and outs of the environment much more thoroughly than we do. We will follow your direction.”

“I’m still gonna complain when it doesn’t make sense, though,” Muta grumbles from the side.

“With your comprehension skills? That’s going to be a lot of complaining,” Toto is swift to remark.

“At least I’m not a birdbrain!”

“That is Oostal, though!” Vanya chirps, having clapped his paws together a few times in delight while listening to the two bicker. Then, thoughtfully, “There is a caravan that accepts passengers. It will take us to the Top-Top.”

“It’s too far to walk?”

“No,” Vanya chirrups again, scampering away and waving for the four of them to follow him shortly after. They share a dubious look with each other before complying, leaving the tidy border of the Sown Forest behind them.

When Haru turns to look just moments later out of nothing more than muted curiosity, she finds that the orderly line of white trees which made up the framework of the forest are no more than faint outlines, like a particularly abstract watercolor painting or a distant cityscape through rain-dotted glass. Seeing also that she’s let a fairly substantial gap form between her and the others even as Muta pauses to let her catch up (having noticed her absence), she jogs forward to continue beside him, putting the oddity out of her mind.

&&&

The roving carriage that Vanya leads them to is, like many things in Oostal, not so terribly outlandish so as to be wholly alien, but still just enough to feel… unfamiliar.

It’s at once delicate and rusted, another relic of Oostal’s ostensible fading vitality, or perhaps of its apparent age, two rows of seating enveloped in a velvety but threadbare and stained layer of scarlet cloth. What had likely once been quite a pretty canopy stretched over the back of it now lies in ragged gauze hanging from bent and dainty posts. The creaking of its wearied joints and wheels echo throughout the air as it rolls stubbornly over the landscape.

There are no horses. Nor is there an apparent driver. More than that, there’s no apparent motor attached to it (and had there been, it would have been the most traditionally technologically advanced object in Oostal the Bureau had yet seen). Yet Vanya is forced to break into a modest jog to catch up to the thing, and it still doesn’t stop in its implacable journey even when he manages to gallop alongside it and clear its side.

“It’s easy!” He calls to them once he’s settled in the back of the wagon.

Amusingly, simply gaining a passenger, even one so minuscule as Vanya, seems to slow the carriage, enough so that it’s little more than a meager sprint the Bureau must employ to catch up. And the addition of four more passengers results in it coming to a momentary stop; then, with all the weary resignation of a browbeaten beast of burden, it circles back around in the direction it had just come, and they are again on their way. At least, Haru assumes they are.

She notices Baron open his mouth and almost immediately close it again, looking faintly discomfited with something, and to herself she hazards a very plausible guess that it was most likely to ask how long the journey might take them.

They’ve all gathered by now that Vanya’s grasp of the passage of time is… tenuous, to say the least. It’s not an entirely comfortable handicap, considering.

So, as a rather roundabout way to procure an answer, Toto instead asks, “Would you advise getting comfortable, Vanya?”

Vanya wastes no time in flopping down into a sitting position at the edge of the base, tail twitching contentedly. “It won’t hurt!”

“So, when were you gonna tell us about that whole ‘spend too long in the forest and you can’t leave’ bit?” Muta asks sourly in the proceeding silence.

“We weren’t going to be there that long,” Vanya sniffs.

Muta appears unsurprisingly unsatisfied with this answer, and he stares the fox down for a good minute before the lack of reaction from Vanya leads to him giving up the ghost for the time being and figuratively throwing his paws in the air.

“Whatever. I deserve a nap. Don’t talk to me until we get there.”

Vanya surreptitiously turns up his nose, but otherwise doesn’t respond, and Muta wanders a short distance away to the driver’s seat, where he quickly plonks into a sleeping position with his back turned to the rest of them. Baron, having watched this show of exasperation with a small measure of knowing affection, then turns that same half-crooked smile to Vanya, this time with a faint edge of sympathy.

“...Well, if there’s room for rest—”

“A short rest,” Vanya clarifies, back to his earlier agreeable tone.

“A short rest, then— I believe I’ll take advantage of it, as well. Don’t hesitate to let us know when we’ve arrived.”

“It’ll be obvious.”

Baron nods once in acknowledgement before moving to join Muta in the front seat. The indistinct, murmuring conversation they begin shortly after is quick to fade into the ambient noise of the laboring of their current mode of transport.

Toto seems content to remain where he is, perched upon one of the velvety seats lined along the side. Haru sits across from him on the opposite row of seats.

“Not to sound skeptical or ungrateful, Vanya, but it’s awfully convenient that this carriage is so willing to take us to our next destination. Does Oostal have a lot of secrets like this?” Toto starts.

“Yes,” Vanya doesn’t hesitate to answer. Then, more thoughtfully, “...or, maybe no.”

He leans back a little and stretches, and when he continues, there’s a certain impassively dazed quality in his voice, “...The Muta Cat complains a lot about Oostal. He wants Oostal to make sense, but Oostal wasn’t made that way. It is what it is.”

“Don’t fret too much about Muta,” Toto says with a dismissive wave of his wing. “He’s just grumpy because we didn’t bring enough snacks.”

Vanya gives an amused-sounding hum.

“...also, out of curiosity, why are we using it anyhow?” The crow pats one of the cushions under him with a talon. “At least, since it’s not too far to walk.”

“Hmm, because it makes it easier.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“Because sitting down is easier than walking,” Vanya replies with a glib obliviousness, the sincerity of which Haru finds she can’t quite discern one way or the other.

