i love YR and i love wille and simon so much but i will be a simon defender till the day i die. i can see both wille’s and simon’s POVs for how they acted but idk as poor POC simon’s actions resonate more with me. regardless, the reason why i say this is because i always see so much more wille support/simon hate online than i do vice versa. im not asking for wille hate but im asking for prepubescent girls to stop supporting wille simply because he’s an attractive white boy. i dont know—maybe im oversimplifying things but what do you think about the split between simom defenders and wille defenders?
I get it. It's not fair but I get it.
Why?
Because Simon is all of us.
I might be able to identify more with Wilhelm when it comes to many things, his personality, his anxiety, his temper... but in essence every single one of us will always have more in common with Simon than with Wilhelm.
It doesn't matter how different our lives, upbringings and the small everyday things which shaped and defined us are from Simon's. It doesn't matter how much I see my younger self reflected in Wilhelm, how much I can relate to his struggles (I mean it does, but for this specific argument it doesn't). My life will still always be closer to Simon's than to Wilhelm's.
We are Simon. Simon fucks up. Simon makes mistakes. Far reaching mistakes, and it's always easier to be self-critical and insecure than not to.
I'm Simon. But I wouldn't have done xyz! (I wouldn't, I'd either have done something worse or nothing at all, which might just be worse still.)
Simon is a teen and he makes teen mistakes. Sometimes understandable ones, sometimes stupid ones, sometimes crazy ones.
It's normal. It's relatable, it's every one of us but different. Of course it's easier to be critical of Simon. To 'hate on' Simon. He is us, but he doesn't always act like we would, nor does he act like the idealized version of the beloved character we want him to be.
He's a teenager and he's flawed and he's human. We love him and we want him to be perfect but he isn't. Of course there's Simon 'hate'. It's not okay, but I get it.
Simon is us, but he makes mistakes we, however unconsciously, think we wouldn't. We think we would do better, or at least we hope so, and so we criticize him.
It's not right, but I also get the urge to do so even if I don't approve.
Wilhelm however? Wilhelm is different.
Wilhelm is a prince. Worse, he's a crown prince and future king. He's His Royal Highness The Crown Prince of Sweden, Duke of Some Historical Province or Another.
His entire existence causes a knee-jerk reaction of defensiveness. At least it does in me.
Him being a minor who didn't choose who he was born as helps, but it's not enough. Yes, his life isn't easy. Yes he's living with pressure none of us can understand. Not the irl crown princess and not rwrb's Henry.
But he also has power and privilege and wealth the likes of which we'll never truly be able to comprehend. No matter what he chooses to do once he's an adult, he'll always have that.
Wilhelm's entire existence is a reflection of most of what's wrong with this world. I cannot in good conscience root for him and I shouldn't like him. We shouldn't romanticize and glorify royalty, not even fictional one, because all their wealth, power and privilege is built on our backs and sustained by our backs.
I should hate him, not feel sorry for him. I shouldn't empathize with him.
And yet Wille is my bb and my fav and I love him and he never did anything wrong in his life. Not ever. Wille is perfect. He deserves the world and I'll defend him and his wrongs to the very end of it and damn everything and everyone else.
Why?
Because if I start to acknowledge, in all seriousness, that any of his mistakes or wrongs are in fact mistakes and deserve (more) consequences, no matter if it's the fact that he's an objectively bad friend to Felice (I'm already getting super defensive typing these words because Wilhelm, my poor bb, had reasons and deserves to be selfish!) or that you never, ever point any gun at anyone, not ever, or any of his other numerous mistakes, then I'm opening up a Pandora's box I cannot close again.
Yes, he's a teenager and he's flawed and he's human. Yes, he makes stupid, far reaching mistakes. Yes, it's everyone else who hands him his power and privilege. Yes, it's all inherited, as is his wealth, but that doesn't make it alright.
You cannot, in good conscience, root for Wilhelm without also acknowledging or at least being aware of the inherent power dynamics at play, and I'm not only talking about Wilhelm and Simon's relationship, but Wilhelm and everyone, including his mother and the royal court and the entire government.
All three need Wilhelm more than he needs them, and once he fully realizes that he's going to be (even more of) a menace.
Wilhelm doesn't have any political power on paper, but that doesn't mean that his actions can't influence and control the entire Swedish legislature for years. That can be good, sure, at least in the long term, but it'll also take away from much needed other laws etc being discussed and passed, ones which would better the lives of many Swedes directly and immediately. That is scary, because it's real, or it could be.
Wilhelm is a minor and Young Royals is captivating, fictional escapism. But my ardent republican heart (of the non US kind) still struggles with not getting immediately defensive when talking about my love for Wilhelm, because Young Royals is also so real and realistic and a reflection of so many things which are still extremely problematic in our oh so progressive, look at how much worse all the other countries are, can't you be happy with what you've got? part of the world in ways many other shows aren't, and Wilhelm and his rank and title and entire existence are at the heart of it.
The biggest 'problem' Young Royals has is that despite the premise, it is so realistic and relatable and well done. It's almost impossible to escape into the fiction of it to a degree where you can solely focus on the cute boys falling in love and the romantic tragedy of their struggles, without also being at the very least peripherally aware of our reality being reflected in every scene.
Young Royals is romantic and hot and heart-wrenching, but it also criticizes the system and society and shows us exactly how little people like Simon, people like us, matter to the upper class, and it does so from the very first episode in which Simon tries his best to stay strong and tells everyone exactly who the country's biggest welfare receivers are. And he's right.
Simon deserves our defense, our support. But I don't feel the need to. I should, because Simon is not as strong as he wants to be, but he's also a normal teen and nothing is easier than looking down on teenagers and people we can identify with or have things in common with. We all do it all the time, willingly or not, consciously or not, thinking we're better, that we'd do better, no matter how much we love them, because not doing so would mean acknowledging our own faults and flaws, would mean we'd have to admit that Simon is doing the best he can in a way most of us probably wouldn't be able to.
Wilhelm however? I can identify with parts of him despite of everything he stands for and not because, and that is scary, because I don't want to have anything in common with a future hereditary head of state.
I don't want to sympathize with royalty, with people who can control others around them with nothing but words, worse their mere existence. People who, were I to address them in anything other than the third person and with a title, would consider me to be the rude one, as would everyone around us.
And yet I do. I do identify with Wilhelm. I sympathize with him. I think I understand him, but scratching the surface of that is dangerous, because no matter how much we need escapism in these hard times romanticizing royalty, sympathizing with them and thinking they're just like us is not only tricky but dangerous.
It's what the elites want, all of them, while they laugh at our plight and profit off of our hard work. It's what gets horrible people elected president and billionaires turned into cool, dudebro heroes. It's a slippery slope and none of them are the exception, no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise.
Of course we get defensive, of course we're so passionate to highlight that Wilhelm's mistakes are okay and are overly critical of Simon's.
Defending Wilhelm is not rational, it's not logical, and yet it is, which is why I will burn down the world in Wille's defense and serve it to him on a silver platter, because my bb deserves everything and his feelings and struggles are valid and who am I to judge. Wille never did anything wrong.
Finally, I get where you're coming from, but please don't make this about prepubescent girls. Or teenage girls. Being a girl that age is hard. Your body and feelings are changing in ways you don't understand, people suddenly treat you differently. Adults, kids, other teens no matter their gender. You are sexualized, and your intelligence and skills are suddenly only of secondary importance at best.
It's scary, and even when it's good it's not safe. You always need to be wary and careful lest you have to pay a price for your joyful inattentiveness, a potentially traumatic, life changing price.
Being a prepubescent and teenage girl is also wonderful and freeing and eye opening in the best way, but anything you do or say will always be reduced to silly teenage girl, even by other teenage girls, someone to be made fun of and not taken seriously, when in truth nothing requires more strength and tenacity than surviving as a prepubescent and teenage girl.
So if fixating on attractive, unattainable white boys helps? Let them and don't judge, no matter your age or gender. It's not perfect, but it's safe. More, it's a safe way to explore your budding sexuality and bond with others along the way, something which is so important when nothing about being a girl that age ever feels safe, not even when you think you can do anything and know everything.