Toto, at least, only laughs. “I guess you have me there.”

“It seemed like it was already on its way somewhere, though,” Haru then begins, and the oddness inherent in this ostensibly sentient carriage is not at all lost on her, though she neglects to address it specifically. “Where was it going before we, er… commandeered it..?”

“Nobody knows,” Vanya explains blithely. “Always on a journey Somewhere, though. We just let it roam, because it never stops.”

He pats the faded wooden base under him, almost affectionately.

“Maybe it will finally sit down and sleep when it gets There. In the meantime, it takes you anywhere you wish.”

For a fleeting moment, Haru thinks to ask how the wagon knows the way to all these locations, but she’s by now gathered that, however it works, locations in Oostal do not exist in the same way they do on Earth (or, indeed, in her general understanding of how such things exist). She has often liked to think of herself as being a natural with directions, and yet has consistently felt lost in Oostal (the inherent disorientation seemingly built into the Sown Forest notwithstanding).

She watches Vanya kick his dangling feet for a few minutes, and then moves from her seat to sit beside him.

“I haven’t asked yet, but I’m curious, Vanya—” She eventually starts. “What is the witch like? Does she have a name?”

Vanya seems happy enough to answer, long tail thumping once against the worn base of the carriage and one tiny paw going to his chin in thought. “We call her Grandmother.”

“Grandmother?” Toto sounds profoundly amused, and Haru can’t blame him.

“She’s given us no other name. We came up with our own, and I think she likes it. It is a very affectionate name.”

“Yeah, it is. From her antics, I would have expected her to have a more… um, nefarious name. Definitely not something so casual.” Then, after a moment of further deliberation, “Is she really a grandmother?”

Vanya emits his pealing laugh again, flapping one of his paws. “She is a witch! She has no family. She has lived almost as long as Oostal itself!”

“Th-That long? How old is Oostal..?”

“Old,” Vanya responds unhelpfully, as per usual. Haru is abruptly reminded of Muta’s earlier assertion of the same, back when they’d been searching through the Sown Forest.

“...I see.” Haru glances out at the rolling scenery— a golden sky streaked with teal blue, long, pearlescent grasses that wave in the breeze, and dark water in the distance. It’s beautiful, scenery unlike anything she’s seen before, and so blissfully dreamlike. Then, seemingly just as soon as she’d expressed her appreciation, it all shifts in an instant. It’s seamless, but… indescribably disorienting, how the colors and shapes of their surroundings suddenly melt away into something new.

The sky now is dark, clear of clouds or gold or teal-colored streaks. The gentle hills and their shimmering grasses vanish; all around them the landscape has flattened. Like the Sown Forest, the horizon stretches on so far so as to be near unfathomable. And despite the fact they had previously been traveling uphill and are now incomprehensibly rolling across a flat surface without reaching the top of the hill, there had been no crash downwards, the transition from hills to plains as unremarkable as the one from their surroundings.

If Haru spends too long questioning it, her head will start hurting, she knows it.

“I’m no expert on witches,” Toto starts behind them, “But I’ve always heard many of them have an unassuming object which serves as a source of power for them, nefarious or not. In fact, I recall one which had hidden her soul inside a flower. Does Grandmother have one..? It isn’t often I hear of mischievous witches who also happen to be very graceful losers, after all.”

“Mm, a source of her power, maybe not, but Grandmother is the sole proprietor of a very curious book,” Vanya answers. “It’s the only one of its kind, and no one quite knows just how she came to be the owner of it.”

“Oh? And what sort of book is this mysterious tome..?” Toto asks.

Vanya gives a questioning, thoughtful noise, twisting a little to look at the crow as he does. “It is like an address book. Every creature that now lives in Oostal, or once has— its name is written in that book. Its real name, that is.”

It’s here Toto tilts his head, and his eyes, to Haru, sharpen just so, not so abruptly so as to cause alarm or suspicion, but noticeably for someone who has become more accustomed to his mannerisms. When he speaks, it’s with a marked delicateness.

“...I imagine such a book would be quite coveted.”

“Oh, yes.”

It’s when they pass through a broken iron gate that Vanya suddenly stands, dusting off his hands and sides excitedly before pointing out in the distance behind the two of them (Haru has to crane her neck to see what’s got his attention; as she does, she sees that Toto is following suit, as well).

“There it is! The ruined workshop of the Top-Top. Once home to the finest crafters of decorative eggs in all of Oostal.”

Haru, again feeling the faintest veneer of old destruction and deterioration lingering over yet another Oostal location, gazes up at the looming structure, overgrown with red ivy and moss, and the deteriorating gate they’d just rolled through, and then asks, “...What happened to the Top-Top?”

“Nobody is quite sure,” Vanya answers blithely; his own eyes never leave the dilapidated factory, and Haru gets quite the impression that where she sees the echoes of a lamentable catastrophe, he sees something quite different. “It happened overnight, and by the time there were explorers doughty enough to traverse the city, there were no remains to tell the story.”

“That’s a sad story,” Haru says.

“Mm! Sad! It’s an enduring mystery, all right. Virtuous Siree is obsessed with it. Oh! There— on the side, there’s an entrance. That was for their clients.” Vanya hops over the side of the carriage with such speed, he’s little more than a wispy, white blur. Haru slides off the back end to follow him, sharing a — look with Toto before she sees that Vanya has been joined a short ways away by Baron and Muta.

“There will be many eggs inside,” Vanya is explaining.

“So, what, we just go in and grab one that looks good..?” Muta asks with a shrug.