That attractive, unattainable (white) boy? Be it Wilhelm or the current boygroup heartthrob of choice? He is going to reveal private things about himself (most likely made up, but that doesn't invalidate how finding out those facts makes you feel) without demanding a price, you can develop an intense parasocial relationship with him and learn and grow from it, it can help you in many ways which aren't obvious at first (I still keep up with my teenage boygroup and listen to every one of their new albums even though it's been twenty years and I've had musical anhedonia for almost as long), and he will never, ever grope you or insult you or make you feel awkward and insecure, nor will he ever pressure you to do something you're not ready for (unless it's to spend money you don't have on useless stuff you desperately need).
Please don't be condescending or judgmental of prepubescent girls, especially ones having to grow up in the age of social media and smartphones everywhere. Fixating on the attractive white boy is a matter of self-defense. It doesn't mean they aren't aware of what they're doing or that doing so isn't ideal. They know. Everyone is constantly telling them and making them feel guilty about it. Please don't be one of them.
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in light of gojo's unsealing, ive thought about diff cute scenarios
gojo being the type of person to get his mate's phone and snap hundreds of pictures of his face
this would probably never happen given gojo's privacy when it comes to his marriage but in a different world i can see this happening Gojo naming his alpha as "mochi seller' on his phone and Itadori seeing the message pop out from the lock screen and accidentally somewhat outing gojo's rs when he asks him in front of the other students why the mochi seller sent an ily message
the tender moments where gojo lets his infinity down or lets his alpha inside his infinity and he gets to relish in the warmth of their skin
the sappy things gojo's alpha has to sometimes do whenever gojo gets too rowdy and they need to placate him for whatever reason (re: alpha reading a map together with nanami scenario)
gojo sending his alpha a picture of two rocks by the sidewalk with the caption: 'us'
gojo asking his alpha if they would still love him if he was a worm and the alpha saying: "no<33"
Awww! These were really cute anon! Very happy ending which I feel like we're going to need a lot of in the coming weeks...
(Also I ran with it but why is their name "mochi seller" haha)
[Ao3 link for those who prefer chapters]
⬖ Photomaton
"Device storage insufficient, please move or delete files to make room?" you read, nonplussed.
Nobara sighed. "Sensei, I showed you how to do that weeks ago."
"I did do it." You frowned, opening up your files. Why were there so many pictures...
Nobara rolled her eyes at you and beat a hasty retreat when your hand went to your mouth as your face went warm.
There were rows and rows of photos, none of which you had taken.
Most of them were selfies, but some of them were obviously the result of Satoru propping the phone up and attempting to pose for the camera.
He must have been swiping your phone every time you left it sitting out or went to sleep. He didn't rest much, but there were so many, more probably than you'd been able to take in the last five years.
There wasn't much thought for such things when you only saw one another a handful of days every month. The focus had gone to managing the present, not on taking pictures. You'd only really thought to regret it after that terrible Halloween, when you worried you'd never see him again.
Some of the photos framed Satoru inside one of your homes. Others were almost ugly shots, taken way too close, or blurred with motion artifact. There were pictures of him haloed in the night glow of streetlights or washed out in the halogen light of a konbini. There were those made grainy with low light and some that took your breath away because he was nice looking.
Furtively, you looked up but were alone and you silently thanked your student's exasperated impatience. A few of the photos showed just too much skin to be exactly proper.
You thumbed down. The pictures were a story all their own revealing some of what Satoru did when alone and you savored the honesty. You had to keep apart from one another for so long.
The last thing in the camera roll was a video.
It opened with the shuffling sounds and the wobbling display of someone walking. Satoru wound around furniture in the darkened interior of your apartment.
"I'm home. You're asleep right now," he said lowly, "probably won't be later. I don't know how most people can sleep so much." He spoke half to himself, the deep night laying over his words like velvet.
There was the sound of the door to the little balcony opening and then the faint tinkle of the glass bells hanging from the eaves.
"Must be nice," he mused, "you get to miss a lot."
The image on the screen steadied as he rested your phone on the rail. The familiar view of the city resolved as faint golden starbursts of light. The rustling of Satoru's clothing faded until all you could hear was the faint rush of night wind and his breathing.
The video went on for over a quarter of an hour. You scrolled your fingers across the screen. He didn't move, the picture stayed the same. You leaned against a wall and listened to the last few moments, your heartbeat low and slow, your breath in sync with his from some time both here and long ago.
Satoru spoke, amused over the night-sounds:
"Don't delete this. I'll know."
⬖ Daifuku
"Good job," Gojo congratulated his dust-stained students as the veil fell.
Maki and Toge glared while Yuuji gave him a tired thumbs up from where he was laying on the ground.
"Dinner is on me tonight." Gojo ignored their halfhearted grumbling. "Decide where you want to go."
He anticipated a larger than normal ding to his wallet, but they'd earned it (and it wasn't as though he couldn't afford it). Beating this curse was no minor feat and it had been a particularly crafty one, which was why Gojo had gone with them just in case.
The students made noises of acknowledgement with varying levels of anticipation, but to no one's surprise, Yuuji was the first to roll over and dig around for his phone.
He tapped the screen and groaned.
"Sensei, mine's dead. Can I use yours?"
Gojo unlocked it and passed it over without a thought. He wasn't particularly hungry, the kids could figure this out without his interference for once.
"Um, Gojo-sensei?"
"Hm?"
"Why is a "mochi seller" reminding you to stop at the pharmacy and sending you heart emojis?"
With uncanny synchrony, Maki and Toge's heads turned to look at their teacher.
The phone in Yuuji's hand buzzed faintly.
"I love you?" he read, sounding alarmed.
Toge's eyes went a bit wide but a grin that curled a bit too much at the edges and showed teeth took over Maki's face.
"Text back," she said, scrambling to her feet.
With all her quickness, she swooped in and snatched the phone when Yuuji hesitated.
The phone buzzed once more.
"I'll be home by 8:30, probably," she read.
Gojo took advantage of Maki's triumphant look to slip the device from her grip.
"I knew it!" she pointed at him. "I knew you were hiding something."
"Grown ups hide lots of things," he replied blithely. He was confident none of the students could tell that moment had been more like someone walking over his grave.
It was not as though he intended to hide his relationship with you. Hide implied shame, concealment on the other hand had been security and was harder to let go of. There would come a moment when the kids prised the truth from him. He was not about to have that moment with his kids now, or hopefully ever, because they accidentally read his texts out loud.
Maki reached for his phone and he easily tipped out of her way, walking off and heading towards a neighborhood he knew (and the students did not) had a lot of very good restaurants.
He was silently very thankful when the implied threat of no food at all distracted the students. Or at least had Yuuji barreling past Maki and kindly dropping the matter in favor of promising to "only look at the map this time, was there a good katsudon place nearby?"
⬖ Goose Down
Satoru spotted you hunched over a rail with your umbrella open overhead, held in the crook of your elbow.
He could tell from the set of your shoulders that the summer sun was getting to you, despite the cursed tool taking a majority of the pressure off.
Your energy was butter yellow and burnt red and lithium pink, mixing slowly around your body as you slowly cycled power into the umbrella and the short sword held loosely in your hands.
Satoru ducked around a corner and took a peak at your face. Your eyes were closed.
Smirking quietly to himself, he crept around, Infinity a barrier between himself and the world. For just a little longer...
You jumped when he dropped it, nearly dropping your sword and automatically holding the umbrella high enough for him to fit under it.
"Hah-"
"Speechless?"
You gaped at him, mouth hanging open.
He nodded as if you'd just confirmed it. "This is what they don't tell you about marriage. Making someone's heart race is important even after the wedding. We'll probably be together forever at this rate."
You mouth closed and then went a little wobbly.
"It's hot," you finally said, miserably. "And it's too sunny."
He couldn't hold back his laughter as he stepped closer and folded himself around you. Your scent tingled pleasantly in his nose and your skin was warm from both heat and light, like a sun-warmed blanket.
"Oh," you said faintly, "you're cool," and you all but melted against him.
"You could just go inside," Satoru said. "I sent the students off on an adventure. We wouldn't be bothered."
"That sounds nice," you murmured, but didn't make any move away from him.
He didn't either. He didn't feel much like letting go yet.
⬖ Orange Kazoo
Sometimes, you reminded yourself through your already strained patience, Satoru just needed to be left alone to make noise.