“Were you paying attention to the original riddle at all?” Toto replies.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“It means not just any egg will do, Hairball Brain. From the sounds of it, we’re looking for one that never had the chance to be decorated. Isn’t that right, Vanya?”

Something in Vanya’s expression appears lightly annoyed, as if he feels Toto had rather upstaged him and his no doubt theatrical reveal of the answer to this particular stanza of the witch’s riddle.

“That’s right,” he answers, but his clipped tone at least doesn’t last. He laughs again, though, clapping his paws together once. “A bird should know his eggs, shouldn’t he? Here, follow me.”

&&&

If the outside of the old factory had looked desolate and crumbling, then the inside only furthers the aesthetic— peeling wallpaper, overturned furniture, thick, dusty cobwebs. The air is stale, cold. And unlike the Sown Forest, there is no persistent ambient noise to temper the silence. There are, however, hundreds (if not thousands) of tiny eggs scattered across every surface. They litter the floor. Some of them appear to have been dropped and now lie in shattered slivers across the stone flooring.

...Not one of them, from what they can see by the door, has been decorated.

“Wa— hold on, how are we supposed to tell which one is the right one..?”

“We take them all!” Vanya responds brightly.

“You can’t be serious,” Haru starts.

“I’m not.” He scampers to a nearby cluster of eggs and swipes one, holding it out to the rest of them so that they can more easily discern the thin seam along the middle. Then, when he’s certain they’ve all four seen it, Vanya takes both paws and… gently pries it open much like a jewelry box.

“Oh!” Haru responds with breathy awe. “It’s beautiful!”

In contrast to its plain, unadorned outside, the inside of the egg boasts a vibrant green coating, whitish gold lining an overlapping shell pattern in dainty filaments. The same gleaming platinum is present just below the egg’s seam, forming a tiny floor, upon which rests a minuscule, lace-clad mouse carved from something that resembles ivory.

“It reminds me of a music box,” Haru continues softly.

“Mm! ...But not every egg here is like this. One of them must be unlovely both inside and out.”

“It’s just a little plain, that’s all,” Haru feels oddly compelled to counter.

Muta, on the other hand, appears to have singled out a different issue in the present discussion.

“...so, the plan is to just… open every single egg here and hope one doesn’t have some glitzy trinket in it? How are we supposed to do that in just— how long do we have left..?”

“Somewhere around 28 hours,” Baron says.

“In just 25 hours! Look at all these things— there’s gotta be an easier way..!”

“There is, but…” Vanya appears rather uncharacteristically abashed, paws linked behind his back and stance nearly cringing inward.

“But..?” Muta prompts warily.

“You can not be upset with me! It had to be done!”

“Mr. Vanya,” Baron starts with measured patience. “Please, we are here to assist you and your daughter— there is no need to keep secrets. What is the faster method you know of?”

Appeased, the fox clasps his paws together and then opens them again, revealing a modest handful of the scarlet-colored berries from the Sown Forest.

It doesn’t take long for the pieces to fall into place.

“It was you! You’re the reason those things all turned on us!”

“I was promised there would be no upset!” Vanya cries, apparently deeming Baron the least likely to condemn him, as he quite swiftly scurries behind the Creation, only peeking out to yelp his defense. “Pretty Vanya happened across a berry bush while running to meet the others! It couldn’t hurt to have extras! What if something happened to the one the Helpful Bureau was given?”

“Cut the crap, twerp, you picked them up because you knew we’d need them to make this egg hunt easier,” Muta argues. “Why else would you have worried we’d get mad at you, like it was your fault?!”

Vanya doesn’t respond, but the way his eyes widen in apparent consternation, and the vulnerable, searching look he directs to the four of them says that he hadn’t expected to get caught in one of his own fibs. Even Baron, ever the charitable gentleman, displays some misgiving as he stares at the fox cowering behind him.

“...There do appear to be a number of details you’ve neglected to advise us of, Mr. Vanya,” he eventually agrees softly.

Feeling evidently betrayed by this quiet admonishment from Even Baron, Vanya backs away from the four of them, glancing rapidly between them all again and giving the impression he’s quite frantically running through all his options in his mind. Perhaps predictably, he settles on… well, what they’ve all come to expect as the usual.

“It has been a long time!” He cries, hiding his face in his scarf. “Little Virtuous Siree has spent so long being the way she is now! I wanted a surefire way to gain Helpful Bureau’s assistance, and fast! A time limit, I thought, was the easiest way to do it. The Pretty Vanya Creature is not so devious!”

“Th… that’s it?” Haru pauses. “I guess that explains the time measurements always being off.”

“And the speed of the riddle being solved,” Toto adds. “You must have been working on this for a while, Vanya.”

Muta seems unconvinced, but reluctantly so. “Are you really telling me that a witch not only gave you no restrictions about getting outside help but also didn’t slap down a time limit on you? Eh, look, I’m not trying to be that guy, but that just seems real careless to me, specially for a witch.”

Vanya only cries more loudly.

“Now, now,” Baron starts, offering his own handkerchief to the fox. “It is understandable why you’d feel the need to fabricate this, er, half-truth, but I do promise you, it’s not necessary. We of the Cat Bureau are quite happy to offer our assistance to you in a timely fashion, Mr. Vanya, legitimate time limit or not. And I do hope you will, here on out, feel comfortable placing your complete trust in us.”

Vanya’s black eyes, always rather stark against the pale ivory of his fur, shine now as if they’ve been dusted with glitter as he regards Baron with his paws clasped.