For a moment, you considered begging him for just a little peace, but you knew he was doing this for your benefit. Shibata Kin was a difficult pill to swallow.
"I never expected anyone to send Six Eyes to join us."
It was the weakest and most recent of Shibata's barbs. The oily way he said it and the implication that anyone would dare to subordinate Satoru to this boot licker rankled.
Satoru crinkled the package extra loud on a bit of melon bread and smiled. "I was in the neighborhood."
He took a bite, chewed and swallowed while you flipped through the mission report on a clipboard.
You sighed, exhaling your worry, and handed it back. "Let's go then. It looks like all the victims disappeared from the same place so we should start there."
That place was a building that straddled a moderately busy subway station and stacked part of a shopping mall, a cluster of private clinics, and a cram school all on top of each other.
Satoru trailed behind through the store, stopping at kiosks and chatting with saleswomen, picking up and putting down objects.
You could feel Shibata's irritation transform into something far less internal as he turned to you.
"He's like a child," he remarked coolly. "Sure we shouldn't just ditch him? The curse doesn't sound that hard to deal with since I've got you."
When you ignored him, he kept talking.
"He shouldn't even be here," the man drawled.
You shrugged. "Well he is."
Shibata sourly appeared to swallow whatever else he wanted to say. You turned around to see where Satoru had gone to. The thought of being stuck with the bitter other sorcerer was worse than waiting for them to pick their bickering back up.
He waved a stuffed cat in sunglasses at you and nodded eager agreement when you pointed out a cute little sparrow holding an umbrella on a shelf behind him. Sometimes, it was best to just humor Satoru and play along.
When you turned back, Shibata Kin was gone.
Since you were all concealing your residuals from the curse you expected was in the building, you had no idea where he went.
You looked over your shoulder. Satoru was gone too.
Well.
You tapped your fingers over your pocket and then decided to let them go. Satoru always seemed to know where to find you and Shibata had called you here as backup. You should probably go kill what you were looking for before it nibbled on him.
Many fewer curses than you expected lingered in the shopping mall. They were bizarre places with as many secret passageways as an ancient castle. Away from the popular shops and crowds, it quickly grew quiet and the bright gleam of displays gave way to more neglected halls.
On your way, you passed a small bank of capsule machines. You crouched down, and smiled faintly to yourself. Abandoned in the furthest reach of the shopping mall, almost near to where a service entrance lead to another stretch of winding halls and tunnels, the items here were both ancient (by city standards) and ridiculous.
Packages of candy that still held their shine but were likely far past their expiration date sat beside tiny figurines of a frog-shaped toddler in a little red hat. You grimaced back at those and moved on.
Near the end of the row was a machine that sold tiny musical instruments, plastic and paper and probably terrible sounding, but it wasn't expired food or frog children. You stuck a few coins into the slot and turned the dial.
An acid green ball spat out from the slot.
You picked at the latches on its side while you found your way further and further into the little used corridors.
There was a flash of something, like a burst of camera illumination from behind a door on your right.
You slipped through it, pulling your blade free from its sheath at the small of your back, and emerged into a tunnel that looked to be connecting to the nearby subway station. Not far ahead, the darkened path split into two.
You flipped the sword around so its blunt edge rested against your forearm and sprinted, dashing across the intersection.
A blur of motion came at you. As it grazed by, you snatched at that movement and sprang into the air, high enough to crouch on the ceiling of the tunnel.
The curse was a near perfect twin of the one a little ways down the way the attack had come, which should have maybe been your first hint. The one that had come at you was grinning, its face a rictus mockery of a theater mask.
They both sat, crouched like toads. You feinted toward the one that had come towards you, and at the last minute flew down to the other, its mouth bent in a painted looking frown.
It backed up in surprise, but not far enough and your blade nicked through the face, which was hard like dense wood. The air around your other hand shimmered in heat, as you struck for the thing's cavernous eyes.
It emitted a furious, scolding gurgle that almost reminded you of some of the window teachers from high school, and swallowed the burst of heat before it could crackled around it into full flame.
You hardly had time to reinforce your body with cursed energy before you were blasted from two directions, letting the momentum carry you and trying to wrap the more opposing forces and the roaring sound of displaced air into your own cursed energy. But something about it resisted you, and you were unable to absorb as much of the attack as you usually would.