“Yes, yes! The Prettiest Vanya Creature promises— from here, no more fibs.”

“Good.” Baron responds with an obliging nod.

“Alright,” Toto agrees, as well, before continuing, “These berries you picked up at our last location, though— they’re going to help us find the right egg in a quicker fashion? How’s that?”

“We eat them,” Vanya answers bluntly, miming the motion of popping one of the little berries in his mouth.

A reluctant uneasiness settles over the group, then. Their eccentric client has just promised to abandon his exaggerations and falsehoods, and Haru, personally, thinks to herself she’s never been the type to rebuff a genuine apology, but… So, too, does she think this feels like an awfully monumental amount of trust to place in someone so fickle so soon.

“Eat them…” Toto echoes pensively, softly.

“...They don’t taste gross, do they?” Muta asks, unimpressed.

“Hmm, I don’t know. There are no records kept in Oostal about the taste of the Sown Forest berries. So few people have had them!”

“Well,” Baron starts, again the voice of optimism, “If, even though there have been but a handful of pioneers who have tried this particular curiosity, it hasn’t yet gained a reputation as an anathema, then I believe it should be taken as a sign of favorable fortune. No news is good news, as some might say.”

“Bet they said the same thing about enemas,” Muta grumbles under his breath.

Vanya holds his own little red berry above his head, as if attempting to see the light pass through the opaque sphere, and smiles at it in the same way a mother might her stumbling toddler. “They are very special, like most sacred things. And because of that, they allow those who have been gifted with them a most impressive temporary ability.”

“Oh, yeah? And what ability is that..?”

Vanya smiles at Muta, distracted from the fruit. “To see to the heart of anything.”

“Ah,” Baron says with an acknowledging nod, “Like the Lubov, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“Well…” Muta sighs, interrupting the silence that settles seconds after. “Bottoms up, I guess.”

Finally, with one last tentative look between the four of them, they all take the proverbial plunge.

#the cat returns #secret santa #three fics in two days???? is this madness???#fjfjkd;a

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boycottyashahime · 4 years

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Alright, so I’m bad at Tumblr, and though I wanted to just reblog the original post from @strawberrycreampiefluff and put most of it under a cut or perhaps find a way to trim it, I couldn’t find a way to make it work. So, we’re starting a new thread. Here’s the link the other one if anyone reading hasn’t been following the discussion and want to catch up: https://strawberrycreampiefluff.tumblr.com/post/625063196626223104/what-do-you-think-of-this-whole-ppl-shipping

Anyhow, since we discussed this beforehand, I’ll start from the beginning, only working with the storytelling elements from the series, and I’ll leave out the latter part of the post regarding moralizing (which I mostly agree with anyway, so it’s no loss to me).

“I was trying to convey that considering the methods of storywriting and telling, it would break the “pattern” Rumiko Takashi built up and lowering the impact of Sessh character growth he would later experience. A father-daughter bond is not inferior to a romantic bond, but it would seem out of place, to have both his father and brother form a romantic relationship with a human and then Sessh breaking that pattern by introducing a new kind of relationship-dynamic - when he is the most crucial character in the series when it comes to demon-human relations.”

I’m still quite unclear HOW the impact of Sesshomaru’s character growth is necessarily lowered from not having a romantic bond with a human. Why is the continuation of this pattern so important, in your view, to the character’s development? From my perspective, introducing a new relationship dynamic into and breaking patterns is actually a good thing in stories - It’s a great way to add variety and a different point of view to a narrative. Having characters take a pattern in a different, unique direction can add meaning in a way the reader couldn’t see coming, give the story unexpected dimension.

And you’ve already said that you and other shippers like yourself don’t see anything romantic while Rin is still a child in the original series, so that is effectively what happened. Since we agree that the relationship wasn’t actually romantic within the context of the original Inuyasha series, Sesshomaru took a love of a human in an entirely different direction than his father or his brother did. Which conveys complexity in how youkai can relate to humans that wasn’t in the established pattern. As a reader, I find that kind of thing fun and engaging, though you may disagree.

“A father-daughter relationship would still put Sessh in a superior position to Rin (as the father), not adding a lot to his character development other than him caring for one other human being.”

I have to wince here, because while yes, technically Sesshomaru is in a superior position to Rin in a father-daughter relationship, the implication here is that this can be compared to the sense of superiority he had over humans as a whole that you referenced earlier. Is a parent-child relationship really comparable to a racist outlook? I feel like these two things are quite unrelated, having two ENTIRELY different connotations from the word “superior”. One is an entirely natural superior position, using one’s greater experience, knowledge, and ability to facilitate the growth and guidance of someone still on their way up. The other is a wholly unnatural and malicious disregard for a person based on superficial features. Sesshomaru’s superior attitude toward humans before he met Rin was not based on a paternalistic concern, but complete disgust and the notion that they were entirely unworthy of consideration. The two connotations of “superior” here are just not analogous in the greater narrative.

“In a romantic relationship, both partners should be equals (anything other is unacceptable), for this to happen Sessh would’ve had to lower himself (his pride) to Rins level, since he was the one with the big ego and humans were regarded as one of the lower creatures of the food chain.”

Again, I think it is entirely possible for Sesshomaru to learn not to regard humans as “lower on the food chain” through a relationship that ISN’T romance, but that aside, this whole notion brings up a question: why didn’t Rumiko Takahashi write Rin into the story as a young adult? We’ve already discussed how romantic implications to the relationship couldn’t exist while she’s still a child in the series, and why Sesshomaru and Rin are definitely NOT equal during the series. So if it was so important for Sesshomaru to be otherwise equal to Rin so he can lower his pride and truly consider her such, why was Rin not written as a fully autonomous adult so we could cut to the chase? It seems that if what you’re describing was really Rumiko Takahashi’s intent, it would have been a lot easier if the girl was already grown up. At the very least, our dear author could have ended the series when Rin was an appropriate age to actually make the point instead of leaving it hanging.

“Doing the exact same thing he criticized his father for, which for him would’ve been humiliating in the beginning of the series. The sequel (if you regard it as canon) goes even farther, making him create his own half demons - the very reason he hated his brother in the first place. His mother even said he becomes like his father in the strangest ways - and the only “strange” thing we know about his father was his romantic relationship with Izayoi.”

Since English isn’t your first language, I’m guessing you’re just mistaken in the map of this sentence, but the word “strange” here is referring to Sesshomaru’s behavior in relation to his father’s. What is strange is how Sesshomaru is like his father, not his father’s ways. This actually makes the opposite point - it seems to refer to the ways in which Sesshomaru is behaving as odd, maybe in relation to a pattern his father fit into.

“That’s why I think it wouldn’t fall apart if we draw the parallel in a wider context as you say, because other characters didn’t have the same starting point as Sessh. I very much agree with you, that Inuyasha’s platonic bonds would also count as a dog forming close bonds with humans, but in Inuyasha’s or Shippou’s case, they didn’t need the same character development like Sessh, since they had a different attitude towards humans or “lesser-beings” in the first place (Inuyasha was even past the stage of lowering himself, also out of romantic reasons btw, since he was ready to become human for Kikyo).”

I’m curious as to how the parallel and pattern matter if it’s null and void because Inuyasha and the other characters we talked about have different character arcs. Of course they aren’t starting from the same place as Sesshomaru, characters never do. They’re varied and diverse because it would be boring as tar to write them all going through the same issues. My point about the parallel was that even if it could be said that there’s some similarity in how dog YOUKAI form bonds with humans to actual DOGS, it’s not really a good parallel, because there are other “species” of youkai much less friendly with humans doing it too. I’m having trouble understanding what this argument has to do with that.

In reference to the above, I agree, the example characters you cited didn’t have the same level of dismissive racism as Sesshomaru did (I say “same level” because Shippou does carry a bit of prejudice, even as a small child), but when that’s apparent, why is the pattern even relevant? Since the characters aren’t set to all learn the same lesson, their relationships shouldn’t really resemble each other’s in the long run either, should they? Writers use relationships as tools for character development, and they usually want to use the right tool for the right job. Maybe romantic love with a human was right for Inuyasha because he had issues with vulnerability and reconciling his half-heritage. What if SESSHOMARU benefited more as a character from an unconditional bond (free from the conditions of sexual/romantic attraction) to demonstrate to him how even the weakest creature is incomprehensibly valuable for reasons impossible to articulate, and they are worth using his incredible level of “superior” power to protect and defend them? It’s a different kind of humbling oneself than what you were talking about, but I think it’s just as meaningful, and it fits Sesshomaru’s character development neatly into the the original text. It doesn’t require Sunrise make a sequel more than a decade later to wrap up the character development that Rumiko Takahashi meant to do when Rin grew up even though she could have just written her in as an adult in the first place.

“But Rin will obviously not always stay 8/11 years old, she will grow into her own person and become a woman (while living apart from Sessh), creating a completely different power dynamic with Sessh. One that would still be an imbalance, but much different than when she was a child.”

As far as the narrative was concerned, Rin COULD very well have stayed a child forever, though. She was written as a character in a story. When the story is done, so are the characters. You’ve said before and here that Inuyasha is just fiction, and it is, but accepting that means accepting that Rin doesn’t grow up without some prompting. She doesn’t age but through the hand of a creator, fanfiction authors or Sunrise. When you say she’s not going to stay 8-11 forever, what you mean is that actual humans who experience actual time are not satisfied with her age as it stood when the story ended, and actively impose time upon her.

And since applying time to a fictional character is something that has to be intentional, so too do the conditions you mention to create the perfect environment for the ship. The different dynamic that isn’t father-daughter, but still a little bit of not-weird power imbalance. The “lowering” of Sesshomaru’s ego in that specific romantic way (that I’m still not sure I understand, but we’ll go with it). The way in which the romance is developed without either character realizing it so that Sesshomaru can’t be accused of using the power imbalance to manipulate a girl he’s had authority over since she was eight. Returning to what catalyzed the change in Sesshomaru in the first place while carefully treading around the fact that it was built upon an unconditional relationship that now suddenly has conditions on it. That’s a lot of mental legwork to do, which is fine, because that’s part of creative expression. But you have to acknowledge that none of this would be necessary if the pairing were “obvious”.

It certainly wasn’t very obvious to some of us. We came to a very different conclusion, saw everything a bit differently. Now we’re being punished for having a less popular interpretation of this relationship, shut down by SUNRISE and told that we don’t get to have that interpretation, because they’re considered an authority on what is canon in Inuyasha, and they’re taking sides to squeeze more money out of the Inuyasha franchise with a next-gen sequel. It doesn’t seem to matter that Sunrise was never really very good at telling Inuyasha stories, or that next-gen sequels never seem to be any good for lack of stakes and boring plots.