A racking shiver radiated through your body right before you were caught by a broad hand on your back.
"Hi," Satoru said sweetly.
"Hi," you panted, automatic, eyes still fixed on the curse.
"What's going on?"
You looked up at him with incredulity.
Hoisted in his other arm was the limp body of your other companion.
Satoru's head cocked to the side, curious as he looked at the curse.
"I don't know yet. I hit it and then--" the mask of the frowning curse was ash blasted and the notch from your first strike still there, but it was not as damaged as expected.
You regained your footing and stood upright.
"If I give it another go I think I can figure it out."
He tilted his head.
You sized up the two curses waiting outside the reach of Satoru's infinity.
"Oh." You reached into your pocket and handed him the green orb.
"What's this?"
"Dunno," you said with a faint smile. "I got it for you."
"Aww, you shouldn't have."
Maybe not. Satoru thinks gachapon are funny, you should show him the line of machines if you get out of here the same way you come in, then he can choose something himself. You still have a few coins on you.
You flew at the grinning curse, both hands on the hilt of your blade, cursed energy flashing into a point a good six inches out from where the metal itself ended.
You held, crystalizing your own movement for a moment and stared deep into the thing's empty eyes.
It twitched, and then its arm moved and you slashed downward, intending to cleave the limb away.
The blade hit, you knew it did. You were able to dodge the attack you anticipated from the smiling curse. The frowning curse in front of you struck back, almost at the same time.
You pulled on some of the reserved momentum you'd held back in your initial strike and barely twisted out of the way.
You lifted the gleeful cackles of the twinned curses from the air and tried to twist them into a crackling rope of flame to surround the grinning one again. As you had expected, the damage did not seem to completely take and you were forced to duck when a bolt of heat tried to sear your back, culminating in another blast that shook the tunnel and thew you once more.
"That's enough."
Satoru appeared at your side again, pulling you back behind the shield of his power when the curse's retaliation threatened to cut through you.
"This one's a bad match for your technique," he murmured thoughtfully.
"Is it reflecting through the faces?" you asked, catching your breath.
He hummed.
Absently, you realized you could scent the sharp, fresh smell of citrus on his breath - the smell of the biting orange flavored candy you'd shared with him on the train ride here.
"If it reflects yours too--" you trailed off. What you did was firmly in the realm of the "real" and Satoru's abilities were not. If this curse were to reflect back blue, or red, or heaven forbid purple... well you'd never seen or asked up until if Satoru could stop his own techniques. It seemed a tactical oversight in this moment.
Satoru stepped forward.
"Stabilize him," he instructed flatly. He'd tossed Shibata Kin's still body where he had been standing barely a minute before.
The curses had moved closer and pressed together, beginning to meld into one another before your eyes. The damage you had already done was fading further.
You knelt at Shibata's side, shaking back your sleeves. "You know this is going to poison him."
You carefully set two fingers underneath his right collarbone, and three a few ribs below his heart on the left and focused in on the flickers of electricity that powered a human body.
"Oh well." Satoru's grin was a baring of teeth. "He'll get over it better than being dead."
You could sense the arrhythmic flutter of Kin's heart, like the popping scatter of an overloaded lamp, like a fractured version of that flash you had sensed earlier.
"You know he was trying to set you up right?" Satoru asked as he batted away an experimental chunk of rubble the curse tossed his way with a flick of his wrist. The stone was aimed right for the face of the smiling curse and even as it hit, it seemed to bounce back, hitting Satoru's shield and falling to the ground.
You sparked a bit of your energy to pure electricity, sending it jumping from one side of Shibata Kin's chest to the other.
"It crossed my mind," you admitted, murmuring as you concentrated. "But I didn't pursue the thought."
Satoru snorted. Yes, alright it was more likely you'd decided thinking about it too hard was going to distract you from the mission but you were here anyway.
You counted the pulse of electricity between your fingers to your own heartbeat until Kin's matched, or at least matched better than before.
When you pulled your hands away, Satoru cracked his knuckles. It looked like he was going to go in for physical attacks.
"You might need to manage the tunnel," he said.
Yet another reason this was a bad match up, not just for you but for him. Satoru did best in wide open spaces where he had room to move and didn't need to worry too much about collateral damage. Dropping a ton of rock on your heads and collapsing the buildings above sounded like a thing that could happen.
You had barely pressed your hands to the ground when Satoru was off like a shot.
The curse wasn't that strong - a high end second grade or low level first grade at best given that it wasn't itself attacking to provoke a response - but it split into those two halves of itself and reformed again as needed to minimize the impacts Satoru rained upon it or flank him.
Limitless lay against his skin between each strike so he remained unmarked, but the cavernous space still rocked with noise and dust shook from the gaps between tiles. You steadied it best you could, absorbing the oscillations and dampening the noise.
It did not take long for the frowning curse to realize what you were doing and send the smiling one racing for you. With one hand on the ground and one on your sword, brimming with unspent potential, you raised the point.
"Nah ah." This seemed at once to you and the monster charging your way. Satoru appeared in its path and bodily kicked it away.
It did not take long after for the twinned curses to be dispatched. Although the only reason you weren't holding your breath is because you were gritting your teeth with the effort of holding the ground together and trying not to shake apart yourself.
Satoru in motion, in a fight, particularly when physical constraint demanded more of his ingenuity, was always a sight to behold.
He came back to you looking unfairly dewy post exertion, with his hair in a sort of windswept disarray, the fabric around his shoulders bunched up. He shrugged out the wrinkles and dusted off his hands.
Your briefly pressed a hand to his knee after you steadied the last tremor from the ground.
"Thank you."
Satoru tapped his forefinger twice against your temple as he walked by. "A feedback loop between you and that thing would have been very messy."
You stood up, swaying slightly.
Even though Satoru would have happily dragged Shibata to the exit point, you insisted on tugging him upright and at least moving him through the air to a place where the three of you could safely rest and call a car.
You had settled him against a wall and were calling Akari when he finally stirred.
"What happened?" Shibata asked weakly.
You turned around to look at him and from Shibata Kin's tepid expression and the sound of shifting cloth behind you, you assumed Satoru must have copied your movement.
Still, you gave him a faint smile and couched down beside him. He didn't have the strength to move away as you grabbed his wrist and felt his pulse. It was thready, but he'd be good enough to get the rest of the way above ground until an actual doctor could take a look at hime.
"We're all alive," you explained unnecessarily.
Shibata Kin's eyes moved from your face to over your shoulder. Sweat beaded his brow and upper lip.
From behind you came a buzzing hum, somewhat approximating a sad tuba. Waa wa wa waaaaaaaa, it trailed off.
Satoru had a the wide end of a grape purple kazoo held between his teeth, his sunglasses already exchanged for the bandages he'd had wrapped around his eyes.
Only just in time, you ducked your face into your shoulder and hid a smile.
⬖ Pet rock
You were walking down some quiet residential street, trying to match the map to the trail of the curse you were tracking. It was not very intelligent, but it had a pernicious little ability to draw other curses to it under the banner of a powerful command. You'd been swatting third and fourth grades out of the air as you chased it, trying to wear down its arsenal.
It wasn't a terribly good strategy however and the thing had been winding its way through side streets to buy time. If you could get in closer, you could chop away at more of its train of screaming fears, maybe get a head start on the main peril. Thus the attempt at navigating and figuring out its destination so you could cut it off.
At least Hirano-san would be happy. Maybe. Culling curses required balance; they were their own little ecosystem. As long as the things aren't eating anyone, a certain amount of apex predators in an area could be a deterrent, like the old practice of putting powerful relics out like roach traps. Have the inevitable critters fight and eat one another rather than their human hosts.
A notification popped up over the map, and then another after it.
You felt your shoulders drop as you recentered yourself with a faint smile.
At your hotel later that night, you recalled that Satoru had sent you a message. You fell onto the bed, wrapped up in the hotel bathrobe.
It was... nice, knowing that someone was waiting at home for you. Or if not at home, he was still busy as ever, out there in the world somewhere, thinking of you. Weirdly normal.
The message was a picture. You blinked up at it. Two little rocks and a flower growing out of a crack in the pavement to shade over them.
>> ?
Almost immediately you saw three dots appear.
<< it's us!