Sunrise’s interpretation is still considered to be more “valid” than ours. And that really hurts. So, if you found yourself wondering why there’s so much vitriol coming from the anti camp, it’s a combination of this, and the fact that they don’t really have the option of avoiding the content they don’t like anymore. It’s kind of EVERYWHERE now.

So, there we are. I don’t want to give the impression from the above that I’m trying to tear apart your arguments to somehow discredit the pairing. Shippers gonna ship, whether it makes sense to me or not. But I did want to highlight how any of the things you bring up can very well be interpreted entirely differently.

Hope you’re doing well, and you did well on that exam. :)

#inuyasha #anti sessrin #iy discourse #sesshomaru #rin (inuyasha)#@strawberrycreampiefluff #apologies for the technical difficulties #i'm tumblr illiterate

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gallickingun · 4 years

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sweet & spicy celebration!

@tomurasprincess and I have both hit follower milestones recently, so we wanted to do a little celebration together using a mix of sfw & nsfw prompts!

First of all, thank you guys for following us! We wouldn’t be able to celebrate this without you! 💜

Rules:

1. Should be following BOTH @gallickingun and @tomurasprincess 2. ONE request per person. 3. Given that both our ask boxes are currently open for generic requests, please make sure to put a little ‘♕’ somewhere in your ask so we can be sure your request is for this event.

How to Participate:

You can hop into either Mari’s ask, or my ask to request a character + a number prompt! These will all be character x reader works, and any and all characters are available - from minor characters, to villains, to heroes!

Once the prompt has been requested, we will mark it off this list and make note of the character it was requested with because once a number has been chosen, it’s no longer eligible for another character! When requesting the spicy prompts, please make sure to note if there is anything you specifically don’t want included, or else we have total creative license to take the spice to the highest level if we so feel inclined!

How it Works:

Once all of the prompts have been claimed, we’ll split them up based on our skills, preferences, and comfort level. I’ll make a masterlist to post on our blogs once we know what characters have been taken for which prompts so you can binge the reading once we’ve started to post the fics. We will start posting as soon as we finish the first fics, and the event will run until we’ve fulfilled all of the requests!

In the meantime, please check out our masterlists - Mari & Morgan.

Prompts below the cut! ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Sweet Prompts:

"I can't sleep, can I stay here?" || BAKUGOU || gallickingun

"You've always felt like home." || SHINSOU

"I'll keep you warm." || SHOUTO

"I wouldn't change a thing about you." || SHOJI

"I'm right where I belong." || TAMAKI

"After everything we've been through, you still don't think that I love you?" || DABI

"You make me happy." || KIRISHIMA

"I could never forget you." || HAWKS

"Apparently all of our friends have a bet going on that we end up together." || AIZAWA

"Are you flirting with me?" "You finally noticed." || TOKOYAMI

Spicy Prompts (ALL TAKEN):

"Sweetheart, I have to mark you. How else is everyone gonna know you're mine?" || DABI

"You're mine, do you understand? You belong to me." || BAKUGOU

"Why do you let others stare at you like that? Do you like the attention? Then, I guess you wouldn't mind if I did this." || TAMAKI

"I want to know what makes you squirm, what sounds you make if I touched you here-" || DENKI

"After I'm done with you, you won't even be capable of thinking of anything or anyone else but me." || BAKUGOU

"You're so beautiful, chained up like that on my bed. I think I might just fuck you like this." || BAKUGOU

"I bet you think you're real cute letting them put their hands all over you. We'll see how cute you look later when I get you home." || SHIGARAKI

"If you're going to act like a little brat then I'm going to treat you like a little brat." || TAMAKI

"Safewords exist for a reason. I'm going to prove that to you." || SIR NIGHTEYE

"Controlling myself around you is so fucking hard." || BAKUGOU

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

As always, if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. If we receive any asks that do not follow the rules, we will delete them or post them without marking off one of the requested prompts. Please be kind and patient, as inspiration sparks at weird times. We may get to some of these fics as soon as they’re requested, or it may take some time.

And again - thank you for following us. You guys mean the world to us!

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #follower milestone #milestone party #sweet and spicy follower celebration #tomurasprincess #gallickingun

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kuriboo · 4 years

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Hugsaku 2021

Day 3 - Things You Said in a Dream | Three Things | Favorite Food | “Oh no I seem to have fallen on top of you and now am too lazy to move. What a tragedy.”

For Hugsaku 2021, I’ve been writing a continuous story with the prompts from each day. The general story is: Yusaku ends up in Heartland with no idea how he got there and Yuma decides try to help Yusaku get home. If you’d like to read the story so far, it’s available in either my previous posts or on ao3. I’ll link to the story on ao3 in the notes.

I ended up using four different prompts for this part, which was more than I expected I’d be using when I first started writing it. I don’t think I ever used this many prompts in future parts, but it ended up working very well for this one. I hpoe you enjoy!

Yusaku woke up screaming.

When his eyes were closed, all he could see was a completely white room. All he could remember was the duels he was constantly forced to go through, all he could feel was desperation, the pain and punishment that came with losing. He couldn’t breathe. Now he was awake and he didn’t recognize anything in the room around him. That only made him feel worse. Where was he? He couldn’t calm down, he couldn’t breathe.

A face floated in front of his. He didn’t recognize it. The face glowed white, with different colored eyes. “Is he sick again?” the face asked. “He doesn’t look good.”

Yusaku screamed again and scooted back on the floor, away from the stranger. This wasn’t home. Why wasn’t he home?

“What’s going on?” A different voice, off to the side. Another face entered Yusaku’s field of vision. He recognized this one: Yuma. Yuma looked towards the stranger.

“He woke up and kept screaming,” the stranger reported. “He did say he gets nightmares. For a second, though, it appeared he was looking directly at me, as if he could see me. Then he screamed again.”

“That’s silly, no one else can see you,” Yuma muttered. He looked at Yusaku. “It must have been a nightmare? But, um, I don’t know what to do?” His voice got louder . “I should do something, right??”

Yusaku’s heart was racing. Breathing was difficult. He felt like Yuma and the stranger were several rooms away. But slowly, his mind started working again. This was Yuma’s room. Yuma was letting him stay here. He’d been dreaming before. The incident was in the past. He had to pull himself out of it.

“Three reasons,” Yusaku managed to get out, “to keep going.” He looked down at his hands. Shakily, he held up a finger. “We need to save Kolter’s brother. We have to help him.” Another. “Ai and Kolter don’t know where I am.” Another. “There’s still a chance… I can get back to Den City.” With each reason, he calmed down a little bit. Breathing got easier. The world around him felt more real. He forced himself to take deep breaths. He took in the scene around him.

Yuma was crouched on the floor next to him. That stranger Yusaku had seen before was real, apparently, and still there. The floating was real, too, so apparently whoever this was could just float in the air, which was weird. Yusaku could feel how sweaty he was. The blankets and the sleeping bag he must’ve thrown off himself in his sleep, because he didn’t feel any different now than he had before he backed away. No difference in the amount of weight on him or how warm he was. It was dark, probably the middle of the night. Yuma looked tired, but still concerned. Yusaku felt bad for waking him.

Yusaku rubbed the back of his neck, feeling itchy. “It’s nothing,” he told Yuma. “Just a nightmare. I get them all the time. Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course I’m worried about it!” Yuma shot back. “‘Just’ a nightmare? You don’t look good at all, for a moment you looked more like a cornered wild animal or something than someone who just woke up. You looked scared. You shouldn’t have to feel scared.”

“Doesn’t matter if I should or not. It’s just the way it is.” Yusaku shrugged. Whatever was ideal meant nothing compared to reality. “I’m probably just not used to waking up in your room. This happened multiple times after I moved to my apartment. It’s nothing.”

“It’s something all right.” Yuma sighed. “What kind of nightmares are you even getting that you’re reacting this badly to them?”

“Real world experience. From the past.”

“What happened?”

Yusaku looked away. As a rule, he didn’t talk to anyone about the Lost Incident besides people that were involved and understood, like Kolter, or Ai. Yusaku didn’t open up to people. He generally avoided interacting with people at all. Nobody uninvolved could really understand. Plus, now he had his identity as Playmaker to worry about. Opening up to people, connecting himself to the Lost Incident, it ran the risk of someone figuring out who he was. And Playmaker needed to be anonymous. Playmaker was a criminal. Yusaku couldn’t keep doing what he was doing if the wrong person figured him out, and anyone could be that wrong person.

But here, in Heartland City, the Lost Incident didn’t exist. It never happened. Yusaku didn’t exist, and neither did Playmaker. So discussing the Lost Incident couldn’t possibly get him in trouble here. He looked at Yuma again. Something told him that Yuma might not understand, but he’d at least try. At least, he wouldn’t judge Yusaku badly. Usually opening up backfired for Yusaku, but maybe this time it wouldn’t.

“I was kidnapped when I was 6.” With those words out, Yusaku couldn’t stop, so he kept going. He didn’t look at Yuma as he explained what happened, but out of the corner of the eye he could see the stranger floating above them. The stranger didn’t seem judgemental, though, they just looked down at him and listened with a curious expression on their face. “After a few months, we were found and rescued,” Yusaku finished. “But I still have nightmares about it 10 years later. I’ve never really been able to move on.”

“That’s awful.” Yuma teared up. “I’m sorry something like that happened. If I was there, I’d…”

“You would have been way too young to do anything about it if you were even alive then,” Yusaku pointed out.

“Hey, I would have been 1!!” Yuma puffed out his cheeks. “Who cares how old I was, I would’ve done something no matter what! Age means nothing if I’m feeling the flow.”

“Whatever.” Yusaku rolled his eyes. “What’s done is done. It doesn’t matter either way.”

“Of course it matters,” Yuma protested. “If you have nightmares about it and it still hurts you, then it matters, because you matter. Well, in this case, there’s only one thing to do.” Yuma collapsed on the floor next to Yusaku.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh no, it looks like I’ve accidentally fallen on top of you, and now I’m too lazy to move. Guess I’m stuck here all night. Maybe you’ll sleep better if I’m here next to you.”

Yuma wrapped his arms around Yusaku in a hug, further cementing the fact that he was really going to stay there all night.

Yusaku sighed. He wasn’t going to be able to push Yuma away from him, and even if he did he knew by now that Yuma would just come back. He might as well live with it.

Still, something was bothering him. He pointed up at the stranger above them. “Do you know who that is?”

Yuma looked from Yusaku, to the stranger, then back to Yusaku, then to the stranger again. “Wait, you can see Astral??”

“Most peculiar.” The stranger-- Astral-- brought a hand up to his chin. “No humans besides Yuma have been able to see me so far. Have you been able to see me the whole time, or is now the first time?”

“I saw you when I woke up. Not before then.”

“I wonder what prompted this change?” Astral asked. “I’ve spent more time around Yuma’s other friends than you, but they still cannot see me. Maybe there’s something special about you.”