Is it? you thought skeptically, looking at the picture again.
The dots again.
<< You don't think so :(?
Your phone was buzzing in your hand before you had even a moment to answer.
It startled you enough to drop the phone.
Owww
"You took so long to answer. This is photography, are you discouraging my new passion? It could go on a greeting card."
The word salad was meaningless and silly, weightless.
"I dropped you on my nose," you said, eyes closed as you rubbed the spot the corner of your case had hit.
"Were you that surprised by it?"
A pause.
"It's cute." The notion of it and the fact that he'd sent it to you was cute.
"It is cute right?" His voice was bright but not overly loud through the phone, for which you were grateful, already settling into warmth. "The flower is poisonous too."
You curled up on your side and held the phone close. Maybe he'd get lucky and you would find something cute to send back to him.
⬖ Puddle jumping
a/n: You have no idea how much googling I had to do to figure out what the prompt meant. I am not on the tick-tock app lol or, I've found, a fan of this meme... the implication that girlfriends ask useless questions as a rule seems sort of meh. So I mostly kept to my original response to this which was "i don't know what that is and honestly probably neither does alpha"
Satoru was herding you down the sidewalk, occasionally listing one way or the other to get you out of the way of other pedestrians. Sometimes he did it for the simple fascination of how you swayed along by him like you were on a tether. Even while you eyes were all but fixed skyward, you stayed roughly the same distance from him.
It was the first day of sun after days of rain and also one of the first days he had off with you in so many apart. He had been too restless the day before, back off a bad mission that had more to do with the desperate unpredictability of people than the intrinsic darkness of curses. You had not resisted him when he drew you out, stifled by the low clouds and humidity and longing for openness. Even with Infinity blocking the rain, it had felt like being closed in again.
Relieved of their burden, the clouds had gone from iron grey to diaphanous white and pealed up and away in swaths like billowing curtains. This is what you were watching - their retreat from the earth. They had come so low they wrapped around skyscrapers and telephone poles on their back to their usual place.
Satoru watched the drowned earth. You had cut through a tree lined walk. The rich soil was churned and muddy and the long bodies of worms that had been washed out or crawled up were strewn about.
Your and Satoru's steps made no mark as he stretched Infinity over and around the two of you. Neither of you tread upon those blind, waterlogged creatures.
Satoru stepped behind you to allow a cluster of high schoolers to pass and hid a faint wrinkle of his nose as they squealed and ran by, realizing they were stepping on some of the remains.
Your umbrella was folded and carried at your side, and you tilted your head back at him, looking a little sun-drunk. He smiled at you. He could see the reflection of the sky in your gaze.
He adopted a pout, snickering internally as you immediately seemed to regain some awareness and a wary anticipation entered your expression.
"Would you still like me if I was a worm?" he asked.
You blinked at him. "Is this one of those things you learned from the kids?"
He slouched a bit, crowding into your space. "Would you still love me if I was a worm," he wheedled.
"Are you turning into a worm?" you asked, slightly panicked, hand going to his arm as though to check if he was going as wet and floppy as the poor things on the ground.
"I'm going to turn into one if you don't answer my question."
The last of the distracted fog lifted from your eyes as you shook yourself. You took his hand and pulled him close to let another couple pass you on the walk. They inclined their head in thanks.
There was no rush to get where you were going and you tugged him along a smaller path that cut under a row of thick-branched trees so you could walk side by side unimpeded.
"I still liked you when you were a semi-sentient six sided die," you pointed out, smiling slightly.
"It's not the same," he whined a bit, drawing out the words in a sing-song fashion.
"Isn't it? I'm not sure a die eight kilometers under the ocean is more useful than a worm."
"Hmph."
"Although I really hope the worm thing is hypothetical."
"Why?"
"Because with our luck that would mean I'm a worm too."
Satoru huffed a faint sound of amusement. "Nooo. You'd still be some kind of bird." He patted your back. "Don't worry I'll make sure to crawl out late so you can still be in time to eat me all up."
"... Are you propositioning me or telling me to hurry up?"
"Walk faster or I'll step on the backs of your shoes."
You did. The two of you walked faster and faster until you were all but chasing one another out of the park, laughing lightly as you dodged the spots of wet on the ground.
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