It seemed like Astral wasn’t an imaginary friend after all. Yusaku didn’t appreciate the comment about Yuma being his friend, but he was too tired to point it out or to think about why he could suddenly see Astral when he couldn’t before. All he could do was fall back asleep, pulled back towards it by the extra warmth Yuma’s arms provided him.

Yusaku woke up to the smell of something burning. He checked the time: it was fairly early in the day. Who was burning something this early? He looked around the room. Astral and Yuma weren’t here, so it was entirely possible that Yuma was the culprit. Figuring he better go check on him, Yusaku got up and followed the smell to its source in the kitchen.

He found Yuma in the house’s kitchen, perched over a pot on the stove. In a panic, he tried to grab it off the stove before yelping from pain. Yusaku sighed. If something had been cooking in the pot, then clearly it was hot and not to be touched with bare hands. Only a fool would do something like that.

Astral floated above Yuma, watching his work. “Interesting. Observation: contact with metal can sometimes cause pain to humans.”

“It’s because it’s hot,” Yusaku clarified. He walked across the kitchen to close the distance between himself and Yuma and Astral. “If you touch something really hot, it burns you.” Yusaku stared at Yuma. “What’s going on?”

“Oh. Uh.” Yuma blew on the part of his hand that touched the pot. “It’s kind of a complicated story.”

“I have time.”

“Well… You were talking in your sleep. About hot dogs?? It sounded kind of like you liked them, or at least, that’s what Astral thought. So I thought maybe if I made some hot dogs it would cheer you up? I mean, you had a bad nightmare last night, and being stranded in some other world has to be stressful for you. You know? But I kind of accidentally burned them…” Yuma laughed nervously. “So much for that, huh?”

“You never cooked hot dogs for me, Yuma.”

“You can’t eat human food, Astral! We already tried!”

Talking in his sleep? As far as Yusaku was aware, he didn’t talk in his sleep much. Maybe being in Heartland City was causing something weird to happen to him. Maybe that was why he could see Astral now. But he had been dreaming. It had been a nicer dream for once. He was visiting Kolter at Cafe Nom, like none of this ever happened. It was...nice, actually. He missed that more than he’d think he would. And Kolter did give him a hot dog in his dream…

Yusaku spent more time around Kolter than he did anyone else. He included school in that as well, since Yusaku skipped classes occasionally and Kolter and Yusaku pulled more all-nighters together than anyone else probably should. And now, Kolter wouldn’t let Yusaku pay for hot dogs and coffee anymore (though he did try to limit the amount of coffee Yusaku drank). He pretended to keep some sort of running tab for Yusaku while refusing to let him pay any amount of it off. And Yusaku only started eating hot dogs in the first place to have a reason to be at Cafe Nom that was actually legal, but by now they’d grown to be his favorite food. Yusaku did tend to stick to eating cheaper food anyway. Yet, hot dogs were still the winner. Some days he barely ate anything else.

Yusaku stared at the pot of burnt hot dogs. All burnt food smelled bad, and hot dogs were no exception. They weren’t going to be edible. It was a disaster on all accounts. But Yuma had done it thinking of him. Yuma’d gone out of his way to do something he wasn’t asked to do for him, with nothing for Yuma himself to gain from it. Yusaku didn’t know how to respond to that. Friends did this kind of thing for each other, right? Yusaku was rarely on the receiving end of something like this, and never on the giving end. That required having friends at all.

“Thank you,” Yusaku managed. Hopefully that was good enough.

“For what?” Yuma sounded confused. “For burning your hot dogs? That’s a weird thing to thank someone for. What, do they eat burnt hot dogs where you’re from?”

“No.”

“Then what are you thanking me for?”

Yusaku sighed. “Nevermind.”

“I believe that Yusaku was actually thanking you for the sentiment rather than the hot dogs themselves, Yuma,” Astral explained.

“I didn’t send anyone mints,” Yuma said.

“Nevermind.” Astral sighed.

Yusaku dreamed again the next night. It wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a dream of what he missed.

Earlier that day, Yuma had helped Yusaku look for a way home after school. It was difficult without having idea how Yusaku arrived in this world in the first place. The only idea they could think of was based on Astral being from another world as well. Apparently, as Yuma and Astral gathered Number cards, Astral began to regain memories as well. (Interesting, that Yusaku and Astral had both lost memories upon arriving in his world.) Astral suggested that the key might be within his lost memories. So, Yusaku ended up actually helping Yuma and Astral look for Numbers. They had no luck that day, though.

The dream Yusaku had wasn’t far off. He was trying to help Yuma deal with Numbers. Dreams could be nonsensical, however, and Yusaku’s dream often didn’t make sense. Sometimes, rather than Heartland City, he found himself in Den City, Link Vrains, and other places Yusaku couldn’t remember ever seeing before.

No matter where they were, Yuma kept dragging Yusaku along with him in his search. They seemed to be in a rush. But even though they never found anything before Yusaku woke up, Yusaku never felt too annoyed about the whole situation.

#hugsaku #hugsaku2021 #yugioh vrains #yugioh zexal #tater writes #this one starts out with yusaku waking up from a nightmare...#i've really enjoyed writing the banter between yuma and astral and i think this chapter really shows it off #as for yusaku being able to see astral... i've intentionally interpreted his abilities loosely for this fic #yusaku can sort of sense what's happening in vrains so i've decided to interpret that as #yusaku being able to sense things from other connected worlds #with vrains being connected to den city and astral world being connected to heartland #which is almost certainly not how it works but? i wanted yusaku to meet astral

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